Qaddafi Appoints Nicaraguan At UN

The Washington Post reports:

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi has selected a fiery former Nicaraguan foreign minister and U.N. General Assembly president, the Rev. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, to represent him at the United Nations.

The move comes exactly one month after Gaddafi’s government instructed U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to withdraw the accreditation of his previous ambassador. Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgham broke with his former leader and urged the U.N. Security Council to pursue a war crimes investigation against members of Gaddafi’s regime.

D’Escoto’s letter of appointment, dated Sunday, was written by Libyan Foreign Minister Musa Kusa, whodefected Wednesday.

In his letter to Ban, Kusa wrote that Libya “has decided to appoint Mr. Miguel D’Escoto Brockman, former minister of foreign affairs of Nicaragua, as its representative to the United Nations in New York, being therefore also authorized to speak on its behalf in all of the organs of the United Nations system.”

While the U.N. has stripped Shalgam and his deputy, Ibrahim Dabbashi, of their accreditation, it has provided them with courtesy passes that allow them to enter the Security Council visiting room and to deliver anti-Gaddafi statements in the halls of the United Nations.

Kusa wrote that Libya decided to appoint D’Escoto as Gaddafi’s U.N. envoy after the United States refused to provide a visa to his favored candidate, the former Libyan foreign minister and General Assembly President Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki.

The appointment of a foreign national as a country’s U.N. envoy, while highly unusual, is not unprecedented. Palau, a tiny island in the South Pacific, appointed a New York lawyer, Stuart Beck, as its top man at the United Nations.

A former Maryknoll priest, D’Escoto served as the Sandinista’s foreign minister during the country’s civil war against the U.S.-backed Contras. He has been an outspoken critic of American foreign policy ever since, once describing President Ronald Reagan as “the butcher of my people.”

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