White House Spars With Kerry Over Foreign Support
Richard C. Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration, came to Kerry’s defense last night. ”The Republicans are just having fun with this,” he said. ”They know it’s correct. . . . The overwhelming majority of foreign leaders and leadership want a change in American leadership.”
Holbrooke said Kerry ”committed candor” and Republicans were jumping him because of it.
Spousal Benefits for Gays at U.N. Challenged By Colum Lynch, Washington Post
A bloc of more than 50 Islamic states, backed by the Vatican, sought today to halt U.N. efforts to extend spousal benefits to partners of some gay employees.
The initiative came less than two months after U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan moved to award benefits to partners of gay employees who come from countries where such benefits are provided, such as Belgium and the Netherlands.
The same group is also preparing to oppose a resolution, sponsored by Brazil and supported by the European Union, at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva that calls for nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, diplomats said. The Vatican and other conservatives maintain that the Brazilian resolution and Annan’s new benefits policy would provide gay people with protections never envisioned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This struggle is an international one. Please notice who is with Bush and who is against him. Bin Laden and Bush probably agree on more than one issue. mjh