America's Ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalizad, gets the Hoge-wash treatment today in the New York Times, in an article written by Warren Hoge (who never has a bad word to say about the United Nations but had a lot of bad things to say about our former Ambassador John Bolton).  Khalizad needlessly has fun at the expense of former Ambassador John Bolton. Ambassador Khalizad took pains to mention his close friend Algerian former Foreign Minister and UN official Lakhdar Brahimi, while also taking time to praise to praise Rumi, a Sufi Islamic poet.

Speaking on Belgian radio and to the Belgian senate last week, Mr. Brahimi compared Mr. Sharon to an assassin, urged Europeans to increase their pressure on Israel, and said that the world is too accepting of "cynical and ridiculous" Israeli positions on peace with the Palestinian Arabs, according to a report by Agence France-Presse that was translated from the French.

According to AFP, Mr. Brahimi, in an interview conducted in French on Belgium's RTBP radio last Friday, said, "You must condemn Mr. Sharon when he assassinates people, but you keep quiet just like you keep quiet when he uproots more than a million trees in the orchards of Palestine."

He urged European listeners to be much more aggressive in pressuring Israel. "A return of peace will not happen all by itself," he said. "It will happen only with a totally different European attitude."

A day earlier, Mr. Brahimi addressed the Belgian senate, where he said that the root of international terrorism is related mostly to the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to AFP. "What is being done to solve this problem? Not enough," he said.

"The international community has too easily accepted the cynical and ridiculous viewpoint of the Israeli prime minister, who considered the late president Yasser Arafat the only person responsible for insecurity in Israel and for the plight of his own people," Mr. Brahimi told legislators.