Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

On Syria, of Kofi & "Mission Impossible," Double Pensions & Boutros, Baker

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 24 -- Around the UN in New York the day after former Secretary General Kofi Annan was appointed joint Arab League - UN special envoy to Syria, diplomats and staff were abuzz about other candidates considered, and what the naming of "Kofi" meant.

  Sources told Inner City Press that the other candidates considered included not only Finland's Martti Ahtisaari, who garnered Russian opposition for his Ahtisaari plan for Kosovo independence from Serbia, but another former UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros Ghali, vetoed by the US for a second time.

  An American, James Baker, was in the mix, as was Algerian former prime minister Mawloud Hamrouch and Kuwaiti former foreign minister Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah.

  Annan was selected. Inner City Press asked his former chief of communications Edward Mortimer, who replied, "I salute Kofi for his courage in undertaking what looks like the ultimate 'mission impossible.'"

  Another long time UN source told Inner City Press that this work might be a way of "making Kofi pay for his two pensions," referring to his double dipping of pensions as former UN staffer and then Secretary General. Inner City Press has asked Ban Ki-moon's top two spokesmen about this, and how Annan's mission will be funded, after for an answer before noon. Watch this site.