Ban spanks Ahmadinejad

Ban Ki-moon has prided himself on his willingness to engage some of the world’s most unsavory leaders, including Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Burma’s Than Shwe, in a bit of personal diplomacy in the hopes of persuading them to behave well. But he has never warmed to the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with whom ...

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Ban Ki-moon has prided himself on his willingness to engage some of the world's most unsavory leaders, including Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Burma's Than Shwe, in a bit of personal diplomacy in the hopes of persuading them to behave well.

Ban Ki-moon has prided himself on his willingness to engage some of the world’s most unsavory leaders, including Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Burma’s Than Shwe, in a bit of personal diplomacy in the hopes of persuading them to behave well.

But he has never warmed to the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with whom he maintains a chilly relationship. Almost each year, at the U.N. General Assembly session, the U.N. chief delivers a stern rebuke to the Iranian leader for some provocative statement or refusal to submit to Security Council demands on his government’s nuclear program.

This year, Ban scolded the Iranian leader for once against challenging the U.S. assertion that al Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks and for launching a fresh attack on "Zionists" (he never says Israel). "The United Nations should be respected as a forum for promoting tolerance, mutual respect and cross cultural understanding and that comments denying or questioning painful historical facts such as the Holocaust and 9/11 are unacceptable."

Ban did say a couple of nice things to the Iranian leader. He welcomed the assistance "the people of Iran" provided to famine-wracked Somalia and welcomed the "release from prison in Iran of the two U.S. nationals Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal on humanitarian grounds."

But he also prodded Ahmadinejad to comply with U.N. resolutions demanding Iran suspend its nuclear program until he can persuade the world that it being used for the generation of energy, not bombs. Ban expressed sadness over the execution earlier this month of a "juvenile offender" in Iran and prodded Ahmadinejad to respect the "fundamental civil and political rights" of his people.

Follow me on Twitter @columlynch

Colum Lynch was a staff writer at Foreign Policy between 2010 and 2022. Twitter: @columlynch

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