Chuck, I'm not sure what you're impressed with. If there's anything unusual about this interview it's the questions that the interviewer is asking -- a bit more bold and provocative than one hears in an North American interview. Annan's responses, on the other hand, are utterly bland... a string of vacuous PR sound bites. He sounds like the hack that he's always been, providing justification for the war crimes he's been obliged to provide diplomatic cover for, while making some obligatory noises about all sides needing to respect international law:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/anderson Made in USA By Perry Anderson
The Nation. March 15, 2007
. . . Annan's performance regarding Rwanda was in a way a condition of his further ascent. The Clinton Administration, gearing up for intervention in the Balkans, was determined not to allow any distractions over killings in Africa to deflect public attention from Bosnia--where the scale of death, though high, was neither proportionately nor absolutely near that in Rwanda. But strategic interest, not to speak of skin color, made the region altogether another matter. As a Pentagon memorandum about Rwanda put it at the time: "Be Careful. Legal [department] at State [department] was worried about this yesterday--Genocide finding could commit USG [the US government] to actually 'do something.'" Clinton and Albright, naturally, did nothing. When, on the other hand, they pressed the button for action in Bosnia in the summer of 1995, Annan sprang to life and, at Albright's request--without consulting Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General--he authorized NATO to start heavy bombing of Serb positions. This was the alacrity that made him. Boutros-Ghali, although a former foreign minister of Mubarak's regime in Egypt, one of America's most loyal client states, had riled Washington with an increasing lack of deference, dragging his feet over Bosnia and talking too much about Africa. By the time his mandate came up for renewal the following year, the Clinton Administration was determined to oust him and parachute Annan into his place.
. . . Within a few months of Annan's green light in Bosnia, a team of top officials in Washington, headed by Albright, was working on a secret plan, Operation Orient Express, for a coup at the UN. As America's designated candidate, Annan was, of course, party to the scheme. In the Security Council itself, Boutros-Ghali was supported by every member state, with the exception of the United States, which vetoed him. Seven ballots later and following tireless pressure by Albright, every state except France had realized, as Traub remarks, that "there was no percentage in blocking the will of such a powerful figure." Decisive was Washington's ability to call Russia to heel, bypassing its foreign minister for direct instructions to Yeltsin, on whom it could rely for submission. Once the Russian vote had been pocketed, France caved in, and Annan was home and dry.
. . . When NATO launched its aerial attack on Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 over Kosovo, in patent violation of the UN Charter, the Secretary General, far from condemning the action of the United States and its allies, informed the world that it was legitimate. For services like these--he "courted the wrath of the developing world by rejecting anticolonialism in favor of moral principles cherished in the West"--he was much feted and, not surprisingly, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The invasion of Iraq, however, would pose a severer test. Annan had presided over the sanctions regime without a qualm and not demurred at Operation Desert Fox, the four-day bombing campaign Clinton oversaw in 1998. When the Bush Administration began its push for war with Resolution 1441, which declared Iraq in material breach of all past resolutions on its disarmament, Annan swung into action to pressure all members of the Security Council to vote for it, personally phoning Syria's President Bashar Assad to insure that there would not be a single abstention. Unanimity was secured, but a hitch arose at the next stage. The French told the White House that while they could not accept a second Security Council resolution explicitly authorizing an attack on Iraq, which would implicate them, they had no objection to a US invasion based on an American interpretation of 1441--the course that Cheney was urging within the Administration. But Blair, who wanted to join in the attack, insisted that a second resolution was necessary to protect him from criticisms at home, and got Powell's support for a futile attempt to circumvent a French veto in the Security Council. Such mutual hypocrisies put Annan in an awkward spot. Blessing the Balkan War was one thing: In 1999, the West was united in the attack on Yugoslavia. But now the West, to all appearances, was divided. What should he do? If only the French had come round, we learn, all might have been well. "He would have accepted, and perhaps even embraced," Traub tells us, "a resolution authorizing war so long as the council was firmly united behind it." But unity was not forthcoming, and an embrace remained out of reach.
Annan, aware that his inspectors had failed to come up with any evidence of WMDs in Iraq, the pretext for war, and that his own position would be weakened by an attack that opened up a line of division between the United States and leading Western allies, indicated his unhappiness at this unfortunate turn of events, but he refrained from condemning the invasion--which, having endorsed an identical bypassing of the Security Council over Kosovo, he was anyway scarcely in a position to do. Once Iraq was conquered, however, he hastened to the assistance of the occupation, for which Bush and Blair wanted backdated cover from the UN. In May, at Annan's urging, the Security Council ratified the Anglo-American seizure of Iraq, voting unanimously for Resolution 1483, which endorsed Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, and pledged that the UN would play a "vital role," as requested by the White House and Downing Street, in helping it out. Rice and Powell had already chosen the functionary in the Secretariat they wanted for the job, Sergio Vieira de Mello, its human rights commissioner. . . . On arrival in Baghdad, Vieira de Mello's task was to help Bremer arrange a puppet advisory body to give the Anglo-American armies a local facade. "Over the course of six weeks, he persuaded reluctant leadership figures to identify themselves with the American regime" and got Bremer "to change the name of the body to the more dignified Governing Council (even though it remained powerless)." Traub goes on: "This was just what Annan had had in mind when he argued for a serious role for the UN." . . .
. . . Back in the West, cornered by a reporter from the BBC, Annan was in the end forced to admit, under repeated questioning, that the invasion of Iraq was illegal--"if you wish," he grudgingly added. . . . Asked if he was "bothered that the United States is becoming an unrestrainable, unilateral superpower," Annan replied: "I think in the end everybody is concluding that it is best to work together with our allies." Our allies. Identification with the United States could not be more innocently complete. . .
Full: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/anderson