By Yatindra Bhatnagar

This is what the UN has come down to under Secretary General Ban ki Moon! The downward trend had started with Kofi Annan and is 'ably' continued by Ban. Iran hosting an anti-terror conference! Tomorrow China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Libya, Syria and the like will hold human rights conferences and Ban would bless them, hail and praise them! Wow!

The United States is the major donor to the UN but gets full bashing at such conferences. Israel, the only democratic county in the entire Middle East of Arab Muslims, is treated most unfairly. Secretary General Ban got this post - and re-election - with US support. The UN has lost its relevance and fairness completely. It's dominated and pressured, influenced and coerced by Arab-African blocks where democracy and human rights have no meaning, and no place. Democratic countries rarely get anything useful from the United Nations, the so-called world body.

Remember, during Kofi Annan's term there was a UN Conference with the world map as the backdrop on the dais. And lo and behold! Israel was missing from the world map! It did not make any difference to the then UN Secretary General; it meant either he was oblivious to the blunder or went along with the sinister idea of wiping Israel out of the world map even at a UN meet. That is a dream of radical Arab/Muslim states and their declared intention.

Last month-end there was an anti-terror conference in Iran's capital, Tehran. The world knows that Iran's mullah-dominated government is one of the major sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East and Central Asia and has been suppressing dissent inside the country with violent crack down on demonstrators and opponents.

Besides, Iran is reported to be well on the way to becoming a nuclear weapon state, a scary thought given the radical policy of those who run the country.

In that context it was shocking to know that Iran was holding a conference on anti-terrorism where the main targets of bashing were invariably the West and Israel. And here is the UN Secretary General wishing the conference success and supporting the holding of such an event!

Here is a report by Patrick Goodenough of CNSNews.com:

"U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman has confirmed that Ban sent a message of support to an Iranian government-hosted "counter-terrorism conference" in Tehran, where the U.S. and Israel were repeatedly vilified and 9/11 conspiracy theories were aired.

"A spokesman for the UN Chief, Farhan Haq did not distance Ban or the U.N. from the provocative sentiments expressed during the gathering. Neither did he make any attempt to suggest that Ban's involvement had been improperly portrayed by the conference organizers or Iranian media. He confirmed that a message from Ban had been delivered at the conference on his behalf.

"The Secretary-General believes that all nations, all peoples are affected by terrorism; and that it is imperative that we involved as many states, as many peoples as possible, in the fight against terrorism," Haq said.

"The suggestion that Ban was simply throwing his weight behind the fight against terrorism got short shrift from U.N. Watch, a non-governmental organization that monitors the world body, which had earlier called for Ban to distance himself from the Tehran gathering.

"If the Chinese Communist Party will now organize an international conference for Internet freedom, and if Syria's President Assad will hold one for the right to peaceful protest, will the U.N. also endorse those, on grounds that it is important for all nations to work together in promoting human rights?" U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer asked.

"Ban's message reportedly was read to the gathering by Muhammad Rafiuddin Shah, a former First Secretary at Pakistan's mission to the U.N. who currently serves as acting head of a U.N. body called the Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF)."

[Yet another irony as Pakistan is the fountainhead of terrorism and nurtures and exports terrorists and is also giving safe haven to violent terrorists on its soil.]

"Iranian media reports published during and since the conference underlined the U.N. involvement. The conference Web site also implied U.N. endorsement, featuring the U.N. logo among the organizing entities including the Iranian Foreign Ministry and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's office.

"The U.N. association with the ‘International Conference on the Global Fight Against Terrorism' raised eyebrows for several reasons, not least of all the fact that Iran has for many years topped the US State Department's list of terror-sponsoring states.

"President Ahmadinejad, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others used the event to rail at the U.S., Israel and Britain. Ahmadinejad once again raised speculation that the 9/11 terror attack involving four hijacked planes was a conspiracy designed to benefit U.S. and Israeli interests.

"Also controversial was Ban's association with an event whose main participants included Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the subject of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Darfur.

"State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland commented at a press meeting about the conference at a press briefing, although she did not refer to the U.N. involvement.

"We consider it quite ironic that Iran, the most active state sponsor of terrorism, is holding a meeting on terrorism," she said. "Iran's financial, material, and logistical support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia flies in the face of efforts to promote peace, threatens economic stability, and undermines the growth of democracy throughout the region.

"So instead of engaging constructively in the region with the international community, the Iranian government continues to engage unhelpfully and in an unfounded way," Nuland said. "So, again, an ironic choice to have a terrorism meeting in Iran."

"U.N. Watch wrote to the U.S. and British Ambassadors to the U.N. asking them to demand that Ban dissociate himself from the Tehran conference. "We trust that the United States will demand that the U.N. distance itself from this Orwellian propaganda exercise - an insult to victims worldwide of Iranian-sponsored terrorism - and that it refrain from similar acts in the future."
Attempts to get comment from the U.S. and British missions in New York were unsuccessful.

"The U.N. later released a copy of Ban's statement to the conference. In it, Ban stressed the need for all U.N. member states to take an "unambiguous" position on terrorism - to condemn it ‘in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes.'

"Despite that appeal, the conference ended with a final statement that made clear resistance to ‘foreign occupation' should be excluded. It was emphasized that ‘legitimate struggles of peoples under colonial rule or foreign occupation for their inalienable right of self-determination should not be labeled as terrorism.' "

It all means that Iran would continue to support terrorism, not dialogue, violence and not negotiation and subversion instead of cooperation. Iran doesn't want to be a peaceful member of the society and the democratic comity of nations, and it seems to have the blessings of the UN Secretary General Ban ki Moon. Wow!