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EDITORIAL

Our man in North Korea

January 20, 2003

Gallivanting, wealthy, Canadian businessman and environmental guru Maurice Strong has completed his mission as United Nation’s envoy in North Korea. Strong, a former UN secretary general, has no credentials to be on the middle of the world stage in times of crisis, other than his unique ability to endear himself to the various leaders of exotic nations.

Even though U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has made it clear that Washington wants a diplomatic way out of the three-month-old standoff with the Stalinist state, Strong seems to beg to differ.

"We are not looking for a crisis. We are not looking for a war. We have no hostile intent toward North Korea," Powell said in an interview reported by International News.

Strong, who seems to have bestowed upon himself the role of an elected world leader, is not having any.

The architect of the Kyoto protocol, who reportedly held talks with the North Korea regime’s number two Kim Yong-Nam, also warned of eight million people in a life or death humanitarian situation and said they must not be used as a political football.

"The humanitarian crisis is a real crisis, it’s not just a potential crisis," he said. "It is a crisis affecting the lives and the prospects of some six to eight million people.

"It has been somewhat overshadowed with the attention of the media on the political crisis and of course the political crisis is a real crisis.

"(But) you cannot make the children, the ill people, the old people victims of a political crisis with which they have had nothing to do."

Amid mounting signs that Washington is considering a new deal with the unpredictable North, Powell emphasized that the U.S. and the International Atomic Energy remained "concerned" that North Korea has violated its obligations under a 1994 accord that froze North Korea’s nuclear development.

Strong said North Korea made it clear to him they had no plans to acquire nuclear weapons and were willing to talk.

What is it about Maurice Strong that the North Koreans would open up to him?

"They said to me what they have been saying publicly, that they have no intention of trying to acquire or manufacture nuclear weapons." Strong said.

"They believe they themselves are threatened by the world’s main nuclear power (the United States) and they themselves are quite prepared as part of a settlement to renounce any desire or intention to acquire nuclear weapons and to subject themselves to inspections."

As a self-appointed world diplomat, does Strong believe his dialogue about the United States at this particular juncture is really helpful dialogue?

Isn’t it somewhat Orwellian to look the other way when there is evidence some countries are stockpiling nuclear weapons while accusing others of threatening nations as "the world’s main nuclear power"?

The clout of Maurice Strong in the international arena and how he intends to exert it becomes more and more curious.

As Ezra Levant wrote in his recent book Fight Kyoto, "Strong demands that ordinary people reduce their consumption of resources, while he leads a jet-setting lifestyle, his call for the conservation of resources stops at his own farm."

The man who returned from North Korea once did a business deal with arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi,, and wound up with a 200,000-acre ranch in Colorado–which his wife, Hanne runs as a New Age spiritual colony.

The world of hocus pocus is harmless in Colorado, but on the world stage it’s dangerous.


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