By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 14 1998 (IPS)

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, reviewing the U.N.’s successes and failures, says he is seriously concerned at the lack of progress in resolving several ongoing conflicts in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The world “mercifully” has been free from large-scale regional conflicts over the past 12 months, but many local wars have continued, while new ones have broken out, he says. These include a war over territory between the neighbouring states of Ethiopia and Eritrea.

“While there have been some important successes for the international community, including the restoration of the democractically-elected government in Sierra Leone, peace in many parts of the world remains precarious,” Annan says in his annual report to the 185-member U.N. General Assembly.

The 32-page report, will go before the 53rd session of the General Assembly beginning Sep. 21. In it Annan warns that peace processes in several regions, including some in which the United Nations has devoted extensive resources over a long period, “show a distressing tendency to unravel.’

Annan says he is particularly concerned with the stalled peace process in the Middle East, the turmoil in Afghanistan, the escalation of violence in Kosovo, the civil war in Sudan, the continuing instability and violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the return to civil war in Angola.

The U.N.’s peace efforts in Angola were dealt a severe blow, when Annan’s Special Representative, Alioune Blondin Beye, was killed in a plane crash in June.

“The rising tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and other issues, is also a major cause of concern, as is the stalemated peace process in Cyprus,” he says.

While U.N. peace missions have achieved notable successes, he notes there are some conflicts “where hostility is so intense and distrust so pervasive that no amount of skilful diplomacy will achieve a breakthrough.”

Singling out Afghanistan as one of the world’s most intricate conflicts, Annan says the Afghan crisis has defied a solution despite several meetings in New York by a group of eight concerned countries, and the best efforts of the U.N.’s Special Representative to Afghanistan.

“The warring Afghan parties have continued to pursue the military option at great humanitarian cost,” Annan says. “They have also refused to participate in any meaningful dialogue. In this, they have been regrettably aided and encouraged by outside powers.”

But the Organisation’s “most sensitive and difficult diplomatic initiatives” last year have been in Africa’s trouble spots: the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, including Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Annan argues that the role of diplomacy is so central to virtually all U.N. activities that is specific contribution is sometimes overlooked. “This is especially true of successful preventive diplomacy,” he says.

Annan complains that the light of publicity is often turned on only when a conflict has become entrenched. “But that in itself makes compromise more difficult, since leaders fear that concessions made in public will be interpreted as weakness by opponents, or as betrayal by supporters.”

But he adds that “one does not always have the choice, however.” Annan recounts his journey to Baghdad in February where he convinced Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to permit U.N. arms inspectors into his presidential palaces.

Since the causes of most conflicts are usually regional or local, Annan believes that regional organisations are particularly well suited to play an important role in early warning and preventive diplomacy.

Therefore in the spirit of the U.N. charter, he says he wants to create a real partnership, with a more rational and cost- effective division of labour, between those organisations and the United Nations.

Early this year, in pursuit of this objective, the United Nations established a liaison office at the headquarters of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Ethiopia.

The United Nations is also consolidating links with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. According to Annan, the collaboration of the United Nations with regional and subregional organisations also illustrates the close relationship between peace-building, development and disarmament.

While the categories of prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping and post-conflict peace-building remain useful, he says, it is now widely recognised that most operations combine activities in more than one category.

In Cyprus and Georgia, the United Nations is actively involved in both peacekeeping and peacemaking. And in Sierra Leone and Tajikistan, planning for peace-building started during peacekeeping operations.

These varied combinations, he said, “reflect an understanding of the complexities of particular situations and the need to coordinate a diverse range of security-enhancing activities.”

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