UN Puts Fox in Charge of Henhouse

Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 7:32:10 pm PDT

We reported this story last Friday, and it’s just showing up at the Jerusalem Post today: UN disarmament board chooses Iranian.

As the international community looks into ways of stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons, an Iranian representative was elected to be the vice chair of the UN’s disarmament commission.

The commission, which began its annual conference last week, was established by the UN General Assembly in the early 50’s in order to promote disarmament and to review international treaties dealing with nuclear energy.

The commission does not have any authority to enforce its decisions and is not connected to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the international nuclear watchdog that is now investigating Iran’s nuclear program and is expected to report to the UN Security Council by the end of the month.

The new Iranian vice chair, Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi, who is also the country’s ambassador to the UN, said last week that Iran will cooperate with the IAEA and will “seek an acceptable venue for holding transparent talks with interested parties.” The ambassador, who is one of three vice-chairpersons, said during the meeting of the commission that Israel’s nuclear stockpile is among “the major sources of concern with regard to global peace and security.”