Score One for the Diplomats
By GAIL COLLINS
NYT
We are gathered here today to praise the United Nations, not to make fun of it.
Although it’s sort of hard to resist when you’ve got Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi working on a plan to dismember Switzerland. This thought is not central to my argument about the U.N., but we live in troubling times and it might be very soothing to stop worrying about Iran for a while and listen to world leaders argue about the Swiss Menace.
The president of Switzerland, Hans-Rudolf Merz, paid a conciliation call on Qaddafi, who is camping out at the Libyan Embassy in New York City this week after literally being unable to find a patch of ground on which to pitch his tent. Merz has been trying to get Libya to spring two Swiss businessmen, who have been stuck in Tripoli since 2008, when Qaddafi decided that Switzerland is a “world mafia and not a state.” He also withdrew Libya’s assets from Swiss banks, recalled his diplomats and closed the Nestlé office in Tripoli.
This would be immediately after the Geneva police arrested Qaddafi’s son Hannibal and his wife for beating two servants with a coat hanger and belt while they were staying in one of the city’s luxury hotels. The servants later withdrew their complaint after receiving what The Associated Press said was “compensation from an undisclosed source.”
(More here.)
NYT
We are gathered here today to praise the United Nations, not to make fun of it.
Although it’s sort of hard to resist when you’ve got Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi working on a plan to dismember Switzerland. This thought is not central to my argument about the U.N., but we live in troubling times and it might be very soothing to stop worrying about Iran for a while and listen to world leaders argue about the Swiss Menace.
The president of Switzerland, Hans-Rudolf Merz, paid a conciliation call on Qaddafi, who is camping out at the Libyan Embassy in New York City this week after literally being unable to find a patch of ground on which to pitch his tent. Merz has been trying to get Libya to spring two Swiss businessmen, who have been stuck in Tripoli since 2008, when Qaddafi decided that Switzerland is a “world mafia and not a state.” He also withdrew Libya’s assets from Swiss banks, recalled his diplomats and closed the Nestlé office in Tripoli.
This would be immediately after the Geneva police arrested Qaddafi’s son Hannibal and his wife for beating two servants with a coat hanger and belt while they were staying in one of the city’s luxury hotels. The servants later withdrew their complaint after receiving what The Associated Press said was “compensation from an undisclosed source.”
(More here.)
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