国际英语资讯:Feature: Kofi Annan remembered in Ghana and beyond_时事

国际英语资讯:Feature: Kofi Annan remembered in Ghana and beyond

ACCRA, Aug. 27 -- The national flags of Ghana are flying at half mast across the country and at the country's missions around the globe.

Kofi Annan, former United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, passed on at a hospital in Bern, Switzerland, after a short illness.

"We knew that in August he tends to come to Ghana and stay in his house and family members will go and see him. So we were looking forward to seeing him in August. So to hear this news is really shattering," Kojo Amoo Gottfried, Ghana's former ambassador to China, told Xinhua on Saturday hours after the news broke.

Amoo-Gottfried, who grew up with Kofi Annan in Bompata, Kumasi, said: "As a man, Kofi was forthright, truthful and did what he considered to be right, and never gave up."

Commentators say not only do people in war-torn countries recognize the greatness of Annan, who took over from Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1997 as the seventh UN secretary-general, but also the youth and women see a father figure in him.

"To say he is a statesman is an understatement. He lived fulfilled life always preaching peace and fairness in the world and he practiced it so much," Ghana's deputy information minister Nana Ama Dokuaa Asiamah-Adjei remarked in an interview with Xinhua.

"His fight for the youth, his fight for women, we cannot forget," she said, adding that her wish was for Annan to have stayed a little longer for Ghana and Africa to tap into his reservoir of experience.