Libya and the United Nations
Hat tip to the
Best of the Web for this link to this
Reuters article. They are talking about the USA's recent Press Conference that displayed samples of Nuclear materials taken from Libya. From the Reuters article:
bq. Washington offended Libya with its display of the north African nation's dismantled nuclear weapons, an official close to the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Tuesday.
bq. The White House displayed for the media on Monday components flown out of Tripoli in late January under a sudden Libyan agreement to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction.
And the kicker paragraph is this one:
bq. "It looks like unilateral U.S. disarmament of Libya and Libya wants it recognized as disarmament under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and IAEA auspices," the Vienna-based official added.
Sorry to bust your bubble kiddo but it was a unilateral U.S. disarmament. The U.N. had squat to do with it. Britain helped a lot -- Libya went to them first to open talks but it was the USA they wanted to come to the table with and it was the USA who did. Sure thing, the U.N. made a lot of noises - they are very good at that. Read
here and
here for more. Basically, we did work out a deal after the initial agreement that the IAEA could come in and verify the scope and content of Libya’s nuclear program and the USA and Britain would do the actual heavy lifting, taking the materials back to a central place in the USA where they would be carefully dismantled. The UN/IAEA would get none of the toys, they would only be there to verify what happened.
For them to whine about it as though it was entirely their show and that the USA was acting up is reprehensible. Goes to show what petty little bureaucrats they are...
Posted by DaveH at March 17, 2004 1:53 PM