Word: kouchner
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...Perhaps most the controversial (though not unexpected) appointment was naming Socialist Bernard Kouchner as Foreign Affairs minister, a move that may reveal the staunchly conservative Sarkozy's intent to give issues like human rights and democratic and financial accountability greater weight in France's international relations. A trained physician, Kouchner founded the M?decins Sans Fronti?res (Doctors Without Borders) relief group in 1971, and used the diplomacy skills he learned in humanitarian crises to launch a political career. Socialist opponents have called Sarkozy's recruitment of Kouchner a ploy to co-opt and thus weaken the left ahead of June legislative...
...broader message behind Kouchner's appointment - that Sarkozy intends to solidify presidential control over France's foreign affairs - has been largely overlooked so far. While Chirac began the process of relocating the pole of diplomacy from the Foreign Ministry to the Elys?e, Sarkozy seems intent on completing that process. Sarkozy advisors say that will involve the creation of a National Security Council similar to the one used by U.S. Presidents to provide him advice and analysis on international and diplomatic issues. The unit will import around 30 foreign policy strategists from the Foreign Ministry, and it will be directed...
...BERNARD KOUCHNER No, because of the way Americans went about it. I think it was up to the international community to pull together and get rid of Saddam for the Iraqi people. I have long argued for the "right to intervene." But you have to succeed. To do that, you need the international community standing with you. Saddam had been a major assassin in his country for 35 years. What difference would a few weeks have made? They should have done as we did in Kosovo, setting up a contact group and relying on international cooperation and peacekeepers...
...Kouchner, former U.N. administrator for Kosovo, co-founded France's Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde...
...pacifist consensus. Forget pleasant sentiments. This humanitarian breaks taboos and reveals matters that render us sleepless. Faced with the globalized inhumanity that is burning the 21st century, Kouchner is introducing a new humanism without geographical or political borders. He does it not to open the gates of paradise, but to bolt the gates of hell. --BY ANDRE GLUCKSMANN, philosopher and political essayist