Kofi Annan shows his stripes

The New York Daily News: The United States, in the person of Condoleezza Rice, continues to stand firm against an international community motivated more by intense bias against the State of Israel than by any desire for real Mideast peace, no matter what distorted pronouncements emanate from a Rome summit -- or from the United Nations, in the person of Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The big glass house by the East River has long nourished an anti-Israel predisposition. But rarely have the U.N.'s leanings been more outrageously on display than they were Tuesday, when Annan accused the Israeli military of "apparently deliberately targeting" a U.N. post in Lebanon after an errant rocket killed four observers.
It defies reason and humanity to believe Israel determined to launch a lethal attack against the world body, but that was Annan's impulse, one obviously rooted in the animus that informs virtually all he says and does regarding Israel.
Since Hezbollah provoked the fight with a bloody cross-border kidnapping, Israel has dropped 40,000 shells on Lebanon, killing 400 people -- a figure that testifies to Israeli restraint. Yet Annan is appalled, putting him in the same camp as the top Hezbollah man who admitted he never expected such Israeli fury.
Annan's accusations against Israel are all the more odious because he is the chief of an organization that failed to implement Security Council Resolution 1559, which passed three years ago demanding the disbanding and disarmament of all militias in Lebanon and the control of the Lebanese government over all territory. If the U.N. had carried through, Hezbollah attacks would have long ended.
So, defying calls for a premature ceasefire in Lebanon, Secretary of State Rice on Wednesday reiterated this country's stance that there shall be "no return to the status quo," in which Hezbollah, armed by Syria and Iran, rained rockets and missiles on Israel at will.