POLITICS-UN: Unresolved Disputes Clog General Assembly

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 9 1998 (IPS) - The 53rd session of the U.N. General Assembly opens Wednesday and most of the major items on the agenda – from reforming the UN Security Council to debating the Middle East peace process – are all too familiar to diplomats.

This is no surprise. The 1997 Assembly wrapped up its work with dozens of key disputes unresolved as its president, Hennadiy Udovenko of Ukraine, admitted Tuesday.

Udovenko argued that the 52nd General Assembly – which UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had dubbed “the Reform Assembly” after promising to streamline the United Nations – had delayed implementing major reforms. Instead, he said, the Assembly after nine months of debate had only agreed to refer many of Annan’s reform plans to the new Assembly session.

“Any substantial progress toward meaningful decisions was thwarted by mistrust and suspicion that continued to exist among the member states, as well as by our inability to move beyond narrow positions of delegations and groupings to reach a common goal,” Udovenko said. “This has been one of my biggest disappointments.”

The Assembly over its past session succeeded in approving many of Annan’s reforms, including his decision to create the post of Deputy Secretary-General – now held by Canadian diplomat Louise Frechette – who would supervise economic and social affairs. It also agreed to create a new disarmament office and to streamline existing U.N. Secretariat functions.

The continued resfusal of the United States to repay more than 1.5 billion dollars of past U.N. dues, however, soured the atmosphere and complicated efforts to secure approval of the 185 U.N. member states for many reforms which were believed to have Washington’s support. Ambitious plans for a U.N. revolving credit fund, for “sunset clauses” ending some U.N. operations and for “results-based” budgeting foundered as delegates from Europe and the developing world alike doubted Washington would pay up.

Similarly, the new session – which will open Wednesday by approving Uruguayan Foreign Minister Didier Opertti Badan as the next Assembly president – will also have to take on Security Council reform after political suspicions halted any progress during the past year.

Even before India conducted nuclear test explosions in May, a concentrated bloc of opponents – including India’s nemesis Pakistan, as well as Italy, Egypt and Mexico – blocked plans to expand the currently 15-nation Council by adding five new permanent members. The Council currently has five veto-holding permanent members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – and 10 other members who have rotating two-year terms.

The Indian tests, some diplomats believed, all but ended hopes for Council reform this year, either. India – as the world’s largest democracy and most populous nation not currently holding a Council permanent seat – was perhaps the strongest developing contender for a permanent slot, but diplomats said it was hard to imagine that the United States or China would reward New Delhi after its nuclear tests.

Meanwhile, the number of seats comprising the new Council remained disputed, with Washington wanting only about 21 while many nations still are pushing for 25 seats. “Given the fundamental nature of these differences, reform of the Security Council is probably one of the most difficult issues faced by the United Nations in its history,” Udovenko said. “Obviously its resolution requires much more than negotiating skills or, for that matter, magician’s sleight-of-hand.”

Other unfinished task remain on the Assembly’s agenda. The almost complete lack of trust between the Palestinian Authority and the right-wing Israeli government has prodded the Palestinians to push their concerns to the Assembly repeatedly.

Most recently, the Assembly overwhelmingly approved a special status – just short of full, voting U.N. membership – for the Palestinians in a move which angered Israel and the United States. Palestinian diplomat Marwan Jilani warned that a new push by Binyamin Netanyahu’s government to allow Jewish settlements in largely Arab East Jerusalem would bring the dispute back to the Assembly.

Other disputes threatened to make life difficult for the Assembly’s credentials committee. Cambodia has offered two competing U.N. delegations – one representing the Cambodia People’s Party (CPP) of strongman Hun Sen, the other the royalist FUNCINPEC coalition of Prince Norodom Ranarridh – for a year now, and Hun Sen’s declaration of victory in a disputed July election have raised CPP hopes of winning the official seat.

This week, Annan urged Cambodia’s competing sides for restraint following an apparent grenade attack on Hun Sen’s home over the weekend, which was followed by the Hun Sen regime’s crackdown on the opposition. The deepening mistrust in Phnom Penh is likely to make the UN ambassadorial dispute between the CPP’s Ouch Borith and FUNCINPEC’s Prince Sisowath Sirirath even more bitter.

Nor is that the only case of competing credentials. Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, who control some 90 percent of the country, are pressing their claim to the U.N. seat now held by representatives of the ousted government of Berhanuddin Rabbani. Yet Taliban sources told IPS they have few hopes of winning recognition in the current atmosphere – particularly given U.S. distrust of the Taliban’s “guest”, Saudi financier and vocal U.S. opponent Osama bin Laden.

Whatever disputes may loom, however, the General Assembly will encounter at least one festive moment this session, as it celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The star-studded list of world leaders arriving for the Assembly plenary at the end of September – among them South African President Nelson Mandela, Iranian President Mohammed Khatami and Colombian President Andres Pastrana – can be expected to talk at length about the world body’s human rights commitments.

Whether U.S. President Bill Clinton, battling against impeachment by Congress through lying about an “inappropriate” sexual affair, remains an open question.

POLITICS-UN: Unresolved Disputes Clog General Assembly

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 8 1998 (IPS) - The 53rd session of the U.N. General Assembly opens Wednesday and most of the major items on the agenda – from reforming the UN Security Council to debating the Middle East peace process – are all too familiar to diplomats.
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