Discorso di Bush all'Onu

BUSH INSISTE, INSISTE, INSISTE. CHIEDE AI 'WILLING', AI VOLONTEROSI, DI AGIRE. 
CHIRAC INSISTE ANCHE LUI 

di Mauro Suttora

Il Foglio

New York, 24 settembre 2003

Con un discorso di 25 minuti sapientemente calibrato, ieri mattina alle 11 George W. Bush non ha ceduto di un millimetro sulla giustezza della liberazione dell'Iraq, ma ha allo stesso tempo usato toni soffici e di riconciliazione verso gli oppositori della guerra: "Alcune delle nazioni qui presenti non sono state d'accordo con la nostra azione", ha detto il presidente degli Stati Uniti, "ma siamo tutti uniti nella difesa della sicurezza e dei diritti umani. E ora guardiamo avanti".

Naturalmente Bush ha sollecitato gli altri Paesi a impegnarsi nella ricostruzione, ma è stato attento a legare assieme Iraq e Afghanistan, e invece di chiedere truppe ha preferito puntare più in generale sull'"aiuto ai popoli di queste due nazioni nel loro cammino verso la libertà e la democrazia". 

Bush ha avvertito che, dopo aver trasformato due anni fa "New York in un campo di battaglia e in un cimitero", i terroristi di Al Qaeda hanno attaccato a Bali, Mombasa, Casablanca, Riad, Giakarta e Gerusalemme, e che quindi "si sono messi contro tutta l'umanità. Essi non trovano posto in alcuna fede religiosa, e non dovrebbero avere alcun amico in questa sala".

Utilizzando il condizionale il presidente ha voluto tracciare un chiaro confine: "Da una parte c'è chi vuole  in questa sala". Utilizzando il condizionale il presidente ha voluto tracciare un chiaro confine: "Da una parte c'è chi vuole la pace e l'ordine, dall'altra i banditi e assassini che seminano il caos".

Particolarmente forte è stato l'omaggio a Sergio Vieira de Mello, il capo della missione Onu a Bagdad ucciso in agosto assieme ad altri 22 funzionari. E subito dopo Bush ha definito la guerra contro Saddam come "conseguenza delle risoluzioni Onu" che gli chiedevano di disarmare: "Queste conseguenze ci sono state, oggi l'Iraq è libero e qui con noi ci sono ora i suoi rappresentanti. Non più camere di tortura, celle per gli stupri, killing fields e cimiteri collettivi: oggi in Medio Oriente la gente è più sicura perché un alleato del terrorismo è caduto".

Bush ha astutamente mescolato l'azione delle Nazioni Unite a quella degli Stati Uniti nel descrivere l'attuale situazione in Iraq: "L'Unicef sta vaccinando il 90 per cento dei bambini, il Programma per l'alimentazione mondiale sta distribuendo mezzo milione di tonnellate di cibo al mese. In un Paese dove il dittatore si costruiva lussuosi palazzi mentre lasciava crollare le scuole, stiamo ricostruendo mille edifici scolastici e stiamo ripristinando gli ospedali.
Saddam comprava armi mentre le infrastrutture decadevano, noi abbiamo intrapreso il maggior programma di aiuto dopo il piano Marshall e onoreremo le nostre promesse all'Iraq".

Insomma, per uscire dall'incipiente 'quagmire' (palude, pantano) dell'Iraq, Bush si rivolge a quello che la maggioranza degli americani considera il tempio del 'quagmire': l'Onu, dove un anno fa il presidente degli Stati Uniti aveva annunciato la sua nuova dottrina della guerra preventiva, prefigurando quindi la liberazione di Baghdad.

Un sondaggio Cnn/Usa Today lo avverte che 48 statunitensi su cento ritengono ora che non valesse la pena andare in Iraq, e il suo gradimento è calato dal 70 per cento di aprile all'attuale 50. Ma lui, intervistato l'altra sera dalla Fox Tv di Rupert Murdoch, assicura di non preoccuparsene: "I've got a job to do, ho un lavoro da fare, e mi giudicheranno gli elettori fra un anno".

C'è chi dice che non basta

Niente concessioni quindi a Jacques Chirac (che ha parlato subito dopo, chiedendo "il rapido trasferimento agli iracheni della sovranità sul proprio Paese"): "Nessuna fretta e nessun ritardo da parte nostra, in Iran il ruolo dell'Onu si può allargare per assistere nella scrittura della Costituzione e nell'organizzazione delle elezioni", ma nulla di più.

Lo scorso inverno, per gli ultimatum a Saddam, la Francia parlava di mesi mentre gli Stati Uniti ragionavano in termini di settimane. Oggi è l'esatto contrario: Parigi vorrebbe un governo iracheno nel giro di poche settimane, Washington parla di mesi. E Colin Powell, intervistato da Charlie Rose, ha buon gioco nello spiegare che "è nell'interesse degli stessi dirigenti iracheni non bruciarsi in questo momento", e nel prevedere "sei mesi per la Costituzione, un anno per il voto".

In ogni caso, nessuno parla più di trasferimento dei poteri all'Onu. L'appello di Bush è sempre individuale, ai Paesi "willing", volenterosi: "Tutte le nazioni di buona volontà dovrebbero farsi avanti per aiutare il popolo dell'Iraq". Basterà?

Fareed Zakaria, direttore di Newsweek, è scettico: "C'è un vuoto di leadership nel mondo in questo periodo, come ha dimostrato anche il fallimento di Cancun. L'unilateralismo di Bush ha prodotto un multilateralismo caotico, di cui gli Stati Uniti stanno perdendo il controllo".

Il prestigioso Council on Foreign Relations avverte: "L'Amministrazione agisca con urgenza per ridurre il crescente antiamericanismo che si sta sviluppando in Europa e nel mondo arabo.
Mauro Suttora 

Newsweek: Vacationing with Mr.B

Vacationing With Mr. B

By Mauro Suttora

Newsweek, August 18, 2003

link: original article on Newsweek

"What's new, Salvo?" My paparazzo friend is sipping caipiroska in a seaside cafe, watching the yachts anchored off Porto Cervo. The smallest is 40 meters. It's cocktail time, and he's taking a break from chasing celebs all day. "I got Gwyneth Paltrow on Valentino's boat. Liz Hurley, too. But I'm still looking for Eric Clapton. He should be at Peter Gabriel's villa."

There's no place like Sardinia's Costa Smeralda for stalking stars in summer. Marbella, St. Tropez? Not even close. "Tonight Roberto Cavalli is throwing the wildest party," Salvo informs me breathlessly.

 The Sultan of Brunei could be there, though probably not Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister. Among the world's richest men, he owns four villas in Costa Smeralda: one each for his mother, his brother, his eldest son and himself. Salvo's fondest dream is to snap Berlusconi on holiday, preferably with a woman other than his wife. The picture would be gold - not worth as much as Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's first and last kiss here in 1997, but enough to make his season. My friend is practically salivating.

Casually, I mention that I'm vacationing with Mr. B - or rather with three of them, all oddly linked to the real Mr. B by no more than a degree of separation. Salvo looks confused. Berlusconi recently bought a fifth piece of land for a fifth villa, I explain. He got it from another Mr. B--the most powerful man on the Costa, Tom Barrack, a Californian descended from a Lebanese grocer. This second Mr. B also just paid $340 million for a chain of luxury hotels in Porto Cervo, including the sumptuous Cala di Volpe. "I'm having breakfast with him tomorrow."
As it turns out, Barrack is aiming to develop some virgin shoreline but fears being blocked by local zoning authorities, who didn't let even the Aga Khan (the famous bazillionaire playboy-prince who essentially founded the Costa Smeralda) build on the site when he once owned the land. Will they now let Barrack fire up his bulldozers? I bet they do.
The two Mr. B's are now friends, I tell Salvo, especially since Silvio gets his fifth villa. Tom, clearly a smooth operator, lavishes compliments on the P.M. "A Renaissance man," he calls Berlusconi. "He even composes love songs for his wife that he sings himself." Salvo looks downcast.

My third Mr. B to be vacationing in Sardinia this year is Gigi Buffon, the renowned goal-keeper for Juventus and the Italian national football team. This has been a fantastic year for Italy: we swept three out of the four first places in the European Champions League for the first time in history. The winner was AC Milan - Berlusconi's team, of course.
A pity that the football players who flock to the Costa in search of glamour and girls are not more appreciated. They aren't elegant enough for the habitues, who despise them as newcomer wanna-bes. And the sleek young women who prowl about in the snippiest of bikinis and evening dresses are mostly after bigger fish than footballers.

At the ultra-glam Yacht Club annual gala, filled with everyone from the president of Mercedes to the most powerful and secretive Swiss bankers, Salvo and I hoped again to come across Berlusconi. But no. Instead we teamed up with the young and rowdy football champions--and thus fell in with still another famous Mr. B.
This one is Flavio Briatore, the Formula One racing-team manager who owns the most expensive nightclub in Porto Cervo, aptly named Billionaire. The big news this season is that the potbellied playboy Briatore has switched girlfriends: from high-attitude model Naomi Campbell to, well, high-attitude model Heidi Klum. A point in his favor, Salvo agrees. We left Billionaire at 5 in the morning, the not-quite-risen sun lighting the sea a tender pinky-violet to the east. No doubt the real Mr. B was home in bed. With his wife.

Copyright 2003 Newsweek

Iraq and the U.N.

THE LAST THING IRAQIS NEED

Newsweek, April 21, 2003

Keeping luxury hotels occupied is perhaps the main contribution of U.N. officials to the local economies they are unsuccessfully advising

by Mauro Suttora

http://www.newsweek.com/last-thing-iraqis-need-134083

Unfortunately, I am a lousy tennis player. Otherwise I would have had a great time in Sao Tome, a wonderful equatorial island off the Atlantic coast of Africa. My friend, a United Nations employee, played every day, early in the morning and at twilight, when the temperature was bearable. The tennis courts belonged to the only five-star hotel in the capital. The rest of the hot day, he retreated into the air-conditioned hotel, where he sometimes held meetings. I was the only 'normal' guest. All the others belonged to one U.N. agency or another, and I found this to be true for many of the luxury hotels in Africa. Keeping them occupied is perhaps the main contribution of U.N. officials to the local economies they are unsuccessfully advising.

I am amazed that as Saddam Hussein statues were toppled all over Iraq last week, all my fellow Europeans could talk about was the importance of U.N. rule in the country, and the danger of a long-term American occupation. They've got it backward. Wherever the United Nations goes, it tends to stay forever, and to perpetuate problems. It's been in Bosnia for eight years now, in Kosovo and East Timor for four, in the Palestinian territories since '48. In Gaza the U.N. agency running the refugee camps is the main purveyor of jobs. I am a refugee's son myself: my father fled the territories that Italy lost to Yugoslavia in 1945. After a few months all 350,000 refugees had found jobs, houses, new lives. There was no U.N. presence, which was perhaps their good fortune.

Today there is no sign that the United Nations will leave Bosnia or Kosovo. No solution for Cyprus after almost 30 years. Nevertheless, 'U.N.' has become a magic phrase, the last redoubt for pacifists. Even my paper - the largest Italian weekly, normally quiet and middle-of-the-road - has turned pacifist: for Christmas it published an article by a Catholic bishop against the war, and as counterbalance an article by a former communist against the war.

I was once a pacifist demonstrator myself, fighting the placement of U.S. nuclear cruise missiles in Sicily. But now I don't mind anybody getting rid of Saddam, by any means necessary. We Italians should know: Rome invented the word 'dictator', the first modern dictator was Italian (Adolf Hitler was a pupil of Benito Mussolini) and even Silvio Berlusconi, our current premier, has been called by his adversaries the model of the postmodern media dictator. Nevertheless, Europeans don't care anymore about dictators (or freedom). They rave about peace. They crave the United Nations.

Now, pardon my bluntness, but why should we condemn the poor Iraqis to be governed by lazy and incompetent bureaucrats? It's no secret that the United Nations has more tolerance than most for petty despots: Libya currently holds the presidency of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. The U.N. bureaucracy is a Gogolian monster with 65,000 employees and a budget of $2.6 billion a year. For each problem the United Nations has set up a special agency, and this week in Vienna the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime - the longer the name, the more wasteful the body) is discussing how the war on drugs is going. It's a disaster, actually: halfway through a 10-year effort to eradicate drug cultivation, production has soared. Is the agency closing down because of this failure? No, it's asking for new funds.

The system is corrupt. When I give money for the hungry, I send it directly to the missionaries instead of UNICEF or the World Food Program or anyone else whose first-class air-travel budget could feed tens of thousands. UNESCO is a successful Paris job-creation program for sociologists and intellectuals, famous for overhead expenses that eat up as much as 80 percent of some programs. Officials of the Human Rights Commission have been sent home for allegedly trafficking women and young girls for prostitution in Bosnia. At the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (yearly budget: $740 million), four officials have been arrested for smuggling refugees. The U.N. apparatus has grown so much that in 1994 a new Office for Internal Oversight Services was established to keep track of everyone. It promptly hired 180 more people, at an extra cost of $18 million a year.

Has the United Nations really proved its competence in dealing with Iraq? Past experience says no: not only did the Oil-for-Food Program allow Saddam and his cronies to pocket large sums, but an audit found the program had overpaid $1 million for services. U.N. officers are well paid: six-digit tax-free salaries in dollars, plus innumerable allowances. Most of them are decent people, frustrated by their own red tape. But why on earth should they go to Baghdad? Let them play tennis elsewhere.

Suttora is U.S. bureau chief for Oggi (Rizzoli Corriere della Sera) in New York.

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.



Newsweek

May 26, 2003, Atlantic Edition

SECTION: LETTERS; Pg. 16

Mail Call

Mauro Suttora's April 21 piece on the U.N.'s ineptitude ignited a heated debate among readers. "A great article!" cheered one. "The U.N. has proven weak and useless," chimed another. But the U.N.'s defenders accused us of "tabloid journalism." One reader simply urged that the U.N. be rehabilitated.

The U.N. Under Attack

I was disappointed to see NEWSWEEK descend to tabloid journalism with Mauro Suttora's "The Last Thing Iraqis Need" (April 21)--a farrago of gossip, unsubstantiated assertions and outright falsehoods masquerading as reportage. Allow me to rebut the most egregious of his misstatements. He says, "Today there is no sign that the United Nations will leave Bosnia," but we have already left. The U.N. troops have been gone since 1996, and we closed down our civilian mission last year. The U.N.'s role in East Timor changed with that country's independence in 2002; we are now there only at the government's request, to assist the authorities, not supplant them. The U.N. has 9,600 employees, not 65,000; even counting every international organization in the U.N. system--including the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization--Suttora's calculation is excessive. U.N. staff do not fly first class; only the secretary-general does. Suttora twists facts to substantiate his prejudices: he even criticizes the establishment of a tough audit mechanism, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, whose effectiveness is acknowledged by the U.N.'s major contributors. The U.N. may not be perfect, but its record needs to be examined with more accuracy and integrity than in this article that is unworthy of your magazine.

Shashi Tharoor
Under Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information
United Nations
New York, N.Y.


It was a pleasure reading Mauro Suttora's article on the United Nations. The fact that the U.N. is inefficient, inadequate and ineffective is, of course, not a closely guarded secret, but it is important for those who fund it, or perceive it to be a sort of savior, to be aware of this and of some of the reasons behind the U.N.'s blatant ineffectiveness.

Morris Kaner
Givatyim, Israel


What a great article! It's time someone spoke out against the United Nations with a few home truths. Anyone who follows international affairs knows that the U.N. has proved weak and useless in most cases. You can't blame America and England for not paying their U.N. dues when they are the ones invariably forced to do the work the U.N. is incapable of completing, thanks to its incompetence. The last vestige of respect was gone when the U.N. backed down, under pressure from Israel, from sending a committee to investigate the atrocities and damage caused by the Israeli invasion of refugee camps in the Palestinian territories. There may be many dedicated, well-meaning workers in the U.N., but the organization has lost its credibility as an effective operation. If Iraq is to get on its feet again, don't let it fall into the hands of the U.N.

Kaye Krieg
Inzlingen, Germany


As a Vietnamese refugee, I personally experienced the incompetence of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Coming to Britain, I've seen the corrupt nepotism and cronyism of charity/voluntary organizations. There are too many bosses, no one can assert authority and there's no competition for them whatsoever. The U.N. needs to be rehabilitated.

Thong V. Lam
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England


As a U.N. official with a 25-year career in many refugee-crisis situations in the world, I'm shocked by Suttora's vicious article. He singles out some shortcomings of the U.N. and blows them out of proportion. This is a body that can be only as good as the individual entities that constitute it. Not only have I never flown first class, but my colleagues and I often work under unbearable conditions--lacking both basic amenities and physical safety. U.N. salaries are comfortable but not competitive with those in the private sector or some foreign services. "Staff assessment," equivalent to our nations' income tax, is deducted from our gross salary. We take pride in our humanitarian work and serve without political bias in accordance with the U.N. Charter. We help innocent civilians who have suffered persecution or violence to rebuild their lives. Those of us who work in the field often have to live without electricity, running water or heating. Many U.N. workers have been taken hostage, sustained injuries, even lost their lives while performing their duty. As for the UNHCR, the yearly budget cited by Suttora would hardly cover the support we offer to 21 million refugees and other similarly displaced people. The UNHCR has twice won the Nobel Peace Prize; we're proud to have repatriated millions of people, enabling them to live normal lives. Yes, there are shortcomings in the U.N. system. But the last thing the world needs is the denigration of the one international humanitarian body that gives states a forum where differences can be reconciled. What the United Nations needs is for all--individuals, states and the media--to help us best fulfill our humanitarian task. If we fail, there is no substitute.

Marion Hoffmann
Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Albania
Tirana, Albania


The United Nations' presence in Iraq is an issue that cannot be dealt with in an ironic, one-sided op-ed piece like Mauro Suttora's. It is true that the U.N. system is not run efficiently and that its peacekeeping operations have rarely managed to facilitate peace. What Europeans want is not U.N. "rule" in Iraq, as Suttora says, but its "role" in international legality. This opens up important issues that transcend the functioning of the United Nations and go to the very core of the debate on American imperialism. It's reductive to rule them out with the sarcastic comments of an Italian tabloid journalist.

Fabrizio Tassinari
Copenhagen, Denmark

© 2003 Newsweek