New U.N. secretary-general in early flap
Legal News Center
[##_1L|1173457143.jpg|width="107" height="107" alt=""|_##]New UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that resolving the crisis in Darfur was "very high" on his agenda and would be one of his top priorities. Ban, whose tenure as secretary-general officially began Monday, said that he has already spoken to Jan Eliasson, former UN General Assembly President and current Special Representative for Sudan, and that he has a meeting with Eliasson scheduled for Wednesday to discuss the Darfur situation. Ban's predecessor Kofi Annan had in the final weeks of his own term pressed UN bodies - especially the new UN Human Rights Council - to focus more on Darfur.
Ban, however, took a different approach, never mentioning the U.N. ban on the death penalty in all its international tribunals, and the right to life enshrined in the U.N. Charter.
"Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against Iraqi people and we should never forget victims of his crime," Ban said in response to a reporter's question about Saddam's execution Saturday for crimes against humanity. "The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide."
His ambiguous answer put a question mark over the U.N.'s stance on the death penalty. It also gave the new chief an early taste of how tricky global issues are, and how every word can make a difference.
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