The United Nations general assembly has before been for world political leaders to troop to New York for a weeklong party of long rambling speeches, and unplanned bilateral presidential chit chats.
The United Nations general assembly has before been for world political leaders to troop to New York for a weeklong party of long rambling speeches, and unplanned bilateral presidential chit chats.
Nobody really gives much notice the annual concentration of political power on the East Coast of America. Not this year.
The world watches in fascination as many paradigm shifting potions take centre stage.
For the first time in many years the world is looking forward to an American president who does not promise any pleasant surprises in his centre stage speech except proclamation of war against one thing, one state or one individual.
For the first time, climate change which has been a taboo subject for the biggest culprits, the world powers, is the pet subject of the United Sates just as is the topic of non-proliferation.
A lot of the unprecedented attention is focused on the change of the American administration and the ushering in of a wave of policy change that favours cooperation with other world powers. President Obama made history as the first American president o chair a United Nations Security Council Heads-of-State meeting, the fifth of its kind ever.
The big news, however, was the ultra long rambling speech by Libya’s Muamar Gadhaffi.
The showy leader, fresh from provoking international outrage for the heroic welcome accorded to conveyed Lockerbie bomber who was released from a Scotland jail on humanitarian grounds, drama began with a complicated search for green space to pitch his famous luxurious tent in New York.
He then took his first opportunity to address a UN meeting, to issue a frantic speech that lurched from topic to topic, attacking the same body that he was addressing, questioning the deaths of Martin Luther King and President JF Kennedy, before he issued flowing tributes to Obama, who it seems, is the man everybody wants to love.
His ninety five minute speech not only broke diplomatic protocol, but left an impression of distaste but above all appeared the work of an ill-prepared eccentric despot referring to a wad of disorganized notes, tearing up UN charters to maximize the drama, but most of all shocking everyone into wondering if his tent pitching troubles got in the way of his sleep and his head.
Then came the joke of Tehran, fresh from an election apparently rigged in his favour of continuing his irrational tirades against Israel and his denial of the holocaust, and fails to notice the empty seats and those being vacated regularly in the hall, in protest of his whimsical words.
The Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu followed with a well thought out defence against accusations of human rights abuses in Gaza as President Ahmadinejad’s incessant holocaust denials.
Netanyahu carried along evidence of the planning of the holocaust and castigated the assembly members for putting up with the lies.
He went ahead to compare the Israeli decision to attack Hamas positions to the allies attack on the Hitler regime in the Second World War after Germany barraged England with bombs.
He reduced his demand for peaceful negotiation with Palestine to one sentence. "Say yes to a Jewish state.”
All international drama cannot pass before Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan revolutionary making his mark.
He comes up with a theory of Obama One who supports the ousted President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and Obama Two, the one who through the Pentagon supported the coup through the American army base there.
He charms his words into the crowd, confesses an admiration for the American president but admonishes him to change everything he thinks is bad about his nation including Capitalism because it can only lead to ruin.
However, the political drama at the UN has a lot to do with Obama’s new policy of political inclusiveness instead of aggression which has been welcomed by friend and foe.
To see Russia and the US seeing near to eye to eye on Iran’s nuclear program, and the open hand with Myanmar’s military Junta, North Korea’s stubborn communist regime and Iran’s disputed government , it is clear that the so called rogue states have only but themselves to fear in their quest to obtain respect in the community of sovereign nations.