POLITICS-UN: Sharp Divisions in Security Council

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 23 1999 (IPS) - The five veto-holding permanent members of the UN Security Council have had their differences in the past but this week’s meetings in New York underscored lingering divisions on a wide range of issues.

From debates about humanitarian intervention and the Kosovo conflict to lingering disagreements about how to deal with Iraq, officials from the five nations – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – have shown frequent disagreement.

One sign of the effect of the rifts between the council’s most powerful members was the cancellation of a planned meeting of the foreign ministers of the five nations, which had been scheduled Friday.

The meeting had intended to address Council divisions on Iraq but UN sources said that delegations, which had met earlier in Paris to discuss Iraq policy, had not made sufficient headway for any productive meeting to occur here.

France, Russia and China continued to back a quick end to nine- year-old UN embargo against Iraq, while the United States and Britain favoured lifting sanctions only on Iraqi exports – conditional on Baghdad’s acceptance of renewed weapons monitoring.

The rift over Iraq has prevented the Council from taking any action concerning sanctions or weapons monitoring since December, when a report from UN weapons monitors that criticised Baghdad’s cooperation prompted four days of US and British air attacks.

Since then, US and British forces have regularly struck Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries, prompting criticism from Russia and France. The UN Special Commission meant to monitor Iraq’s weapons has been kept out of the country since the attacks began, and virtually is defunct.

Despite the apparent deadlock, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met a delegation of Iraqi opposition leaders here, including Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, to assure them of US support.

Riyadh al-Yawer, spokesman for the INC, then urged the Security Council to lift the caps on Iraq’s oil exports, but only “as long as the increased funds continue to flow through the UN escrow account” set up to monitor Iraqi oil sales and humanitarian purchases under an “oil-for-food” agreement.

“We will vigorously oppose one more penny being put in the hands of Saddam Hussein,” al-Yawer argued.

For now, with little movement on that issue, there was little to oppose.

Between the December attack on Iraq and the 11-week North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombardment of Yugoslavia this spring, the main Council members have shown a growing disharmony that has rendered the Council ineffective.

Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan showed Wednesday how much bitterness still lingered over such episodes when he said the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia had created “an ominous precedent in international relations.”

The NATO attacks, which never won approval in the Security Council – where China and Russia stood ready to veto any authorisation – violated the UN Charter, Tang argued.

“It has eroded the leading role of the United Nations in safeguarding world peace and security and gravely undermined the authority of the UN Security Council,” Tang warned.

Similarly, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov urged the General Assembly to strengthen the authority of the 15-nation Security Council after it had been “seriously and painfully tested by the Balkan and Iraqi crises.”

Tang also told the 188-nation General Assembly that NATO’s bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was “an incident rarely seen in diplomatic history,” and went on to assail the concept of “humanitarian intervention” proposed by supporters of the Kosovo intervention.

“The issue of human rights is, in essence, an internal affair of a country and should be addressed mainly by the government of that country through its own efforts,” Tang said, dismissing what he called the “vogue” for humanitarian intervention.

By contrast, French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin argued that state-sponsored violence against civilians was unacceptable. “We must uphold the principle of international intervention, under UN auspices, to assist the victims,” he added.

Robin Cook, the British foreign minister, said that Britain would provide police officers for UN operations that would be “ready for deployment at short notice” during crises.

Yet Cook added that there must be some consensus to act when atrocities are committed.

“We can all agree that the first responsibility for reconciling internal conflict rests with the state in which that conflict arises,” he said.

“But we also have a shared responsibility to act when confronted with genocide, mass displacement of people or major breaches of international humanitarian law.”

For many diplomats, the Council responded well – if slowly – when pro-Indonesia forces massacred supporters of East Timor’s independence in recent weeks. Despite initial reservations, the United States and China, both Indonesian allies, swung around to support the deployment of an Australian-led force, which landed in East Timor this week.

Lamberto Dini, Italy’s foreign minister, said Wednesday that the East Timor and Kosovo interventions at least had followed a set of clear criteria, including repeated calls for a state to halt illegal actions and “serious, massive and systematic violations of human rights.”