After three weeks I am now officially in a ‘New York state of mind.' Well not really, but traffic came to a snarling crawl, there were those ubiquitous Chinese mediators on every corner, President George Bush made a cameo, even his opponent John Kerry was in town…and then there was the opening of the 59th United Nations General Assembly here in NYC. Welcome to NYC. But at the start of the General Assembly there was anything but unity at one UN Plaza, at least in my humble opinion. Division among the nations was bursting at the seams.
But the traffic here in the Big Apple was the biggest news still. Imagine an accident on Princess Margaret Drive during rush hour. Police were everywhere: NYPD, FBI, sharpshooters, helicopters, bomb sniffing dogs, and dozens of news vans even a station from Japan. And I proud to say that for the first time ever just one station from Belize was there, 7NEWS, yours truly was front and center and though budget didn't permit a camera man I did have a pen and notepad. It could have been chaos but I avoided it by jumping ‘on the 6.'
I ‘sixed it' to the UN where half the joy was getting in through at least three levels of security. But it was worth it because starting on Tuesday morning the Secretary General Kofi Annan fired the first salvo saying "the rule of law is at risk around the world…we see fundamental laws shamelessly disregarded…we have seen Iraqi prisoners disgracefully abused."
A defiant Bush fired back. In his words: "the commitments we make must have meaning…when we say serious consequences…there must be serious consequences." And in his speech which ran 21 minutes (more than the allotted 15), the President known for his "compassionate conservatism" has a new word "human dignity" which he mentioned 9 times.
The fireworks continued during the rest of the debate with surprising and stinging rhetoric from Zimbabwe's President R. G. Mugabe calling Iraq "a vast inferno created by blatant and completely illegal and defiant acts of aggression by the U.S. and Britain…we are now coerced to accept and believe that a new doctrine has arisen, namely that there is one political God, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair is his prophet."
And where does Belize stand in all these? I don't know since foreign Minister Godfrey Smith was to have his 15 minutes on Tuesday, that is now uncertain.
The week though was rounded out by speeches and for Fellowship participants it included a visit to Global Vision and the Wall Street Journal and briefings from UNICEF and UNAIDS.
Monday we leave the big NYC behind and will jump on a Amtrak train bound for Washington D.C. and my next diary entry should be from the Capitol.