UN opposes guns, agency awards Chavez as he arms his citizens
Date: Feb 8, 2006 8:58 AM
PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2006.02.08
EDITION: National
SECTION: World
PAGE: A13
COLUMN: Steven Edwards
BYLINE: Steven Edwards
SOURCE: National Post
DATELINE: NEW YORK
NOTE: [email protected]
WORD COUNT: 606

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UNESCO at odds with self: UN opposes guns, agency awards Chavez as he
arms his citizens

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NEW YORK – Limiting the worldwide distribution of handguns, rifles and
other lightweight weapons is a central focus of the United Nations,
which notes most wars today are waged by people toting these rudimentary
weapons.

Successive international conferences have labelled small arms the “real
weapons of mass destruction” throughout the developing world, saying
they kill hundreds of thousands.

Why, then, has a UN agency just bestowed an international award on a
leader who wants his people to be armed with light weapons?

Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President, says the 100,000 Kalashnikov
assault rifles ordered from Russia will be followed by more purchases.

At the same time, UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization, is praising him for “promoting the heritage and values”
of
Latin America.

Last week, Mr. Chavez received the Jose Marti Award in Havana from Cuban
leader Fidel Castro, acting for the agency.

The prize, which includes US$5,000 in cash, is named for the
19th-century leader of Cuba’s independence movement from Spain and was
created in 1994 at Mr. Castro’s urging.

While contradictions in mission can be found throughout the world body,
they are abundant at UNESCO, which was temporarily abandoned by the
United States and Britain in the 1980s to protest its inefficiency and
anti-Western posture.

Take, for example, the agency’s Dialogue of Civilizations project, which
involves major conferences and workshops around the world, including one
last summer at Quebec’s Laval University.

The aim is to “increase mutual understanding and tolerance among peoples
of different cultural backgrounds.”

The initiative was the brainchild of Iran, where a newspaper responded
yesterday to the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad by
launching a competition to find the best cartoon about the Holocaust.

This comes after calls by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President,
for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and for a conference to assess the
scale and consequences of the Holocaust, which he called a “myth.”

It’s also unclear how UNESCO squares Iran’s suspected pursuit of a
nuclear bomb with the agency’s self-described mission to act as a
“laboratory of ideas … based upon respect for shared values.”

Announcing the U.S. return to a slimmed-down UNESCO in 2002, President
George W. Bush said the agency had “been reformed … in its mission to
advance human rights,” but observers noted he was also seeking UN
backing to get tougher with Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

Of course, that backing never materialized to the extent the U.S.
President had hoped, while UNESCO, apart from operating with half the
number of directors it once had, appears to be edging back to its former
anti-Western self.

Before picking Mr. Chavez as a Jose Marti prize-winner, UNESCO had
awarded it only three times, despite rules saying it is a biennial
honour.

Is it just coincidence it went to the man who is the biggest thorn in
Washington’s side in the Americas — apart from Mr. Castro, neutralized
now by the decades-old U.S. trade embargo?

Previous winners were Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez Casanova,
Ecuadorean painter Oswaldo Guayasamin and Dominican historian Celsa
Albert Bautista.

As Venezuela’s leader, Mr. Chavez keeps his name in international
headlines only by thumbing his nose at Washington.

He followed a U.S.-opposed deal to buy military planes from Spain by
expelling a U.S. official he accused of spying.

He says his bid to give Venezuelans Kalashnikovs will head off
Washington’s plot to invade his country.

“The gringos want us unarmed,” he said at a rally to celebrate the
failed coup he led in 1992.

The United States is not alone in its concern at how the military
purchases will destabilize the region.

Cardinal Rosalio Castillo Lara, Venezuela’s most senior Roman Catholic
clergyman, recently told thousands of worshippers that the country
“presents the semblance of a dictatorship.”

As the UN prepares for another major conference this summer to rein in
international trade in small arms and light weapons, UNESCO officials
say the agency itself is not responsible for picking Mr. Chavez as this
year’s champion of Latin American traditions.

That decision was made by an independent committee whose current
representatives come from Cuba, Uruguay, South Africa, Benin, France and
the United States.

But since the award is wrapped in the blue UN flag, the distinction is
meaningless. UN goals and actions simply appear to be inconsistent with
one another.