Word: annans
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...surprise that the U.N. Security Council in the same week unanimously, and with acclaim, reelected Annan to a second term as Secretary General. No surprise not only because nobody ran against him - indeed, if Annan has enemies, they don't reveal themselves in daylight - but also because of the warmth and respect he has engendered across all political boundaries. Praise for the unassuming Ghanaian diplomat came as effusively from U.S. diplomats and political leaders (even longtime U.N.-basher Senator Jesse Helms enjoys a cordiality with the Secretary General that would have been quite unthinkable when Boutros Boutros-Gali held...
...Secretary General is often described simply as that of the world's diplomat-in-chief, charged with making peace and preventing war in situations where simple government-to-government diplomacy has failed. Annan has proved singularly adept on that front - indeed, the ringing endorsements of his second term and complete absence of hostility from any quarter speaks to his almost implausible popularity across all geopolitical boundaries. Of course his immediate predecessors - Boutros-Gali, Javier Perez de Cuellar and Kurt Waldheim - all performed the diplomatic role with dour sobriety, Annan has reinvented the role in keeping with the founding principles...
...quiet but unmistakable moral leadership. But his is a moral leadership tempered with realism and exercised with a light touch, highlighting issues and engaging with governments and other stakeholders in search of plausible solutions. A Ghanaian diplomat whose career has been spent mostly in the United Nations system, Annan has never wielded real power. And that may be his strength. His ability to effect outcomes derives entirely from his powers of persuasion, his knack for showing the partisans to any particular conflict that there is a high road, and that they're capable of walking it. It's plainly...
...Annan rose through the ranks of the U.N. system, and he takes his cue from the founding objectives of the United Nations. The international body was founded in the wake of World War II to prevent future wars by creating a set of geopolitical rules, and the forums and mechanisms for enforcing them. Hence the Secretary General's diplomat-in-chief role. But the U.N. also had a higher purpose - to serve as a beacon of hope to a battered world. Hope that a better world can be built. Hope that no matter how deep our political and cultural differences...
...Plenty has happened since the birth of the U.N. to mock that hope. But that has not deterred Kofi Annan from making it his life's work to revive and sustain it in the face of the pervasive cynicism that pervades his world. People have been beatified for less...