UNITED NATIONS: General Assembly Gives Nod to Reform Plan

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 13 1997 (IPS) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s wide-ranging plans to reform the United Nations cleared its first hurdle Wednesday when General Assembly endorsed his his reform proposals.

The 185-nation Assembly lauded the reform package, presented by Annan in July, and that his report would be considered as the world body’s 1998-99 budget is being prepared. But the Assembly’s consensus approval, although it allows Annan to proceed with many of his reform proposals, is only the first of many that the package must receive before it can become a reality.

“Today is an important moment in the history of the United Nations,” Annan told the Assembly Wednesday. The resolution “affirms that the General Assembly and the secretary-general are working in partnership to bring about the ‘quiet revolution’ that I announced on Jul. 16.”

As part of that revolution, the Assembly endorsement allows the U.N. chief to assembly a Cabinet-style ‘Senior Management Group’ which brings together all the top advisers and planners in the U.N. system.

It also allows Annan to proceed with plans to form a Strategic Planning Unit to analyse global trends, and a U.N. Development Group dealing with both global and country-level economic concerns; to resume the work of a disarmament office, which had been phased out under Annan’s predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali; and to place U.N. agency work in each country under a U.N. resident coordinator.

All of the plans which the Assembly endorsed Wednesday, however, always were under the secretary-general’s authority to implement. More prickly issues, ranging from a new post for a deputy secretary-general to the actual status and work of the disarmament office, remain unresolved and may not face a vote for several more weeks, U.N. officials said.

This endorsement actually arrived later than planned, one senior U.N. official noted: It had been intended at first as a “mother resolution” designed to set the stage in October for subsequent Assembly consideration of the reform package. Instead, the 185 U.N. member states immediately launched into what the official called “a quite serious philosophical discussion” of Annan’s proposals — delaying the initial endorsement, but, he argued, making it more authoritative.

The next phase of reviewing and approving the U.N. reforms is therefore “likely to be much more rapid than anticipated,” another senior official here said. Annan has pushed for all of his varied reform measures to be accepted as a single package before the Assembly ends its current session in late December.

Many diplomats here agree that the initial approval could help provide momentum for resolving all the more controversial debates about reform and budgetary questions quickly in the coming weeks. “This resolution sends a powerful message to the world,” Canadian Ambassador Robert Fowler said. “It says that U.N. member states fully support the evolutionary reform process of the secretary-general.”

Now, he argued, all countries should “bend every effort to nurture and maintain a constructive approach to the reform challenge.” Whether they will do so is an open question.

The debate that dragged on over the past few weeks prodded U.N. officials to flesh out many of the July reform proposals, and snared the package in several heated debates – particularly one over the purpose of the disarmament office. Annan backed down on one of the key concerns which many developing nations had with the office: its initial description as the Department for Disarmament Affairs and Arms Regulation.

The United Nations quickly responded to objections about what the world body would do to regulate small arms traffic and decided, as Annan noted, “in accordance with the earlier recommendation of the General Assembly, to name the new office the Department of Disarmament Affairs.”

More is at stake than simply a change of name. The Wednesday resolution also pointedly noted that Annan’s proposals will be carried out “with full respect for the relevant mandates,” including that of the Medium-Term Plan for 1998-2001. That plan places most of the U.N. work on disarmament during the next four years under the authority of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva — an arrangement which now will presumably still hold despite the creation of the new disarmament office.

“Any strengthening, if needed, should take place in Geneva, where the centre of gravity on disarmament lies in the Conference on Disarmament, which is the sole multilateral negotiating forum on disarmament that we have,” argued Ambassador Ahmad Kamal of Pakistan.

Kamal added, “We note with satisfaction that the reference to ‘arms regulation’ has been dropped,” and that the financing and status of the office — which Annan intends to be headed by an under-secretary-general — will be established through the regular process of U.N. budgetary and Assembly review.

As the rest of the package comes up for approval, a similar process of give-and-take among nations is expected. “I doubt that the whole package will be approved,” one senior official contended, noting that many North-South disputes may still crop up when the rest of the package, including complex steps to revamp U.N. budgeting and free up money for development work, come to the fore.

The success so far of Annan’s reform package, the official added, also has no connection with two other simultaneous reform projects: efforts to expand the 15-nation U.N. Security Council and to review the assessment of dues that member states currently must pay. The official added that the United Nations was pleased that the issues were not linked, because “it would have been a setback…because of all the trade-offs that would have occurred.”

The United States is especially keen on reviewing assessments, since it currently is expected to pay one quarter of all regular U.N. costs and wants to contribute no more than 20 percent of the annual budget. But many nations have resisted that move, angry that Washington still owes the world body roughly 1.5 billion dollars – with plans for repayment stalled in the U.S. Congress.

Reports from Washington late Wednesday, suggested that the administration has agreed to drop more than 900 million dollars that it had hoped to pay the United Nations over the next three years in last-minute bargaining with Congress on 1998 foreign aid spending.

Security Council reform has also lagged badly in recent days, with several nations urging that the controversial topic be shelved until next year.