Monday, June 18, 2007

If anyone had hopes that the new UN Secretary General would be and improvement over Annan

They certainly were dashed by this comment:

"The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change," Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.

UN statistics showed that rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, he said, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons.

"This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming," the South Korean diplomat wrote.

"It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought," Ban said in the Washington daily.

(via)

If the UN is going to do something about the conflict, wouldn't it be helpful for them to understand it?