UN Watch has released a study of Jean Ziegler, The United Nations official who is supposed to be fighting hunger. Instead, the report finds that he has been abusing his office to attack the United States.

Over the four—year period covered by the study, Jean Ziegler, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, censured the U.S. in 34 separate statements, accusing it, for example, of committing 'genocide' in Cuba and of being an 'imperialist dictatorship' responsible for all the world's misery.  In the same period, however, Mr. Ziegler made no mention of the food situation in 15 of 17 countries deemed by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to have man—made food emergencies.

Most recently, Mr. Ziegler has accused the U.S. of 'starving' Iraqis, a contention denied by the U.S. military.  Mr. Ziegler opposed the U.S. intervention in Iraq, and suggested in 2003 that Switzerland offer asylum to Saddam Hussein to avoid war.

Mr. Ziegler, a former Swiss Socialist party politician, came into his U.N. office in 2000.  In 2002, he was awarded the 'Muammar Khadaffi Human Rights Prize,' an award he helped establish with the Libyan ruler in 1989.  In 2004, Mr. Ziegler contributed an article criticizing American imperialism and the war on terror to the inaugural issue of L'Empire ('The Empire'), Europe's first magazine dedicated to anti—Americanism.  In both the article and his 2005 book, L'Empire de la Honte ('The Empire of Shame'), he used his U.N. title.

Ed Lasky   10 28 05