On Thursday 06 October 2005 22:26, Iain Sims wrote: > Not this again. Of course. It hasn't been settled yet. The issue is not simply going to disappear.
> The UN is just pissed because the US was instrumental in exposing > corruption at their highest levels and showing how Annan is as bent as > any African dictator. Yeah yeah sure. > The French contingent are simply doing their > regular trick of getting up everyones backside. They never miss an > opportunity to have a dig at the US...unless the US are helping them out. That leaves only a couple of hundred other countries. > 1. How does this fall under the UN mandate? What is the UN if not the world's countries sitting around a table tackling an issue? If just about every country in the world decides to make it a UN issue, then it's a UN issue. As the article points out, the internet has become too important a part of a country's infrastructure to leave it in the hands of a foreign government. It's a bit like having your country's entire telephone system or power supply in somebody else's hands. When the internet was merely for fun it wasn't an issue. Nowadays the situation has changed. > 2. Doesn't the UN think they could be spending this time better off > elsewhere in the world? The UN encompasses lots of different areas - UNHCR, UNESCO, WHO, UNSC etc. They tend to work independently of each other, so the UN's involvement in one area doesn't mean they're going to pull people out of WHO or something like that. Ramon
