By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 2006 (IPS)

The United Nations took a severe political beating during the opening week of the 61st session of the General Assembly as several world leaders chastised the organisation – specifically its 15-member Security Council – for its failure to assert its authority in some of the world’s battle zones.

“It is sad that the Security Council dithered and failed to take timely action to stop the massacres and wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure in Lebanon – all because of the misguided national interests of one superpower,” complained Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

He said the status quo in the Security Council, where a few powerful countries hold the world to ransom, “is no longer tenable”.

The well-aimed attacks on the world body also came from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Sudan’s Omar Hassan Al-Bashir.

The softer blows came from South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki and Italy’s Romano Prodi – all of them heads of state who challenged either the credibility of the world body or called for a radical restructuring of the Security Council currently dominated by the five veto-wielding permanent members: the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.

Chavez was blunt: “The U.N. system born after the Second World War has collapsed. It is worthless,” he said.

He described the killings in Iraq as “genocide” and held the United States and Britain, two members of the Security Council, responsible for the ongoing tragedy in that country.

In his speech, Iranian President Ahmadinejad asked: “If the governments of the United States or the United Kingdom, who are permanent members of the Security Council, commit aggression, occupation and violation of international law, which of the organs of the United Nations can take them to account?”

“And can a Council in which they are privileged members address their violations? Has this ever happened before?”

The Iranian president also said the Security Council is being used only to ensure the security and rights of some of the big powers.

“But when the oppressed are decimated under bombardment, the Security Council must remain aloof and not even call for a ceasefire?”

He was specifically referring to the refusal of the Security Council for an early intervention in the month-long devastation of Lebanon by Israeli military forces recently.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, whose government is facing genocide charges in Darfur, openly defied the Security Council by saying he will not permit a proposed 20,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force to enter his country – and rejecting it “categorically and totally”.

He wanted the current 7,000-strong African Union (AU) military force to continue maintaining peace in the politically-troubled Darfur. Any attempts to send other forces into Sudan, he argued, would be an attempt to re-colonise his country.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi called on the international community to restore the central role of the 192-member General Assembly “as the main decision-making, representative, and policy-making body of the United Nations.”

He also called for renewed efforts to reform the Security Council: a process that has lingered on for more than two decades, with no conclusive results.

South African President Thabo Mbeki complained that the United Nations had been unable to fulfill some of the objectives of its founders because the world body did not reflect the expansion of the global family. “The organisation needed, urgently, to be reformed.”

Even Annan was constrained to admit that “the world has changed dramatically since 1945 (when the United Nations was created), and the Security Council must change too.”

“Without an expansion of its power base, it’s hard to see how we are going to go on meeting the demands that member states make on us, particularly in the area of peacekeeping,” he added.

Asked for non-U.N. perspective, Mouin Rabbani, contributing editor to the Washington based Middle East Report, told IPS: “I think it is increasingly clear that the U.N. Security Council’s (UNSC) crisis of credibility is developing into a crisis of legitimacy.”

This is the result of a number of factors, he pointed out, the most important of which are the UNSC’s failure in a number of cases, most prominently the recent Lebanon war, to fulfill its responsibility of maintaining international peace and security.

Additionally, the Security Council has continued to be castigated for several other reasons, including its failure to implement resolutions which it has adopted of its own free will; the selective pursuit of implementation of UNSC resolutions; the increasing domination – particularly since the end of the Cold War – of the UNSC and thus more broadly of the U.N. system, by a single member, the United States, and its closest allies.

Rabbani said the Council has also been criticised for the manner in which such members additionally treat both the United Nations and UNSC as non-entities when it suits their interests – e.g. Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 war.

“The problem here is that there have been a number of proposals for UNSC reform, some commissioned by the United Nations itself by committees of respected statesmen and experts, that have ultimately come to nothing due to resistance by UNSC members,” he said.

The result is that member states are increasingly speaking out in more forceful terms on this issue – and while many may not resort to the outspoken formulations voiced by the Iranian and Venezuelan leaders, support for the substance of their indictment seems to be increasingly widespread.

“Given that the United Nations is the only genuinely global institution, and that it is increasingly dominated by the UNSC, I think the crisis of legitimacy of the Council should be considered an extremely serious matter.”

However, its failure to act on Lebanon – to date the Security Council has yet to adopt a ceasefire resolution on this conflict – was approaching the proportions of an Abyssinia moment, he said.

“My own view is that if the UNSC intends to restore its credibility (and if not a mechanism should be found by the General Assembly to do so) it will have to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a credible and purposeful manner, specifically by addressing the issue of Israel’s impunity for which UNSC bears a good measure of responsibility and addressing the issues of end of occupation, peace and security head on.”

Secondly, Rabbani said, it cannot but revisit the issue of its composition and powers.

Excerpt: