Not Worth Talking About - 9 January 2004

Surfing the channels and scanning the newspapers I'm staggered - on the rare occasions I'm standing up - by a sudden tidal wave of news, profiles, meditations and interminable speculations about the Democratic candidates now running for this year's presidential race.

Of course every television channel and every newspaper months ago assigned their reporters to each of the candidates. But until the New Year dawned they were held on a leash.

It's as if the reporters covering the runners had been kept in their stalls at the gate till somebody announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, the Presidential Stakes. Get ready, set, bang and they're off."

And now it seems they can write themselves into exhaustion.

Yesterday in one paper I noted four huge profiles and at least four or five speculative pieces, in all about 10,000 words on nothing and nobody but Tom Noddy and Joe Cobley and Elspeth Sidesaddle.

I read only one of them and I'm not going to talk about any of them until 20 January, after which historic date several of them will drop out.

And from then on maybe we'll take another long break or as we say here now - hiatus - before we touch on the subject again.

I've said this with pleasure, if not with pride, because for the third time I think in 12 years I've not talked about the next November's presidential election until the dawn of the year itself.

I ought to have been warned years ago, when I took a slow trip around the world and noticed, but not sharply enough, what a huge, prolonged yawn overtook the natives of India, Australia, Ireland, Kenya, whenever the social conversation came around to the probable candidates in the next presidential election.

By this time of the year I'd usually done four or five talks on the absorbing subject.

What finally cured me of this ludicrous presumption that Sydney or New Delhi or little Piddle Trenthide were consumed with curiosity in the coming runners was what you might call a fan letter but shorter and a little more tart than most.

It was from a little old lady in Dorset - I don't know why I say little old lady, maybe she was an old lady built like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Anyway she wrote a short, sharp and in the result, a most helpful, note.

"Instead," she wrote, "of telling us who might be the next president of the United States, would it not be better if you waited 'til November and told us who is?"

Well after the middle of January there are two primary elections - one in the small Eastern state of New Hampshire and the other in the small Midwestern state of Iowa.

When they happen I'll hope to tell you why these primaries have come to be the decisive factor in choosing the ultimate candidate, why the old convention system is dead and gone and the summer conventions are no more than gaudy coronations.

So Madam Dorset, your orders will be obeyed.

Looking over the United Nations Secretary-General's final report on Iraq I find that December 15th was a great date.

When for the first time in years there was good news about - wait for it, Noam Chomsky - about Iraq from a very unlikely source - the foreign minister of Iraq.

You may remember the previous one - Tariq Aziz - the small, compact man with the thick glasses and the moustache and the easy, occasionally jocular manner of an old and wily diplomat.

He regularly deplored the loss of civilian life from the aerial bombing by Britain and the United States.

And when President Clinton was at his wits' end six years ago, after Saddam had refused to let the umpteenth team of UN inspectors into his country and the Clinton administration sorrowfully and correctly concluded that while many weapons had been found and reported many more had by then, during six years of stealth, been transferred and/or buried to neighbouring countries.

Well Mr Aziz is now, in the official phrase, under restraint in the prison facilities set up at the Baghdad airport.

The capture and imprisonment and of Mr Aziz was, among other consolations, a great relief to the members of one of the UN's admirable commissions.

For under the UN's rotation system the chairmanship of the UN's Disarmament Commission was Iraq, and in obedience to the same principle of impartiality the chairman of the Human Rights Commission, which scrutinises every act of cruelty, torture, denial of civil rights et cetera, the chairman is Libya's humane Mr Gaddafi.

Well the good and even inspiring news is that Mr Aziz has been replaced by a new Iraqi foreign minister, appointed by Iraq's new governing council.

He is Hoshyar Zebari, a name which may well echo resoundingly through history if the Iraqi experiment succeeds.

Just before the holidays he was introduced to the Security Council by the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and he made his first speech.

According to a friend, a delegate who was there, it was a shock and a novelty.

It was not an open session of the council and I, for one, saw no report of it but I have in front of me a transcript of the proceedings and I shall try to give the gist of it.

Because of what Mr Zebari had to say and how he said it this can, for once, be done. Though usually you can no more select the gist of a Security Council speech than you can pluck a needle of sense out of a haystack of jargon.

The Secretary-General did the formal introduction. After the capture of Saddam, he said, he will be held to account.

Meanwhile the task is to restore sovereignty to Iraq, and though there may be no time to organise fair and free elections, the United Nations is ready to play its full part, although for the time being, after the United Nations headquarters in Iraq were blown up, he regretted to say, it cannot be "inside the country".

Mr Zebari pretty soon jumped on this regret.

We understand, he said, the devastating losses you suffered on 19 August but your help and expertise cannot be effectively delivered from Cyprus or Amman.

You have been in dangerous situations before and we are ready to provide whatever security you need.

And by "we" he made it plain he meant the governing council. His only mention of the United States was as the main force pacifying his country.

What you see today, he said, is a country traumatised by a legacy of unimaginable human suffering designed to rip our country apart.

We are making an unprecedented effort among political, ethnic, religious and secular groups to unite.

He recited a long and impressive programme from a draft constitution to a final one, to caucuses in 18 provinces, the dates of first elections, all the way through to a permanent constitution and a parliament directly elected by the Iraqi people by 2006.

He had two other things to say, one a bit of scolding advice, the other an imputation of blame.

Look beyond your differences over the decision to go to war over Iraq. Settling scores with the United States coalition will not help bring stability to the Iraqi people.

And then, looking straight ahead but noticeably paining the Secretary-General, he said something I doubt has ever been said to the Council in 50 years.

The United Nations failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years. The United Nations must not fail the Iraqi people again.

Some speech, some man, a name to remember - Mr Hoshyar Zebari.

I've been waiting for weeks to end on a necessary personal note and I shall do it now.

My most cherished memory of 2003 happened after Thursday 16 October when the floor got up and smashed my forehead and I was obviously unfit to perform my weekly duty from a hospital emergency room.

Within a day or two, while I sat at home looking, as a good friend said, like a racoon, the telephone started up and the e-mails and the faxes and soon a daily snowdrift of mail outside my door from all over - the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, France, Poland, Zambia - from places I'd never heard of.

When Winston Churchill was very old he once told his doctor: "Whenever a stranger says a kind thing to me I blubber."

When I had a call of concern from a lady in China I blubbered.

I simply wanted to say how grateful I am to all these unknown listeners and wish you all a healthy New Year with no unforeseen trips.

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