UN Strategy: Talk Assad to Death

This morning, Kofi told the Madrid conference on terror that one of the UN's five points for fighting terrorism is to deter states from supporting terrorists. For an insight into the utter ineffectiveness of this strategem, we need go no further than this afternoon's UN press briefing:

Question: A senior UN official who was not identified has quoted as saying that Terje Roed-Larsen is going to tell President Assad that Syria’s going to face political and economic isolation if he doesn’t completely and quickly withdraw. Can you confirm that that’s the message that he is going to be delivering to the Syrian President?

Associate Spokesperson: I cannot confirm that and, in fact, on the contrary I spoke with Roed-Larsen’s people and they said, after his meeting with the Foreign Minister of Jordan, that Roed-Larsen said he was going to Damascus and Beirut to have a constructive dialogue and that the United Nations was not operating with the use of threats.

Question: Is any envoy like Mr. Roed-Larsen actually empowered to threaten sanctions?

Associate Spokesperson: I think that would be a matter for the Security Council to consider, but I think he made his point clear by saying that certainly that is not his intention.

Less than 12 hours passed between Kofi's bold statement and this evidence of the UN's powerlessness, ineffectiveness and irrelevance in the War on Terror.