Green Activists Close To Despair After UN Climate Confab

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Doha Climate Summit Ends In Disgrace 


At the end of another lavishly-funded U.N. conference that yielded no progress on curbing greenhouse emissions, many of those most concerned about climate change are close to despair. --Barbara Lewis and Alister Doyle, Reuters, 9 December 2012

The United Nations climate talks in Doha went a full extra 24 hours and ended without increased cuts in fossil fuel emissions and without financial commitments between 2013 and 2015. However, this is a "historic" agreement, insisted Qatar's Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, the COP18 president. --Inter Press Service, 10 December 2012

Climate negotiators at the most recent conference on global warming were unable to reduce expectations fast enough to match the collapse of their agenda. The only real winners here were the bureaucrats in the diplomacy industry for whom endless rounds of carbon spewing conferences with no agreement year after year mean jobs, jobs, jobs. The inexorable decline of the climate movement from its Pickett’s Charge at the Copenhagen summit continues. The global green lobby is more flummoxed than ever. These people and these methods couldn’t make a ham sandwich, much less save Planet Earth. –Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest, 9 December 2012

United Nations is working hard behind the scenes to assist Palestine in becoming full member of UNGA.

Palestinian push for U.N. upgrade likely to succeed: Jeremic

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Laura Rozen

reuters.com - UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The push by the Palestinians for upgraded status at the United Nations is likely to succeed, the president of the U.N. General Assembly said on Friday, while warning the ...

Reuters: U.S. bans 20 Iran officials from travel to U.N. assembly: report

(Reuters) - The United States has denied visas to about 20 Iranian government officials hoping to attend next week's U.N. General Assembly, including two ministers, Iran's Fars news agency reported on Saturday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a regular at the assembly since he took office in 2005, will give his final speech there on Wednesday and will address a meeting on the "rule of law" on Monday.
But of the 160-or-so visas requested by the Iranian delegation two months ago, about 20 were turned down, Fars said.

It gave no reason, but many Iranian officials are subject to travel bans under sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program.

Read full story on Reuters:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/22/us-un-assembly-iran-usa-idUSBRE88L06G20120922

Reuters/AlertNet: Climate Conversations - Is progress on climate change an illusion?

Read full story here: http://www.trust.org/alertnet/blogs/climate-conversations/is-progress-on-climate-change-an-illusion

By David Hodgkinson | Yesterday at 11:32 PM | Comments ( 0 )

A woman laments her burned-down home after a fire broke out at a slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on September 20, 2012. REUTERS/Andrew Biraj

By David Hodgkinson

The world is not organised to deal with the climate change problem. Climate change is a global problem, but there is, of course, no global government with the interests of the earth as a whole at heart. Rather, there are sovereign states, the interests and concerns of which are very different.
This difference is recognised in one way by both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol. The UNFCCC states that “developed” and “developing” states have “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” in dealing with climate change. Under the UNFCCC, it’s clear that developed countries “should take the lead in combating climate change” and its effects...

Read full story here: http://www.trust.org/alertnet/blogs/climate-conversations/is-progress-on-climate-change-an-illusion

North Korea, Iran trade missile technology: U.N.

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By Louis Charbonneau

NEW YORK | Sat May 14, 2011 5:55pm EDT

(Reuters) - North Korea and Iran appear to have been regularly exchanging ballistic missile technology in violation of U.N. sanctions, according to a confidential U.N. report obtained by Reuters on Saturday.

The report said the illicit technology transfers had "trans-shipment through a neighboring third country." That country was China, several diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The report was submitted to the Security Council by a U.N. Panel of Experts, a group that monitors compliance with U.N. sanctions imposed on Pyongyang after it conducted two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

The U.N. sanctions included a ban on trade in nuclear and missile technology with North Korea, as well as an arms embargo. They also banned trade with a number of North Korean firms and called for asset freezes and travel bans on some North Korean individuals.

"Prohibited ballistic missile-related items are suspected to have been transferred between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Islamic Republic of Iran on regular scheduled flights of Air Koryo and Iran Air," the report said.

"For the shipment of cargo, like arms and related materiel, whose illicit nature would become apparent on any cursory physical inspection, (North) Korea seems to prefer chartered cargo flights," it said.

It added that the aircraft tended to fly "from or to air cargo hubs which lack the kind of monitoring and security to which passenger terminals and flights are now subject."

Several Security Council diplomats said China was unhappy about the report and might not agree to release it to the public. At the moment, only the 15 council members have official access to the document.

One of the independent experts on the panel is from China and diplomats said he never endorsed the report.

Beijing has prevented the publication of expert panel reports on North Korea and Sudan in the past. Earlier this week, Russia took similar steps to suppress an equally damning U.N. expert panel report on Iran.

The spokesman for China's U.N. mission was not available for comment.

SIMILAR WARHEADS

Further evidence of Iran's cooperation with North Korea on missile technology came during a military parade in October 2010, the report said, when North Korea displayed a new warhead for its Nodong missile.

The warhead had "a strong design similarity with the Iranian Shahab-3 triconic warhead."

The expert panel said there appeared to be no compelling evidence that Myanmar had been developing a secret nuclear program with the help of North Korea, an allegation that had been raised previously by the group.

But it did not dismiss the allegations and suggested "extreme caution" might be needed to prevent North Korean-Myanmar cooperation from becoming proliferation.

The allegations are due partly to attempts by the former Burma to acquire items that can be used in a nuclear program.

"While acknowledging the possibility that Myanmar was the end user of this dual-use equipment, several experts also raised the possibility that it was serving as a trans-shipment point for delivery to (North Korea)," the report said.

The report said the possibility of exports of weapons-grade nuclear material from North Korea or nuclear technology to other countries remained a concern and presented "new challenges to international non-proliferation efforts."

U.S., Israeli and European governments have said that North Korea was helping Syria build a nuclear reactor that Israel destroyed in 2007. Damascus denies the charge, which is being investigated by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

In its report, the panel said North Korea's uranium enrichment problem, which Pyongyang says is for civilian purposes, was "primarily for military purposes."

It added that North Korea "should be compelled to abandon its uranium enrichment program and that all aspects of the program should be placed under international monitoring."

The report also said there were concerns about safety at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex. It said "safety issues should be discussed an integral part of the denuclearization of (North Korea)."

It added that "reckless decommissioning or dismantlement at Yongbyon could cause an environmental disaster."

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Laura MacInnis and Peter Cooney)

UN must overhaul image to improve staff safety: Ban Ki-moon

REUTERS

Mon 1 Sep 2008, 11:50 GMT

[-] Text [+] GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations must improve its image in conflict zones so its employees are not seen as targets, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday.

Addressing a Geneva ceremony commemorating the 2003 bombing of the U.N.'s Baghdad headquarters, which killed 22 U.N. staff, Ban said he was committed to taking "every possible measure to protect our staff around the world".

But he said it was impossible to eliminate risk without changing errant perceptions about the world body and its staff, who are occasionally seen as working on behalf of leading powers and not in a neutral interest.

"Too many people in the world do not understand what the U.N. does, or its role as an impartial friend to all. This remains one of our most significant strategic communications challenges," Ban said.

The U.N. has more than 100,000 staff supporting peacekeeping operations in countries including Georgia, Lebanon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Sudan, and Chad, and deploys scores of humanitarian aid workers to distribute food and run refugee camps in some of the world's most dangerous hotspots.

Plans are under way to build a larger and better-fortified compound to house U.N. staff in Iraq, and security policies will be overhauled in line with recommendations from an independent panel formed after last December's blasts in Algiers that killed 17 U.N. employees, the U.N. chief told the ceremony.

At its New York headquarters and regional hubs in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi, the U.N. and its agencies also work to promote human rights, protect the environment, tackle disease, and fight poverty. It spends about $15 billion a year.