In today's Jerusalem Post editorial, the forthcoming visit of International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohammed ElBaradei is noted. This UN agency head, never particularly friendly towards Israel, is expected to join the chorus of NGOs calling for Israel to denuclearize.

The editorial gives its take on why Israel should remain nuclear and argues the case rather well. I want to cast back to last Friday's Post for a further, more pressing reason.

Under the headline "Annan demands Darfur solution", Alexandra Zavis wrote that "Annan...wants to see progress in 48 hours resolving a bitter conflict in the Darfur region which his officials say has led to the world's worst humanitarian crisis."

Good on the UN you might think? Finally making some demands to solve a problem and giving a deadline to do it? Read on.....

"The 16 month-old conflict has killed up to 30,000 people, driven more than 1 million people from their homes and left more than 2 million in desperate need of aid." (my bold type).

The UN, in other words, has acted about as quickly and effectively as it did when standing by and watching 800,000 people hacked to death in the Rwanda conflict.

Israel must remain a nuclear power because it has to be responsible for its own defence. If not, coming along with mealy mouthed demands 16 months too late, with tens of thousands of dead would not wash. If the UN wants to achieve any sort of credibility, it needs to stop spending all its time passing ludicrous resolutions against a democratic state which is desperately trying to defend its citizens from suicide bombings and do something about the real human tragedies taking place around the world. Then Mr. Annan, maybe we will be prepared to take you a little more seriously.

As a footnote, I'm just going to mention that the people doing the slaughtering in the Darfur region of Sudan are Arabs. You didn't really have to ask did you......?

Gilly