French Foriegn Minister at the UN. You gotta love this guy!

When Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, addressed the United Nations for the first time today he showed not only a healthy sense of humor, but also an open mind about dissent. He was only a few minutes into his speech when a woman rushed the stage. Security wrestled her away, but she struggled. The minister stopped speaking for a moment.

He was obviously feeling a little tense as he watched the commotion and saw the woman being dragged away. Breaking the silence in the room, the woman could be heard screaming, “No war in Iran! No War in Iran!” Her voice kept getting farther and farther away, as she was removed.

“No! No!” the Foreign Minister exclaimed. “Let her come in. Let her sit here with us.” But, of course, the woman did not appear. As the moments passed, it was unclear if the Minister’s request would somehow be honored, but it wasn’t. One last shout echoed down some hallway leading away from the room. “No War in Iran!”

With the skill and perfect timing of a seasoned performer, the Minister looked over his lowered spectacles at the crowd. “But she doesn’t know I agree with her,” he chuckled. “I’m here to prevent that. I agree with her.” That broke the ice. It relieved the tension, and it showed the world that the new French Foreign Minister had class.

Post new comment

Upcoming events:

Like our own...

Submitted by Hammersmith on Tue, 2007/09/25 - 9:55pm.

administration, the French governemnt, executive branch anyway, is laying the groundwork for military action against Iran. For the foreign minister to say or imply he too opposes war is disingenuous at best and hypocritical as worst--he opposes war so long as his government, like the neocons in Washington, succeed in bending Iran to its will.

I'm not so sure about that...

Submitted by Carole Borges on Wed, 2007/09/26 - 7:57am.

On March 17, 2007 Al Jazeera-English reported this.

"Dominique de Villepin, the French prime minister, has urged the United States and other foreign nations to withdraw from Iraq in 2008 and said the war had "shattered" America's image abroad.

"The Iraqi conflict ... is sapping the power of the United States to peacefully influence other players in the troubled Middle East," he said on Friday.

"The war with Iraq marked a turning point. It shattered America's image," Villepin, who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, told an audience at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts."

"It undermined the image of the West as a whole. It is time for the United States and Europe to regain together the respect and admiration of the other people."

This is the AlJeezera-English link. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/33E99FDD-CC35-4F09-A423-5360AD07F... I do check it out sometimes, but it's pretty much the same news as here at home. Not as radical or crazy as I thought. I'm sure clicking onto it puts my name on some list in Cheney's office, but that doesn't bother me.