813 E. 4th
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Email: p_genevier@yahoo.com
Mr. Pat Cox,
President
Herr
Poettering, Hans-Gert (PPE-DE)
Sr. Baron
Crespo, Enrique (PSE)
Mr. Watson
Graham (ELDR)
Mr. Wurtz
Francis (GUE/NGL)
Herr
Cohn-Bendit Daniel Marc (Verts/Ale)
Sr. Luis
Queiro (UEN)
Mr. Bonde
Jens-Peter (EDD)
Mr. George
Berthu (N.I.)
Los
Angeles, November 26, 2003
Object: Letter sent to US ‘political Leaders’ and
university Presidents on November 10 2003, misinformation, the attribution of
the Sakharov Price to Mr. Annan and to the UN Secretariat.
Dear
Sir,
I
take the liberty of writing you to forward you a letter I recently sent to US
‘political Leaders’ and university Presidents (att. 1), and to make few
comments concerning the attribution of the Sakharov price to Mr. Annan and to
the UN Secretariat.
You
have been misinformed on the real work that Mr. Annan and the UN Secretariat
have done to prevent the Iraqi conflict.
And therefore your attribution of the 2003 Sakharov Price is, I think,
inappropriate. It is clear (even if
you may not be aware of it) that Mr. Annan, his close collaborators and his
advisors (Mr. Sachs,) made very little effort to prevent the war! In January 14 2003 I wrote a letter to
several US (and others) personalities including Mrs. Frechette and Mr. Stern
(att. 3) to present again my proposal to establish a 65 year age limit for
Country Leaders and I.O. Chiefs, and to ask older leaders like Mr. Annan (65),
Mr. Wolfensohn, Mr.Greenspan to resign to show the good example and to
encourage Mr. Saddam Hussein (65) to step down.
The
UN public inquiries unit sent a response on behalf of Mr. Annan ‘thanking me
for sharing my thoughts’ and directing me toward the US mission to the
United Nations! Given the responsibility of the Secretary
General and the emergency due to the imminence and almost certainty of a
conflict, this response was totally inappropriate. In a letter addressed to UN General Assembly and Security Council
on April 7 2002 (att. 2), I criticized this response and explained why Mr.
Annan did not assume his important responsibilities properly. Moreover Mr. Annan and his colleagues were certainly aware that the Kenyan Parliament was
discussing the possibility to add an age limit for the President in its new
constitution, so they cannot pretend that this proposal is outrageous or
disrespectful.
I must also say that in my
letter of December 2001
addressed to G8 Leaders and I.O chiefs I
had explained the importance of this proposal in our effort to maintain peace
and the consequences if ‘international organizations’ were to continue to
ignore it, when I wrote: 'Every time there is a conflict
somewhere in the world, the International Community, particularly International
Organizations, helps both sides to solve their dispute. To do that, they use
logical and good sense arguments, and scientific studies exactly as I have done
to justify the respect of this rule. So
why should any Leader or country part in a conflict listen to your arguments or
good sense, if, yourself, you don’t even accept the most basic arguments
justifying a very simple rule that would improve the situation of the world.' This is exactly what happened, Mr. Annan
and his colleagues were unable to prevent the US from going to war with Iraq
despite the fact that three permanent members of the Security Council and many
other countries were opposed to a conflict (at least ‘so soon’).
In May 29 2002, I had
also written to 8 US university Presidents (att. 4) and asked them for their
intellectual support to defend my proposals and my legal case (political asylum
application,). I had explained in this
letter that the 65 age limit proposal for ‘Leaders’ could perhaps prevent a,
then, possible conflict with Iraq. At
the time, end of May 2002, no one had started talking about a possible war with
Iraq, but my remark should still have stricken intellectuals like MM.
Bollinger, Summers, and their colleagues (Mr. Sachs, for example, who is also
an adviser of Mr. Annan and the Director of the Millennium Project). I received only a short email of
encouragement from the President of Tulane University. There is no obvious argument that makes this proposal
inappropriate.
The proposal was turned down in Kenya, because politicians thought
that ‘a popular leader should be free to run at 70 if he wants’ (att.
5)! This argument is very weak in
comparison to the ones I presented, especially when you know that popularity
can be easily artificially created or not related to the job it helps to obtain
like in Mr. Schwarzenegger case! I had
talked about the importance of paying careful attention to the time factor and
to this retirement limit (to defeat poverty) in a letter addressed to G8
Leaders and I.O. Chiefs in April 2000, then I brought more logical,
ethical, scientific and good sense arguments in subsequent letters, so Mr.
Annan and his colleagues cannot say that they had not enough time to think
about the proposal, and the fact that it could be applied to him (Mr.
Annan is 65).
I had also pointed out the existence of
similar limits: the judges of the European Court of Human Right cannot stay in
office after 70, for example, and the US limits its presidential mandate to two
4 years terms, which is in some way a much stricter limit since Mr. Clinton,
who is in his mid 50, can not be president again! And I had mentioned examples of Leaders who had applied this
limit to themselves or ‘use it’ as a reason to keep a lower profile after 65
like Dr. Brundtland, and who had, therefore, implicitly or indirectly supported
the proposal. The UN Secretariat and
the World Bank have deliberately ignored the proposal, so that Mr. Annan (65)
and others like Mr. Wolfensohn can stay at the highest positions after 65!
This is outrageous when you know that,
at the beginning of the year, the life of many people was in line, the
destruction of a country and a tremendous spending (100s billions of dollars)
was at stake, and the proposal had become a ‘tool’ to prevent the immediate death
of many people and an unnecessary enormous spending! Mr. Annan had said that everything should be done to avoid the
war, but he would not have given up one day as Secretary General to obtain the
peace or even simply talk about the proposal!
And the President of the World Bank that ‘dreams of a world free
of poverty’ would not have given up
one day as President to spare the world of a spending that will handicap ‘us’
to reach our global objectives for decades!
Mr. Annan and the UN Secretariat do not deserve to receive the Sakharov
Price.
And this even more true after you read
the report on the attack of August against the UN Iraq office that killed Mr.
Vieira De Mello and several of his colleagues.
This report, as you may know, points out the total lack of
professionalism of the UN management on security issues. Mr. Vieira de Mello himself had refused to
follow a recommendation to move his office in a less ‘exposed’ area! What is very grave is that the top managers
at the UN don’t even understand why they have been attacked as we can read in
Mrs. Frechette remarks at the funeral of Mr. De Mello: ‘All were
in the prime of their lives. All were committed to work for the cause of peace/
All were killed in a nihilistic act of violence which we struggle to
comprehend!’.
Rewarding the UN Secretariat when it
obviously does not do its job properly, it does not understand what is going
on, and it hides a possible solution to an imminent conflict, is very
dangerous for the world, and very dangerous for the UN employees also,
because they think that everything is ‘ok’, that they are doing a good job,
when it is not all the case. They have
no idea of the suffering they are causing!
The war with Iraq is a great tragedy for the world, many people have
died and will continue to die for a long time, a country was destroyed, 100s of
billions of dollars were spent and won’t be available to tackle our important
global objectives, poverty, environment,, and finally the international
community was totally divided! The UN
Secretariat and World Bank ‘Chiefs’ must be fired for their important
responsibility in this tragedy, not rewarded!
In a recent letter to the Nobel
Institute, Foundation and Committees, I have denounced the dishonest behavior
of US universities that did not assume their responsibility properly when they
refused to comment my proposals, and indirectly encouraged an ‘unauthorized
and not fully justified war’. I am
now writing you to ask you to please change your decision on the 2003 Sakharov
price based on the information I have just gave you, information that were
unfairly hidden by the UN Secretariat (and by the press and media), and to
please ask for Mr. Annan’s, Mr. Wolfensohn’s and Mr. Sachs’ resignation. Any new UN Secretary General and World Bank
President must know that, if such a tragedy takes place again, particularly
when they hide possible solutions to the crisis to hold on to their job
unfairly, they will loose their job automatically.
I
also would like to ask you to discuss publicly the proposal to limit at
65 the age of country Leaders and I.O. Chiefs, as a part of your work on the
draft of the new European Constitution, and to demand a vote of the UN General
Assembly on this matter as well.
Finally, I would like to remind you that in 1997 I submitted to the
European Commission and then to the international community a project proposal
to improve the transfer and integration of statistical data at the world wide
level. This proposal was supported in
writing by the European experts and by many other experts around the world, but
nothing was really done. It seems now
that Mr. Franchet and his close collaborators were more interested in stealing
the Commission’s money than promoting a project good for everyone (and hiring
the unemployed who had done all the work), so please correct their error on
this matter too. I remain
Yours sincerely,
Attachments:
Att. 1: Letter
sent to US political leaders and University Presidents on November 10 2003.
Att. 2: Letter
sent to the UN (General Assembly and Security Council) on April 7th
2003.
Att. 3: Letter
sent to US political leaders, Mrs. Frechette, Mr. Stern, Mr. Lubbers on January
14 2003.
Att. 4: Letter
sent to several US university Presidents on May 29 2003.
PS: I will send this letter by email because I
do not have enough money to send it by post, if you need any additional
documents (project description, letters, ) please contact me by email at p_genevier@yahoo.com or Pierre_genevier@hotmail.com. I also would be grateful to you if you could
forward a copy of this letter to your colleagues, members of the European
parliament, thank you.