TO SaveOurGuns.com  

But the London Observer reported that former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali played a leading role in supplying weapons to the Hutu regime that carried out a campaign of genocide against the Tutsi tribe in 1994.

As minister of foreign affairs in Egypt, Boutros-Ghali facilitated an arms deal in 1990, which was to result in $26 million of mortar bombs, rocket launchers, grenades and ammunition being flown from Cairo to Rwanda. The arms were used by Hutus in attacks which led to up to a million deaths. The role of Boutros-Ghali, who was in charge at the UN when it turned its back on the killings in 1994, is revealed in a book by Linda Melvern.

In "A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide," Boutros-Ghali admits his role in approving an initial $5.8 million arms deal in 1990, which led to Egypt supplying arms to Rwanda until 1992. He says he approved it because it was his job as foreign minister to sell weapons for Egypt.

Did you catch that? It was just his job. Sound familiar?

The weapons were smuggled into Rwanda disguised as relief material. At the time there was an international outcry at human rights abuses by the Hutu government as thousands of Tutsi were massacred. Asked about the wisdom of an arms deal at such a sensitive time, Boutros-Ghali said he did not think that a "few thousand guns would have changed the situation." His contacts with the Hutu regime have never been investigated.

I raise this anecdote from the past as the United Nations gets set to hold its much-ballyhooed Millennium Summit in New York beginning today. This is a meeting that, organizers say, could change the way the world is governed, increase the power of the U.N. and usher in a new era of global peace.

The record of the U.N., however, should lead every thinking person to the opposite conclusion.

The U.N. is not just, as many Americans suspect, a group of incompetent busybodies. It is, instead, a global criminal enterprise determined to shift power away from individuals and sovereign nation-states to a small band of unaccountable international elites.

Way back in June 1997, I first warned of the emerging pattern of U.N. peacekeeping atrocities.

WorldNetDaily raised the visibility of scattered stories appearing in Agence France-Presse, the South China Morning Post and the London Telegraph.

The London Telegraph, in a combined dispatch with AFP, reported that Belgian troops roasted a Somali boy. Roasted him! And what was the sentence for this peace crime committed during an operation dubbed ironically "Restore Hope"? A military court sentenced two paratroopers to a month in jail and a fine of 200 pounds.

Another Belgian soldier reportedly forced a young Somali to eat pork, drink salt water and then eat his own vomit. Another sergeant was accused of murdering a Somali whom he was photographed urinating upon. Another child, accused of stealing food from the paratroopers' base, died after being locked in a storage container for 48 hours. Fifteen other members of the same regiment were investigated in 1995 for "acts of sadism and torture" against Somali civilians.

The pattern of abuse was not confined to Belgian troops. Belgium is actually the third country in the peacekeeping group to charge troops with serious crimes against Somali citizens -- including rape, torture and murder. In 1995, a group of Canadian paratroopers were investigated for torturing a Somali to death and killing three others.

Gruesome photos were published in a Milan magazine of Italian soldiers torturing a Somali youth and abusing and raping a Somali girl. Paratroopers claim they were specifically trained in methods of torture to aid interrogation. According to one witness, Italian soldiers tied a young Somali girl to the front of an armored personnel carrier and raped her while officers looked on.

Few other news agencies -- especially in the United States -- have devoted any coverage to these atrocities. The Village Voice was one notable exception.

The South China Morning Post published an AFP report about an Italian battalion commander who sexually abused and strangled a 13-year-old Somali boy. There are also allegations that, in 1993, Italian soldiers beat seven suspected Somali thieves, killing one; that they beat to death a 14-year-old boy who sold a false medal and beat a couple in a car.

An Italian paratrooper was quoted as saying: "What's the big deal? They are just niggers anyway."

Remember all this when you watch the glowing TV news reports from the Millennium Summit this week. Think of all this when you read the coverage of the event and see it proclaimed as the greatest development in government since the Continental Congress.