9 DECEMBER 2006, Page 44

Kofi

A limp soft-soaper, he wouldn’t say Boo to a goose. Cautiously neutral, he tried emollience, thereby creating genocide the massacre of the Tutsis by the Hutus.

He similarly failed in Bosnia where Unprofor, the UN mission, vetoed the use of airstrikes to save Srebrenica. Now twenty thousand slain lie incognito’d.

But from these holocausts was nothing learnt?

Not in Darfur, whose people in their need were raped, then disposessed, their hovels burnt four hundred thousand slaughtered by the Janjaweed.

What’s left? A peace prize. Eulogistic mention. Lavish farewells. A very handsome pension.

Norman Bissett