UGANDAÂÂ14/2/2004Â8:38
SECRETARY-GENERAL NATO: NO INTERVENTION FOR NOW, BUT NOT TO BE RULED OUT
The new Secretary-General of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, has not ruled out âfuture involvementâ by NATO in southern Sudan and Uganda.
In an interview to âAgenzia Italiaâ during a visit to Rome (Italy) on Friday, the NATO chief since January of this year however specified that âfor the moment this is not part of NATOâs plansâ.
The Secretary-General recalled that âat the Reykjavik summit we said that NATO could operate in other areas, but the Alliance cannot be involved in every part of the world where human rights are at riskâ.
A few months ago, the European Union sent its first peacekeeping mission to Africa: a multinational force of roughly 1,400 soldiers, mostly French, carried out a three-month mission in Ituri (northeast Democratic Republic of Congo) alongside the United Nations (UN) mission.
The largest peacekeeping missions of the UN are currently operating on the African continent: 10,000 men in ex Zaire, the same number in Liberia and roughly 12,000 in Sierra Leone. Moreover, it is likely that a large contingent will also be deployed to Sudan, once the government of Khartoum and the separatist rebels in the south have reached a global accord.[LC]
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
