Un General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann

The President of the UN General Assembly is a good and courageous man. To paraphrase a US diplomat,  he’s a crazy man who wants an end to war & poverty.

The President of the General Assembly holds the position only for one year. The current President has approximately six months to go. He has very limited power. But as the head of the only forum where all the nations on earth meet and debate, he carries moral authority. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, a 65-year old diplomat and Roman Catholic priest from Nicaragua, is using it with aplomb.

President d’Escoto’s inauguration last June was not quite the media spectacular getting underway in Washington as I type. But he did give a press conference that created a few waves at the time. According to CBS, this is part of what he said last June:

“They elected a priest. And I hope no one is offended if I say that love is what is most needed in this world. And that selfishness is what has gotten us into the terrible quagmire in which the world is sinking, almost irreversibly, unless something big happens,” d’Escoto said during a news conference. “This may sound like a sermon. Well, OK.”

The reports continued:

In his acceptance speech, d’Escoto spoke out against what he called “acts of aggression” in Iraq and Afghanistan – without mentioning the U.S. by name.