POLITICS: World Leaders to Adopt a Watered-Down UN Declaration

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 6 2000 (IPS) - Over 150 world leaders, scheduled to take part in a summit meeting at the United Nations this week, are expected to adopt a wide-ranging political declaration committing themselves to resolving some of the world’s political, economic and environmental problems.

But the declaration itself has been watered-down because of objections from several countries, including the United States, France, China, Russia and India, mostly against provisions relating to nuclear dangers.

A nine-page draft declaration, which is to be adopted Friday, covers several politically-sensitive issues, including human rights, national sovereignty, global poverty, debt, pollution, humanitarian emergencies and the reform of the United Nations.

The Millennium Declaration, which was finalised Monday after 19 rounds of informal consultations among the 188 member states, is to be transmitted to the Millennium Summit in New York Sep. 6-8.

The declaration has been diluted from the original version because of strong reservations by a handful of countries. Even though the declaration was adopted Monday, several countries sustained their objections.

Asked if these reservations will spill over into the summit, the President of the General Assembly Theo-Ben Gurirab of Namibia told reporters Tuesday that he was confident that world leaders will adopt the declaration without reservations.

In the original draft declaration, heads of state and heads of government were urged to “sign and ratify the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court (ICC).”

But due to objections from the United States, which has refused to sign the ICC Statute, the final declaration only calls on states to “consider” signing and ratifying the Statute.

The United States also expressed reservations over a proposal to “cancel all official bilateral debts” of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) “in return for their making demonstrable commitments to poverty reduction.” But that proposal survived the chopping block.

According to the final declaration, world leaders will also resolve to halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world’s people whose income is less than one dollar a day.

Meanwhile, amid strong opposition from the US and Western European states, the developing nations have insisted that world leaders re- dedicate themselves to uphold and respect the “territorial integrity and political independence of sovereign states”, and more importantly, avoid any form of interference in the “internal affairs of states”.

Western nations have argued that the UN Security Council should have the right to intervene in the internal affairs of a country – on humanitarian grounds. But that intervention may now be challenged by the provisions in the Millennium Declaration. Although the document has no legal status, it still has the moral force of having been adopted by a summit of world leaders.

The United States also objected to a provision that calls on member states to ensure the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, preferably by the year 2002. The protocol ensures the required reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases.

India, a newly-ordained nuclear power, objected to a provision on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference which called on all states to sign the NPT. India, which has refused to be a party to the NPT, insisted that the provision be deleted from the final declaration.

Perhaps the strongest opposition was to a proposal relating to nuclear dangers. The original draft asked world leaders “to convene a major international conference to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers.”

But the final declaration asks them to “strive for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, and to keep all options open for achieving this aim, including the possibility of convening an international conference to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers.”

The world’s five major nuclear powers – who are also the five veto- wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council – strongly objected to any attempts at highlighting the dangers of nuclear weapons.

All five countries, namely the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, have said that holding a conference on nuclear dangers is not one of the priorities for the 21st century. All five have also opposed proposals for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

The proposal for a conference on nuclear dangers was originally made by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his Millennium Report to the General Assembly last March.

In projecting a global vision for the 21st century, Annan warned that some 35,000 nuclear weapons still remain in the arsenals of nuclear powers, “with thousands still deployed on hair-trigger alert.”

“Whatever rationale these weapons may once have had has long since dwindled,” he said, adding that “political, moral and legal constraints on actually using them undermine their strategic utility without, however, reducing the risks of inadvertent war or proliferation.”

The objective of nuclear non-proliferation, he argued, is not helped by the fact that the nuclear weapon states continue to insist that those weapons in their hands enhance security, while in the hands of others they are a threat to world peace.

“To help focus attention on the risks we confront and on the opportunities we have to reduce them, I propose that consideration be given to convening a major international conference that would help to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers,” he added.