Samantha Power, outgoing Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the UN, addressing the council after a controversial vote on Israeli Settlements in December 2016. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias.

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 18 2017 (IPS)

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, nominated to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the UN, outlined her vision of a strong U.S. role in the human rights institution at a confirmation hearing today.

Noting her potential role as a “fresh set of eyes” and an “outsider,” Haley highlighted the need for a strong U.S. leadership position at the UN.

“When America fails to lead, the world becomes a dangerous place. And when the world becomes more dangerous, the American people become more vulnerable,” she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, adding that she will bring back the U.S.’ “indispensable voice of freedom.”

When asked about Russia, Haley expressed caution in trusting them but suggested that their government could be an asset.

“Russia is trying to show their muscle right now…and we have to continue to be very strong back. We need to let them know that we are not okay with what happened in Ukraine and Crimea and what is happening in Syria, but we are also going to tell them that we do need their help with ISIS,” she said.

In her last major speech, current U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power similarly noted U.S. interest in solving problems and cooperating with Russia, but expressed dire concerns over Russia’s “aggressive and destabilizing actions” in Crimea, Syria and its interferences in numerous governments.

“Russia’s actions are not standing up a new world order. They are tearing down the one that exists. This is what we are fighting against—having defeated the forces of fascism and communism, we now confront the forces of authoritarianism and nihilism,” she said.

During her hearing, Haley acknowledged that Russia violated the international order when it invaded Crimea and its actions in Syria constitute war crimes, and that she supports preserving sanctions against the government. She also noted the need to stand up to any and all countries that attempts to interfere with the U.S.

This represents what could be perceived as a break with President-elect Trump who has previously denied intelligence pointing to Russian involvement in the recent U.S. elections.

In recent comments, President-elect Trump also suggested easing sanctions against Russia in return for a deal to reduce nuclear weapons. He additionally criticised the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), calling it “obsolete.”

When asked about these comments, Haley again differentiated her position from Trump’s:

“It is important that we have alliances…I think as we continue to talk to him about these alliances and how they can be helpful and strategic, I do anticipate he will listen to all of us and hopefully we can get him to see it the way we see it,” she said.

“I’m going to control the part that I can,” she continued.

Haley also blasted the UN for what she described as its “biased” position on Israel during the hearing, stating: “Nowhere has the UN’s failure been more consistent and more outrageous than its bias against our close ally Israel.”

Like President-elect Trump, Haley particularly criticised the recent passage of a Security Council resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements, calling it a “terrible mistake” that makes a peace agreement even harder to achieve.

During the vote in December, the U.S. broke with long-standing foreign policy towards Israel by abstaining, rather than vetoing. The other 14 members of the 15 member council all voted for the resolution.

Haley vowed to never abstain when the UN takes action that comes in direct conflict with U.S. interests, including actions against Israel.

She highlighted the need for UN reforms, stating that the goal is to “create an international body that better serves the American people.” To bring about changes, Haley suggested using U.S. funding as leverage.

“We are a generous nation but we must ask ourselves what good is being accomplished by this disproportionate contribution. Are we getting what we paid for?” she asked. She pointed to the Human Rights Council as an example, questioning their role in supporting and promoting human rights while countries such as Cuba and China are members.

The U.S. currently contributes 22 percent of the UN’s budget.

Recent legislation proposed by two U.S. Republican Senators would see the United States withdraw its funding not only to the UN Secretariat but also to the entire UN-system, including UNICEF, the UN Development Program and UN Women.

Though initially stating that she would not “shy away” from withdrawing U.S. funds to achieve reforms, Haley later backtracked and said that she does not support a “slash and burn” approach in terms of pulling funding from the UN when there are undesirable outcomes, but rather use funds as leverage to help make agencies more effective.

Haley is a South Carolina-born daughter of Indian immigrants and is the first female and first minority governor of her state. She gained national attention after calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from the state’s Capitol. Haley will replace Ambassador Power as the only woman on the 15-member council.

The “big five” – i.e., the most military powerful states on earth (US, UK, France, Russia and China) have just agreed that it would be about time to end the Syrian five-year long human tragedy.

Baher Kamal

Before reaching such a conclusion, they waited until 300,000 innocent civilians were killed; tons of bullets shot; 4.5 million humans lost as refugees or homeless at home; hundreds of field testing of state-of-the-art drones made, and daily US, British, French and Russian bombing carried out.

So, with these statistics in hand, they on 18 December 2015 adopted United Nations Resolution 2254 (2015) endorsing a “road map” for peace process in Syria, and even setting a timetable for UN-facilitated talks between the Bashar al Assad regime and “opposition” groups.

They also set the outlines of a “nationwide ceasefire to begin as soon as the parties concerned had taken initial steps towards a political transition.”

“The Syrian people will decide the future of Syria,” the Resolution states.

The UN Security Council also requested that the UN Secretary-General convenes representatives of the Syrian Government and opposition to engage in formal negotiations on a political transition process “on an urgent basis”, with a target of early January for the initiation of talks.

“Free and Fair Elections”

The “big five” then expressed support for a Syrian-led political process facilitated by the United Nations which would establish “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance” within six months and set a schedule and process for the drafting of a new constitution.

Furthermore, the Security Council expressed support for “free and fair elections, pursuant to the new constitution, to be held within 18 months and administered under United Nations supervision,” to the “highest international standards” of transparency and accountability, with all Syrians — including members of the diaspora – eligible to participate.

And they requested that the UN Secretary-General report back on “options” for a ceasefire monitoring, verification and reporting mechanism that it could support within one month. They of course also demanded that “all parties immediately cease attacks against civilians.”

The road-map says that within six months, the process should establish a “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance,” with UN-supervised “free and fair elections” to be held within 18 months.

The whole thing moved so rapidly that the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan di Mestura, has already set the 25 January 2016 as the target date to begin talks between the parties.

All That Is Fine, But…

… But the resolution gives no specific answer to a number of key questions:

To start with, the Syrian National Coalition (SCN) has dismissed the whole idea as “unrealistic,” Deutsch Welle reported. The Coalition objects to a fact that the Security Council’s Resolution carefully “omits”: what future President Assad has.

According to Deutsch Welle, the SNC expressed annoyance that the UN language talked of ISIS terrorism but not of the “terrorism” of the Assad government. Russia has called for the transition to leave the question of governance up to the Syrians, while France and at times the US have demanded Assad’s immediate ousting as a condition of the deal.

If so, which “opposition” should sit to talk with the Syrian regime? While the US, UK and France support what they decided to consider as “rebel” or “opposition” groups, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia would have different criteria.

In this regard, it was decided to work out a mechanism for establishing which rebel groups in Syria will be eligible to take part in the peace process. For this purpose, Jordan, which was tasked with listing terrorist organisations in Syria, has reportedly presented a document that includes up to 160 extremist groups.

Even though, would President Bashar al-Assad be able to run for office in new elections?

How will the UN monitor the requested ceasefires, and control so many different sides involved in the armed fighting, including the US, UK, France and Russia? And what if the ceasefires do not work? More Syrian civilians to die, flee, migrate? How to control DAESH and so many diverse terrorist groups operating there? What to do with those millions of Syrian refugees, scattered in the region, mainly in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, while hundreds of thousands of them are being “trafficked” by organised crime bands, reportedly including DAESH itself?

And last but not least, which Syria will exist at the end of the 18 months which has been fixed as a target to hold free, fair elections?

Will it be the current Syria or a new, refurbished one after cutting part of it to establish a brand new “Sunni-stan” that US neo-con, neo-liberal, Republican “hawk” and former George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has recently recommended to create on the territories to be “liberated” from DAESH in Syria and Iraq?

Too many key questions without and clear answers. And too may gaps for this road-map to gain credibility. Unless the idea is to implement a Libyan-style solution, that’s for another Western-led military coalition, under NATO’s umbrella, to attack Syria, let Assad be murdered, and leave the people to their own fate. Exactly what happened in Libya in 2011.

(End)

A man stands amid the rubble of a house following an airstrike in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Apr. 15, 2013. Credit: Freedom House/CC-BY-2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 25 2015 (IPS)

The staggering statistics emerging from the ongoing five-year-old military conflict in Syria – including over 220,000 killed, more than one million injured and about 7.6 million displaced – are prompting calls for a United Nations arms embargo on the beleaguered regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

“Providing weapons to Syria while its forces are committing crimes against humanity may translate into assisting in the commission of those crimes, raising the possibility of potential criminal liability for arms suppliers." -- Peggy Hicks, global advocacy director at Human Rights Watch
But any proposed military sanctions will continue to hit a major roadblock because of opposition by Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC), and the largest single arms supplier dating back to a 25-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation signed by Syria with the then Soviet Union in October 1970.

Syria’s military arsenal includes over 200 Russian-made MiG-21 and MiG-29 fighter planes, dozens of Mil Mi-24 attack helicopters and SA-14 surface-to-air missiles, and scores of T-72 battle tanks, along with a wide range of rocket launchers, anti-aircraft guns, mortars and howitzers.

But most of these are ageing weapons systems, purchased largely in the 1970s and 1980s costing billions of dollars, badly in need of refurbishing or replacements.

As in all military agreements, the contracts with Russia include maintenance, servicing, repairs and training.

According to the latest report by Forecast International, a defence market research firm in the United States, Syria once hosted about 3,000 to 4,000 military advisers, mostly stationed in Damascus.

The Russians also forgave about 9.8 billion dollars in military debts (incurred during the Soviet era) paving the way for new arms agreements back in January 2005 – and ensuring Syria’s military survival against a rash of anti-Assad militant groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Peggy Hicks, global advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, told IPS Russia’s resistance to an arms embargo is a given, but Syria’s flaunting of the laws-of-war and of Security Council resolutions require a real response, not just more rhetoric.

“Providing weapons to Syria while its forces are committing crimes against humanity may translate into assisting in the commission of those crimes, raising the possibility of potential criminal liability for arms suppliers,” she said, adding: “Would such a step make a difference?”

Hicks pointed out that arms embargoes are not a perfect solution, but are a simple measure that doesn’t cost much to implement, and it would make it harder for the government to acquire new arms it could use to attack civilians.

“Action by the Security Council to impose an arms embargo would also send a strong message to Syria that its indiscriminate attacks on civilians must end. So why not impose one?” she asked.

Addressing the Security Council last November, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman pointed out the effectiveness of U.N.-imposed sanctions – from Afghanistan and Angola to Haiti and the former Yugoslavia.

“We know it is not perfect, but there is also no doubt that it works,” he said.

Since the first U.N. sanctions were imposed on Southern Rhodesia in 1966, there have been 25 sanctions regimes – either in support of conflict resolution, countering terrorism or to prevent the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

Currently, there are 15 sanctions regime in place – the highest number in the history of the United Nations.

Since the Syrian crisis began in 2011, both Russia and China have jointly vetoed four resolutions aimed at penalizing the Assad regime, the last one being in May 2014.

China, which supports the Assad regime, is not an arms supplier to Syria.

In a statement released last month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for an arms embargo on Syria following repeated air attacks on market places and residential neighbourhoods, which killed at least 112 civilians.

“Bombing a market full of shoppers and vendors in broad daylight shows the Syrian government’s appalling disregard for civilians,” said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

“This latest carnage is another reminder – if any was still needed – of the urgent need for the Security Council to act on its previous resolutions and take steps to stop indiscriminate attacks.”

On Feb. 22, 2014, the Security Council adopted a resolution demanding that “all parties immediately cease all attacks against civilians, as well as the indiscriminate employment of weapons in populated areas, including shelling and aerial bombardment.”

In August, following attacks on civilians, the Security Council issued a presidential statement reiterating its demands that all parties cease attacks against civilians as well as any indiscriminate use of weapons in populated areas.

HRW said Security Council members, including Russia, which has shielded the Syrian government from sanctions and accountability, should take immediate steps to enforce that demand.

In addition to an arms embargo, the Security Council should apply the same level of scrutiny it has put in place for chemical attacks to all indiscriminate attacks by monitoring these attacks, attributing responsibility for them, and sanctioning those responsible.

The Security Council should also refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court, HRW said.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Advocates hope a historic U.N. Security Council meeting on LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) rights could bring greater equality. Credit: Bigstock

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 24 2015 (IPS)

The U.N. Security Council (UNSC), whose primary mandate is the maintenance of international peace and security, has occasionally digressed to discuss global issues such as climate change and HIV/AIDS.

But in a historic first, and at a closed-door meeting co-hosted by the United States and Chile, the UNSC took up the issue of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) rights – providing a platform for an Iraqi and a Syrian, both of whom escaped persecution by the radical Islamic State (IS) purely for their sexual orientation.

“In a world where there's homophobia and transphobia, the U.N. should lead by example." -- Hyung Hak Nam, President of UN-GLOBE, which represents lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) staff fighting for equality and non-discrimination in the U.N. system
The meeting took place Monday, under what is called the “Arria-formula”, named after Ambassador Diego Arria of Venezuela who initiated the practice back in 1992.

Described as “informal and confidential gatherings”, they enable Security Council members to have a frank and private exchange of views – but with no official commitments.

Critical of this restricted political dialogue, Boris Dittrich, advocacy director of the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS that Monday’s meeting was clearly “not an official U.N. Security Council meeting.”

Security Council members are not obliged to attend or participate in these meetings, he pointed out. “Having said that, I think it is interesting” this debate was held, Dittrich added.

He said testimony given by people who experienced the IS attacks on human rights will draw attention to the atrocities perpetrated by IS against gay men – or men who are perceived to be gay.

“The debate will not end in the adoption of a UNSC resolution. For LGBT people in Iraq and Syria the importance of the debate lies in changes on the ground,” he argued.

“Will the debate lead to less human rights abuses against LGBT people? Or will heightened attention at the U.N. level lead to more targeted killings by IS?” he asked.

“I don’t have the answer, but I will be interested to hear what the panelists have to say about that,” said Dittrich.

He said the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) should take care that its staff members on the ground in Turkey and other countries, where LGBT asylum seekers flee to, will be sensitized to address the issue of homosexuality in a speedy and serious manner.

Too often, he said, HRW hears stories of asylum seekers who flee persecution because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, that their issues are ignored.

“This is something the U.N. could actually do. It would be a great outcome of the debate,” he noted.

Asked about the UNSC digression into non-security issues, Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former U.N. Under-Secretary-General and High Representative, told IPS: “Well, I believe, maintenance of international peace and security depends on many interrelated things and issues.”

It is therefore “absolutely unrealistic, impractical and irresponsible” to categorize any issue as having no implications for maintenance of peace and security, he said.

“I recall in the past, the Security Council has considered HIV/AIDS, climate change and serious violations of human rights.

“I also remember the Council issuing an agreed statement on the floods in Mozambique because the torrential flood water washed away many landmines from their original positions which were mapped by U.N. for demining,” said Chowdhury, who presided over Security Council meetings when he was the Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations.

“Even when the core concept which ultimately became UNSC resolution 1325 was introduced to recognize women’s equality of participation at all decision-making levels during my Presidency of the Security Council in March 2000, I was criticized for overloading the Council agenda by introducing a ‘soft issue’ in the area of international peace and security and was pressurized not to push for a resolution on the issue, particularly by its permanent members,” Chowdhury said.

Of the 15 members in the UNSC, five are permanent (the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia) and 10 are non-permanent members elected for two-year terms on the basis of geographical rotation.

For the last 70 years, said Chowdhury, the Council has narrowly focused on state security and military strategies – not on human security, as the complexity of today’s global situation requires.

“This perspective has to change if the Council wants to be meaningfully effective in its decisions and actions,” he added.

Hyung Hak Nam, President of UN-GLOBE, which represents lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) staff fighting for equality and non-discrimination in the U.N. system and its peacekeeping operations, told IPS, “When I read reports of the horrible violence perpetrated by the Islamic State against LGBTI individuals, I think of the victims.”

“[But] I also think of the U.N. offices or missions in these countries, and whether or not they are prepared to handle such cases. And I think of LGBTI staff working in these countries and whether they feel safe and feel their U.N. offices would be able to protect them,” he said.

There’s a long way to go before the U.N. mainstreams LGBTI issues into the way it operates, including in its employment policies, he added.

“I do hope the U.N. will move towards becoming a showcase for others of what full equality and inclusion for all, including LGBTI staff, looks like.”

“In a world where there’s homophobia and transphobia, the U.N. should lead by example,” he declared.

Javier El-Hage, chief legal officer at the Human Rights Foundation, told IPS his Foundation applauds UNSC member states Chile and the United States for their initiative to hold an ‘Arria-formula meeting’ highlighting the plight of LGBT people in territories currently controlled by IS (also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS).

ISIS, a terrorist organization currently committing numerous crimes against humanity and perpetrating a genocide against the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq and Syria, has already been condemned by the council repeatedly, he pointed out.

So, Chile and the U.S. are now taking the opportunity to highlight ISIS’s barbaric crimes against a particular minority that is deliberately ignored or discriminated against by several authoritarian governments that sit on the U.N. Security Council, El-Hage said.

Many U.N. Security Council permanent and non-permanent member states are themselves notorious for either repressing LGBT people domestically or blocking LGBT rights advocacy internationally, he noted.

Putin’s Russia, for example, bans the discussion of LGBT rights in the public sphere as “gay propaganda,” while China usually teams up with dictatorships at the U.N. to exclude from the text of U.N. resolutions language that recognizes LGBT people as a minority especially vulnerable to, for example, extrajudicial executions.

Similarly discriminatory of LGBT people in their countries are non-permanent members Chad, Angola, Nigeria, and Malaysia, he added.

“Thanks to the symbolic move by the U.S. and Chile, today they are all being forced to sit through a meeting to address an issue that they would rather avoid,” he declared.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees has described the situation inside the Syrian refugee camp of Yarmouk, under attack by Islamic State (IS) militants, as “one of the most severe ever” for the already spartan camp.

Fighters allegedly from the IS, and al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra, began their attack on the camp, on the outskirts of Damascus, on Apr. 1. By Apr. 4, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 90 percent of the camp was controlled by militants.

Around 18,000 people, including 3,500 children, are believed to be trapped inside Yarmouk.

Pierre Krähenbühl, commissioner general for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), told a press briefing Monday the current situation was among the most dire faced by refugees in the camp, already under siege for two years and suffering from a lack of food, water and medical help.

“The current escalation has made the hour more desperate than ever for civilians inside Yarmouk,” Krähenbühl said via videoconference from Jordan.

“Concerted action by [U.N. Security Council] members and U.N. members to uphold humanitarian law is required.”

He said UNRWA had been unable to render assistance to those trapped inside due to access issues, but that the agency was “ready at any time to resume humanitarian assistance.”

On Sunday, UNRWA released a statement demanding access to the camp. “The lives of civilians in Yarmouk have never been more profoundly threatened,” the statement read.

“The level of our aid has been well below the minimum required. Potable water is now unavailable inside Yarmouk and the meagre health facilities that existed have been overrun by conflict.  The situation is extremely dire and threatens to deteriorate even further.”

Krähenbühl was unable to comment on how much of the camp may be under militant control, but conceded that affected areas did house the highest concentration of civilians.

Reports from Yarmouk include alleged beheadings by IS members, but Krähenbühl was again unable to comment, saying UNRWA had been “unable to independently verify” such reports.

Ongoing gun battles in the streets of Yarmouk further escalate an already bleak and miserable living situation for Palestinian refugees. Civilians are said to subsist on just 400 calories a day, with sparse access to food or water. Krähenbühl conceded UNRWA was only able to provide “meagre” assistance to Yarmouk residents, calling their living conditions “unbearable.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council have been briefed on the situation. While it is unclear what, if any, action the U.N. may take, Krähenbühl made several cryptic comments calling on the international community to “influence” armed groups to curtail their offensive.

“There are no easy solutions … messages have to be passed to all the parties and armed groups inside Yarmouk that respect for life is an element not only in international law, it is a fundamental human principle that is found in all religions,” he said.

“We call on states to act and influence parties on the ground … more concerted action could influence action on the ground.”

When asked whether UNRWA had any direct contact with IS, Krähenbühl said no.

“It is not up to me to give any indication on who may channel messages to different parties, including the armed groups inside Yarmouk,” he said.

By Emma Bonino
ROME, Feb 27 2015 (IPS)

When I am asked whether Europe is still a relevant “protagonist” in the modern world, I always answer that there is no doubt about it. For a long time now, the continent has been shaken by financial crises, internal security strategy crises – including wars – and instability within its borders, which definitely make it a protagonist in world affairs. 

If the question asked were about what the leading role of the European Union actually is, it is enough to take a look at a few days’ entries in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s diary.

Emma Bonino

On Thursday Feb. 5 she was in Moscow with French President François Hollande for negotiations on the Ukraine crisis with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the following day she met Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for talks in Kiev. At the weekend she was back in Munich, where she argued publicly for resistance against increasing pressure from the United States to arm the Ukrainian forces.

On Monday Feb. 9 Merkel was in Washington, where she obtained – at least temporarily – U.S. President Barack Obama’s agreement to her stand against providing arms to Ukraine, in order to maintain a favourable climate for the negotiations that were about to be held in Minsk.

Next she went to Minsk to participate in three exhausting days of talks including a 17-hour debate with the presidents of Russia and Ukraine, which led to a proposal of truce in Ukraine, presented on Thursday Feb. 12 to an informal meeting of E.U. heads of state in Brussels.

This brief overview, and the reports and images disseminated in the media, clearly show that Angela Merkel personifies the global role of Europe and puts other European heads of state and institutions in the shade.

Other protagonists on the international stage, like Obama and Putin, show a similar perception when they make important agreements with the German Chancellor.

In my federalist vision of Europe, it would be just perfect if Merkel were the president of the United States of Europe. Unfortunately, that is not the case.“I am convinced that Berlin is aware that Germany is called on to shoulder strategic responsibilities that go beyond its status as an economic superpower”

I do not want to dwell on the oversimplified dilemma that has been exercising think tanks for years: Are we moving towards a Europeanised Germany, or towards a Germanised Europe?

But I am convinced that Berlin is aware that Germany is called on to shoulder strategic responsibilities that go beyond its status as an economic superpower. This view is reinforced by the certainty that the proposal to reform the United Nations Security Council by granting Berlin a permanent seat is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

And if, at some date far in the future, such a reform of the Security Council is approved, the Council’s powers may by then have been reduced.

I believe this because in the last few months, while the events that are public knowledge were happening in Syria, in Iraq, with respect to the Islamic State, in Ukraine, in Sudan, Libya and Nigeria, the Security Council was conspicuous by its absence.

Furthermore, it is a disappointing surprise to witness the almost non-existent resilience of the institutions created by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, which reformed the European Union. At the time they were praised as a new departure in the framework of international law and as the consolidation of a united European foreign policy.

While we watched the serious conflict in Ukraine on our continent, many of us asked ourselves what the top E.U. authorities, who had been elected transnationally for the first time, were doing: E.U. President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council President Donald Tusk and High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini.

What credibility can possibly remain for structures that are systematically side-lined when conflicts become red-hot?

The problem does not lie in the persons who perform these functions. Such an analysis would be too superficial.

It is rather a question of ascertaining whether European institutions are sufficiently robust to resist what many call a return to the Westphalian system, that is, to the treaties of 1648 that demarcated a new order in Europe founded on the nation-state as the basis of international relations.

Outside Europe, this tendency has been developing for some time. The role of global power is increasingly taken over by “mega states”: the United States, Russia, China, India, and soon to include Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia.

The European Union has difficulty matching up to these as a valid counterpart.

I am afraid that this tendency may lead to the definitive crisis of the European federalist project. However, we federalists must resist the trend and reflect on the best way to face the situation.

Since 2008, the economic and political measures taken by EU member countries have aimed at “renationalising” their interests, with the exception of actions implemented by Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank.

Consequently, Europe has abandoned the pursuit of a common foreign policy and has reverted to inter-governmental practices that prioritise national interests.

The dilemma is clear: either the European Union is a global power and is recognised as such, or Europe will be represented by others in crucial debates.

In this context, what is emerging is that Germany is increasingly taking on a new role.

This process began with the bizarre designation in 2006 of a group of countries to negotiate with Iran, known as 3+3, or more commonly, outside Europe, as 5+1: the five permanent members of the Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France) plus Germany.

Since then Berlin has taken on a leading role, not only in the European context but also in many international affairs, often on behalf of the European Union.

To sum up: the European Union works jointly to the extent that this is possible. After that there is a level at which decisions – and responsibilities – are taken by those with the power to do so. That is the scheme practised in today’s Europe. It is time for other Europeans to sit up and take notice. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Translated by Valerie Dee/ Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service

Excerpt:

Independence Square in Kiev. In the aftermath of the revolution Ukraine now faces a difficult path to EU integration. Credit: Natalia Kravchuk/IPS.

By Somar Wijayadasa
NEW YORK, Sep 4 2014 (IPS)

The crisis in Ukraine is a man-made disaster created by world leaders who have been trying to pull Ukraine apart – either towards Europe or Russia.

As geo-political tensions in the world rage unabated, world powers rush to impose sanctions that cause unintended consequences.

A Washington Post editorial, ‘The Snake Oil Diplomacy: When Tensions Rise, The US Peddles Sanctions’, published as far back as July 1998, stated, “No country in the world has employed sanctions as often as the United States has… it has imposed economic sanctions more than 110 times.”

Historically, the League of Nations, United Nations, United States and the European Union have resorted to mandatory sanctions as an enforcement tool when peace has been threatened and diplomatic efforts have failed.

“No country in the world has employed sanctions as often as the United States has… it has imposed economic sanctions more than 110 times.” -- Washington Post
During the 1990s, we witnessed a proliferation of sanctions imposed by the U.N. and U.S. against Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Liberia, Somalia, Cambodia, Haiti – to name a few.

These sanctions brought disastrous consequences – where those in power thrived and the poor suffered.

A few countries such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea scoffed at U.S. sanctions as they had resources or the will power to survive. Sanctions against China and India failed to change the leadership or hinder the country’s economic drive and growth.

But in most countries, especially Cuba, Iraq and Haiti, sanctions deteriorated their economic, social and healthcare systems.

At times, sanctions were used as an ulterior motive for “regime change” which is a violation of the U.N. Charter and the basic norms of international law.

Such a devious practice has nothing to do with protecting human rights, and promoting democracy and freedom.

Now, the sanctions against Russia – over the crisis in Ukraine – have boomeranged.

By April, “Maidan” protests ousted Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovytch. U.S. missiles near Russia and NATO’s efforts to expand into former Warsaw Pact countries angered Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia was blocked out of the G8.

The U.S. and the EU imposed sanctions on Russia when Crimea joined Russia after the Crimeans held a referendum to declare independence based on the right of nations to self-determination that is stipulated in Article 1 of the U.N. Charter.

The right to “self-determination” was applied when former Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were divided, and when several small states like East Timor declared independence.

People in East Ukraine – 70 percent of who are ethnic Russians – felt violated when the Ukrainian Government decided to ban the Russian language from its official status.

They too invoked their right to self-determination and held a referendum to establish their own State.

The U.S. broadened sanctions when the Malaysian plane was downed in East Ukraine. No evidence surfaced from the black boxes, satellite images or OSCE inspectors’ revelations to prove culpability – unless it was a deliberate, pre-meditated act to blame a warring faction.

Also Western leaders claim that Russia provides weapons to the rebels in Ukraine. It may be true, but again the U.S. has not provided any evidence and Putin denies the charge. It’s like Iraq’s WMDs all over again.

More U.S. and EU sanctions against Russia froze the assets of Russians in power, banned their travel to EU countries, restricted Russian banks’ sales of debt or stocks in European markets, and targeted Russia’s defense, energy and financial sectors – to name a few.

On Aug. 7, in a radical response to Western sanctions, Russia retaliated by banning imports of beef, pork, poultry, fish, cheese, dairy products, fruit and vegetables from the European Union, United States, Australia, Canada, Norway, for one year.

Russia’s agriculture minister, Nikolai Fyodorov, said, “We now have the unique chance to improve our agricultural sector and make it more competitive.” He said that Russia has already identified other non-Western countries to import banned food items, and that he is confident that Russians will use locally available food.

From what we hear, European growth has slowed down; some countries creeping back into recession; U.S. investors have withdrawn over four billion dollars from Euro stocks; European farmers and Norway’s fishermen are affected and the EU has set aside 167 million dollars to compensate farmers for their loss of revenue; and companies that transport cargo to Russia have come to a halt.

While it is difficult to predict how this tit-for-tat will ultimately affect both Russian and Western economies, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that the sanctions have, in fact, harmed the West more than they have hurt Russia. He said, “In politics, this is called shooting oneself in the foot.”

Also the toll on human suffering is increasing. The U.N. claims that the war in Ukraine has already killed over 2,500 and injured nearly 5,000 people.

According to UNHCR, over 730,000 Eastern Ukrainians have fled to Russia. The Ukrainian government acknowledges that over 300,000 of its citizens are displaced inside Ukraine.

The U.N. Charter and international law provide for settling conflicts between states through negotiations based on mutual respect for each other’s independence, sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of the other.

This disaster can be resolved only if power-hungry world leaders renounce their arrogance and interventionism, and help Ukraine become a prosperous but neutral buffer nation between Western Europe and Russia. If not, the partition of Ukraine will be inevitable.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

July 2014 floods in Russia but authorities turning blind eye to climate change. Credit: takemake.ru

By Mikhail Matveev
MOSCOW, Aug 30 2014 (IPS)

The recent call from Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev for “tightening belts” has convinced even optimists that something is deeply wrong with the Russian economy.

No doubt the planned tax increases (introduction of a sales tax and increases in VAT and income tax) will inflict severe damage on most businesses and their employees, if last year’s example of what happened when taxes were raised for individual entrepreneurs is anything to go by – 650,000 of them were forced to close their businesses.

Nevertheless, it looks like some lucky people are not only going to escape the “belt-tightening” but are also about to receive some dream tax vacations and the lucky few are not farmers, nor are they in technological, educational, scientific or professional fields – it is the Russian and international oil giants involved in oil and gas projects in the Arctic and in Eastern Siberia that stand to gain.

“In October [2013], Vladimir Putin signed a bill under which oil extraction at sea deposits will be exempt from severance tax. Moreover, VAT will not need to be paid for the sales, transportation and utilisation of the oil extracted from the sea shelf,” noted Russian newspaper Rossiiskie Nedra.“It looks like some lucky people are not only going to escape the ‘belt-tightening’ but are also about to receive some dream tax vacations and the lucky few are not farmers, nor are they in technological, educational, scientific or professional fields – it is the Russian and international oil giants involved in oil and gas projects in the Arctic and in Eastern Siberia that stand to gain”

Some continental oil projects were alsoblessedby the “Tsar’s generosity”: “For four Russian deposits with hard-to-recover oils [shale oil, etc.] – Bazhenovskaya [in Western Siberia] and Abalakskaya in Eastern Siberia, Khadumskaya in the Caucasus, and Domanikovaya in the Ural region – severance taxes do not need to be paid. Other deposits had their severance tax rates reduced by 20-80%.”

In fact, the line of thinking adopted by Russian officials responsible for tax policy is very simple. Faced with the predicament of an economy dependent on oil and gas (half of the state budget comes from oil and gas revenue, while two-thirds of exports come from the fossil fuel industry), they decided to act as usual – by stimulating more drilling and charging the rest of the economy with the additional tax burden.

There have been many warnings from well-known economists about the “resource curse” [the paradox that countries and regions with an abundance of natural resources tend to have less economic growth and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources] – and its potential consequences for the countries affected: from having weak industries and agriculture to being prone to dictatorships and corruption.

For a long time, however, economists have been keen on separating the economic and social impacts of fossil fuel dependency from the environmental and climate-related problems. But now, these problems are closely interconnected, and Russia might be the first to feel the strength of their combination in the near future.

Medvedev may not have read much about the “resource curse” but he should at least be familiar with the official position of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), whose Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres has said that three-quarters of known fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground in order to avoid the worst possible climate scenario.

One should at least expect this amount of knowledge from Russia as a member of the UN Security Council and it will be interesting to note whether the Russian delegation attending the UN Climate Summit in New York on September 23 will be ready to explain why, instead of limiting fossil fuel extraction, the whole country’s economic and tax policy is now aimed at encouraging as much drilling as possible.

However, it is not just the United Nations that has been warning against the burning of fossil fuels due to the related high climate risks. In 2005, Russia’s own meteorology service Roshydromet issued its prognosis of climate change and the consequences for Russia, stating that the rate of climate change in Russia is two times faster than the world’s average.

Roshydromet predicted a rapid increase in both the frequency and strength of extreme climate events – including floods, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires. The number of such events has almost doubled during the last 15 years, and represent not only an economic threat but also a real threat to humans’ lives and their well-being,

Consider this summary of climate disasters in Russia during an ordinary July week (not including any of the large natural disasters such as the floods in Altai, Khabarovsk, and Krymsk, or the forest fires around Moscow in 2010):

“Following the weather incidents in the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk District where snow fell last weekend, a natural anomaly occurred in Novosibirsk, resulting in human casualties … Two three-year-old twin sisters died after a tree fell on them during a strong wind storm in the town of Berdsk, Novosibirsk District.”

“The flood in Yakutia lasted a week and resulted in the submersion of Ozhulun village in Churapchinsky district last Saturday. Due to the rise of the Tatta River, 57 house went under.”

“Flooding in Tuapse [on the coast of the Black Sea] occurred on July 8, 2014 … [and] has left 236 citizens homeless.”

Cars swept away in July 2014 floods in Russia. Credit: takeme.ru

Is it not worrisome that so many climate disasters have to occur before Russian officials start to realise that climatologists are not lying? Or perhaps they are simply not inclined to take the climatologists’ warnings seriously.

Another significant problem could arise for Russia if oil consumers start taking U.N. climate warnings seriously – and there is evidence that this is happening.

The European Union (still the main consumer of Russian oil and gas) has announced an ambitious “20/20/20 programme” – increasing shares from renewables to 20 percent, improving energy efficiency by 20 percent, and decreasing carbon emissions by 20 percent. The United States has decided to decrease carbon emissions from power plants by 30 percent. These are only first steps – but even these steps can help decrease fossil fuel consumption.

Fossil fuel use has only very slowly been increasing in the United States and decreasing in Europe in the last five years. On the other hand, demand for oil has continued to rise in China and Southeast Asia, and it is perhaps this – rather than the recent “sanctions” against Russia over Ukraine – that inspired President Vladimir Putin’s recent “turn to the East”.

But there are serious doubts that Asia’s greed for oil will continue into the future. China recently admitted that it will soon be taking measures to limit carbon emissions – for the first time in its history. China has already turned to green energy andled the rest of the worldin renewable energy investment in 2013.

Will other Asian countries follow suit? Perhaps – because they certainly have a very strong incentive. According to Erin McCarthy writing in the Wall Street Journal, South and Southeast Asia’s losses due to global warming may be huge, and its GDP may be reduced by 6 percent by 2060, despite the measures taken to curb its emissions.

What does this mean for Russia?

Well, if the oil-consuming countries meet their carbon emission targets, we can expect a 10-20 percent decrease in oil demand in the next ten years, maybe more. Any decrease in demand usually induces a decrease in price – but not always proportionally. Sometimes, especially if the market is overheated, even a small decrease in demand can trigger a drastic falls in price. Economists call such a situation a “bursting bubble”.

Today, the situation in the oil (and, in general, fossil fuel) market is often called a “carbon bubble”. Because of high oil prices, investors are motivated to make investments in oil drilling in the hopes of earning a stable and long-term income.

But once the world starts taking climate issues seriously and realises that most of the oil needs to be left in the ground, oil assets will fall in value. Investors will try to withdraw their money from the fossil fuel sector, and, facing a crisis, oil companies will be forced to decrease both production and prices.

If the “carbon bubble” bursts, Russia will be left with sustainable businesses (that are being choked by the nation’s own tax politics) and with a perfect network of shelf platforms, oil rigs, and pipelines (which will be completely unprofitable and useless). Thus, by making fossil fuels the core of its economy, Russia is taking twice the number of risks.

First, it risks ruining the climate, and second, it risks ruining its own economy. It looks like Russia will lose at any rate: if the leading energy consumers are unable to decrease their oil consumption, the climate will be ruined everywhere, including Russia. If they manage to decrease their dependence on fossil fuel, the Russian economy will be ruined.

This certainly is not looking pleasant, especially if we add in the high probability of a major disaster like the Gulf of Mexico Oil spill happening in the Arctic, as well as countless minor leaks possibly occurring along the Russian pipelines.

But maybe Russia just has no other alternative to an economy dependent on fossil fuels?

In that case, perhaps it is worth mentioning a recent article by Russian financier Andrei Movchan in the Russian Forbes magazine. Movchan convincingly shows that the Achilles’ heel of the modern Russian economy is its extremely underdeveloped small and medium-sized businesses. And it looks like the current tax plans would literally exterminate them.

If Russia were able to reverse this tax policy and make small businesses play as big of a role in the economy as they do in the United States or Europe, there could be economic growth comparable to the growth expected from oil and gas – without all the frightful side effects of an economy driven by fossil fuels.

Sounds like a dream, but the first step to making it a reality can be simple: get rid of big oil lobbying in the government and try to reform the taxation system to suit the interests of Russian citizens instead of the interests of the big oil corporations.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

* Mikhail Matveev is 350.org Communications Coordinator for Eastern Europe, Caucasus, Central Asia and Russia

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks to journalists on the hostilities in Gaza Jul. 28, reiterating his call for an immediate, unconditional humanitarian ceasefire in the conflict. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 29 2014 (IPS)

As the death toll in Gaza keeps climbing – and charges of alleged war crimes against Israel keep mounting – the most powerful political body at the United Nations remains ineffective, impotent and in a state of near paralysis.

Perhaps by choice.

The 15-member U.N. Security Council (UNSC), the only body representing the international community armed with legally-binding powers, has failed to adopt a single resolution on the three-week- old conflict in Gaza which continues to result in the merciless killings of Palestinians and widespread destruction of homes and schools.U.S. military, financial, and veto power at the Security Council controls what can be done, even in such extreme moments of carnage.

After an unusual midnight meeting, ostensibly meant to display a false sense of urgency, the UNSC agreed Monday to release a so-called presidential statement, dismissed by some diplomats here as a morbid joke.

“Nobody, least of all the warring parties, takes these UNSC statements seriously,” said an Asian diplomat.

A mildly worded draft resolution, co-sponsored by Jordan and the Arab states, has been in circulation for weeks now, but failed to garner enough support to reach the negotiating table.

Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya, an e-zine produced by the Arab Studies Institute, told IPS that from the outset of the latest assault on the Gaza Strip, Israeli leaders have been clear that their ability to sustain their attacks is dependent on international support.

“It’s what they call ‘the ticking of the diplomatic clock’, meaning the slaughter can continue with impunity only so long as the West remains prepared to extend it political cover,” he said.

The refusal of the UNSC to send a clear message to Israel that the slaughter must stop and there will be consequences if it doesn’t, therefore in practice extends the grace period allotted to Israel to continue its massive bombardments of the Gaza Strip, said Rabbani, who is also a contributing editor to the Washington-based Middle East Report.

This, of course, primarily reflects the support of permanent members U.S., UK and France – but also other members – for Israel’s actions, he said.

All three Western nations in the UNSC have predictably remained supportive of Israel and would not approve any resolutions either accusing Israel of war crimes, imposing a no-fly zone over Gaza or calling for an international commission of inquiry into civilian killings.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, has warned that Israel’s continued military assault on Gaza may amount to war crimes, while criticising Hamas for “indiscriminate attacks”.

“There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes,” Pillay said last week.

The 47-member Human Rights Council last week voted for an international inquiry into alleged war crimes in the Gaza conflict. But Israel has refused to cooperate in implementing the resolution which was opposed by a single country: the United States.

Abba A. Solomon, author of ‘The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech: The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews’, told IPS, “The United States will not act against Israel in the Security Council because of the well-established leverage of the pro-Israel lobby, both in the U.S. Congress and Senate.”

He said the administration of President Barack Obama is working in a situation in which the U.S. House and Senate passed unanimous resolutions of full support for Israeli military action against Gaza earlier in July.

Since the 1940s, he pointed out, American Jewish organisations have cultivated relationships with elected officials, in the process of seeking and giving political and financial support.

“These organisations have accepted that advocacy for Israeli positions is part of their duties,” Solomon said.

In times of crisis, these relationships are golden for the Israeli government, he added.

In this case, customary U.S. deferral to Israel obstructs what would be humanitarian action, a UNSC resolution to protect a besieged civilian population, said Solomon.

Historically, he noted, U.S. assent to U.N. condemnations of offensive Israeli military actions has been argued against because it would “embolden” whatever Arab opponent Israel is contesting with.

In cases where condemnation is unavoidable, “pairing” with condemnation of Arab actions is insisted upon, said Solomon,
who has done years of archival research on the ways that American Zionism has gained and maintained so much power since the 1940s.

Rabbani told IPS at a time when Israeli leaders are explicitly stating their objective is to inflict such massive damage upon the Gaza Strip that the population will turn against Hamas – and killing civilian non-combatants by the bucketful in what can only be characterised as a pre-meditated and deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure – these states prioritise Israel’s purported right to self-defence above all else.

“To speak of an Israeli right to self-defence under such circumstances, when over 1,000 Palestinian civilian non-combatants have been killed in what can only be characterised as a pre-meditated and deliberate act of mass murder, and when the vast majority of Israeli casualties have been uniformed combatants, is well beyond obscene,” he said.

“It constitutes active support, and therefore direct complicity, in Israeli war crimes – even without taking into consideration the manifold other direct and indirect ways such states are supporting Israel.”

These include massive military, economic and political support, giving settlement products preferential access to their markets, and permitting their citizens to commit war crimes in Israeli uniform, he added.

Rabbani said the role of the UNSC is to preserve and protect international peace and security, and it has once again failed miserably in this task.

And it has done so once again on the question of Palestine, a conflict for whose creation and resolution the U.N. bears a unique responsibility, he added.

“Indeed, this demonstrates once more the incapacity of the UNSC to serve as a meaningful guardian of international peace and security in its current form,” Rabbani said.

Solomon told IPS the U.S. administration has the imperative to avoid accusations in the Senate and House that it has “betrayed” the “most important strategic ally in the Mideast” – Israel.

He said direct Israeli connections with U.S. political figures across the party divide require care in any State Department response to Israeli bombardments of Gaza civilians.

And Republican and Democratic aspiring politicians are taken on Israeli “fact-finding” tours.

He pointed out Palestinian advocacy organisations have not established anything like this degree of ongoing cooperation in the U.S. political scene.

U.S. military, financial, and veto power at the Security Council controls what can be done, even in such extreme moments of carnage.

U.S. cooperation with a binding U.N. attempt to rein in Israeli military action would mean a challenge to a long-established system of beneficial relationships in the American political scene, Solomon declared.

Editing by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The British government has published internal legal advice which it said showed it was legally entitled to take military action against Syria, even if the United Nations Security Council blocked such action.

It also published intelligence material on Thursday on last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria, saying there was no doubt that such an attack had taken place.

The document is the latest sign that a coalition of Western countries, including the United States, France and the UK, are moving towards military action against Syria after the alleged attack. It was “highly likely” that the Syrian government was behind the attack, the document said.

“If action in the Security Council is blocked, the UK would still be permitted under international law to take exceptional measures in order to alleviate the scale of the overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe in Syria,” a copy of the British government’s legal position read.

In such circumstances, it added that “military intervention to strike specific targets with the aim of deterring and disrupting further such attacks would be necessary and proportionate and therefore legally justifiable”.

In a debate on Thursday, however, Prime Minister David Cameron told the British parliament it was “unthinkable” that Britain would launch military action against Syria if there was strong opposition at the Security Council.

“It would be unthinkable to proceed if there was overwhelming opposition in the Security Council,” he said.

Syria defiant

Earlier on Thursday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that his country would defend itself against any foreign military intervention.

“Syria will defend itself in the face of any aggression, and threats will only increase its commitment to its principles and its independence,” the embattled Syrian leader told a visiting delegation of Yemeni politicians, according to state media.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that the United States had “concluded” that the Syrian government had carried out a chemical attack. Obama advocated the use of a “tailored, limited” military strike in response.

He was referring to an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Damascus Eastern Ghouta suburbs last week that aid agencies say killed at least 355 people, and injured as many as 3,000 others.

“We have concluded that the Syrian government in fact carried these out,” Obama said in the televised interview. But he did not present any direct evidence to back up his assertion, and the government has strongly denied accusations that it was involved.

‘Destabilisation’

Arguing for measured intervention after long resisting deeper involvement in Syria, Obama insisted that while Assad’s government must be punished, he intended to avoid repeating the errors made in the 2003 Iraq war.

The most likely option, U.S. officials say, would be to launch cruise missiles from U.S. ships in the Mediterranean in a campaign that would last several days.

New hurdles have, however, emerged that appear to have slowed the formation of an international coalition that could use military force to hit Syria.

On Wednesday, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council failed to reach an agreement on a draft resolution from the British seeking authorisation for the use of force.

Russia objected to international intervention, after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier rejected the case for ascribing culpability to the Syrian government at this time, adding that foreign military intervention would lead to “destabilisation of […] the country and the region”.

Chinese state media on Thursday said that any military intervention “would have dire consequences for regional security and violate the norms governing international relations”.

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

The armed group Séléka recently reinforced its position in the northern provinces of the Central African Republic, notably in the northwest city of Paoua. Credit: Simon Davis/UK DFID/CC by 2.0

By Edith Drouin-Rousseau
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 19 2013 (IPS)

As Michel Djotodia took his oath as the new president of the Central African Republic (CAR) on Aug. 18, Séléka, the coalition of rebel groups that he led and that helped him overthrow the government on Mar. 23, were still looting and killing civilians.

Already among the poorest nations in the world, this landlocked Central African country has seen its humanitarian crisis intensify over the last month as attacks by the Séléka multiplied in areas outside Bangui, CAR’s capital.

Order was partially restored in the capital as the international community convinced Djotodia to back down and change his title to interim president as well as establish a transitional council to hold elections in the next 18 months.

Uncontrolled elements of the rebel coalition consequently retreated to provinces to continue “business as usual”. The outcome was an unprecedented peak in violence against civilians, particularly in the north.

Communities have started to take up guns against armed groups, provoking even worse retributions and reprisals. Internal division within the Séléka also contributed to the exacerbation of the crisis, with several clashes taking place."The Central African Republic is not yet a failed state but has the potential to become one if swift action is not taken."
-- Valerie Amos

As the crisis was brought to the attention of the United Nations Security Council on Jul. 14, Valerie Amos, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, warned, “The Central African Republic is not yet a failed state but has the potential to become one if swift action is not taken.”

Non-governmental organisations and U.N. agencies were forced to reduce their staff in the interior of the country when the clashes started and they, along with the civilian population, were targeted by the Séléka.

“Our offices have been looted and pillaged to a point where we have to start from zero, and [it] takes us a long time to mobilise the resources to do that,” Amy Martin, head of office for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told IPS.

A population living in fear

Outside Bangui, rebels are acting with total impunity as the rule of law has disappeared along with the government officials. Courts and offices are being violently pillaged, and police officers hide in civilian clothes for fear of being targeted by the Séléka.

A number of villages have become ghost towns since rebels passed through, with schools, hospitals and houses deserted. The few who remain hide in the bushes, living in unsanitary conditions and vulnerable to diseases such as malaria.

Rising tensions in the north have displaced 4,000 people along the Chadian border, and 206,000 Central Africans have been displaced since the beginning of the conflict.

According to OCHA’s most recent report, 1.6 million out of CAR’s 5.1 million inhabitants are now categorised as “vulnerable”.

At a Security Council session dedicated to CAR on Aug. 14, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Šimonović listed  numerous ongoing abuses, including extrajudicial killings, summary executions, arbitrary detentions, torture, enforced disappearances, gender-based violence and rape, and recruitment of child soldiers.

Many aid organisations have retreated to the safety of Bangui, although some NGOs such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Red Cross, never left the provinces and instead reduced staff when insecurity was peaking. Now they are rehabilitating their installations and sending new workers into the field.

As of Aug. 10, U.N. workers also began to be redeployed in all parts of the country. Full capacity will be reached, however, only when funding is sufficient and the entire state is secure.

A conflict that does not “sell” well

Funding has always been a problem in CAR, even before the Mar. 23 coup. Being a former French colony, the country is still perceived as being a “French problem”, Lewis Mudge, a researcher with Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS.

In addition to CAR’s low international profile, several foreign donors have withdrawn aid to the country, fearing that their money would end up in the wrong hands. The losses have been concentrated in the area of development aid, a domain deemed less “urgent” than humanitarian aid.

“At the moment we reach a very high intensity in terms of human rights violations, [but] we have no means to support ourselves,” said Joseph Bindoumi, president of the Central African League for the Defence of Human Rights (LCDH), which was affected by the cuts, in an interview with IPS.

CAR’s traditional humanitarian donors, however, did not remove or reduce their aid, Martin told IPS. Rather, their donations stagnated as demand increased.

Of the 195 million U.S. dollars needed to cope with the crisis, an unevenly distributed 32 percent of funding has been raised. Emergency shelter and early recovery did not receive a single penny, while water, sanitation and hygiene received only eight percent of the amount required.

Security: The first step towards recovery

“The most pressing issue remains security,” Bindoumi stressed to IPS, deploring that insecurity prevents his organisation from providing a sufficient humanitarian response outside Bangui.

Securing the country was a task left to the African Union until Jul. 19, when the international community decided to upgrade the peacekeeping force to the African-Led International Support Mission in CAR (AFISM-CAR). A total of 3,600 units will be dispatched, of which one third will act as civilian police and two thirds as military.

Still, “3,600 is not nearly enough,” Mudge told IPS. With about 20,000 of Séléka’s fighters scattered around the country, the U.N. troops will need to be strategically organised and have a strong mandate to succeed. Otherwise, it will be a never ending “cat and mouse game”.

Yet CAR cannot expect much more, Mudge added, allowing that “a small amount of peacekeepers can still make a difference”. With only 60 peacekeepers from the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, the northern town of Kaga-Bondoro has shown significantly more stability than neighbouring towns.

After 20 long years of negotiations on a proposed expansion of the Security Council, African countries continue to be left out in the cold – even as African leaders complain that the international community has failed to respond to their demands for two permanent seats in the most powerful body at the United Nations.

Joyce Banda, the president of Malawi, said Africa makes up the single largest region within the United Nations, and a very significant proportion of issues discussed in the Security Council concern the African continent. Credit: UN Photo/J Carrier

When heads of state took the podium at the General Assembly sessions last month, an overwhelming majority of the more than 40 African political leaders criticised the marginalisation of their continent.

Speaker after speaker complained about the continued absence of Africa among countries which hold the five permanent seats (P5) in the Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia.

Africa’s longstanding demand for at least two permanent seats with veto powers, and five non-permanent seats, as agreed by African heads of state back in March 2005, is still far from reality.

But there is a reason for this, says Dr. Kwame Akonor, associate professor of political science at Seton Hall University in New York, who has written extensively on the politics and economics of the continent.

“That the membership and power relations of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) are anachronistic and inequitable, given the geopolitical realities of the 21st century, is irrefutable,” he told IPS.

But any significant reform aimed at changing the membership or procedures of the UNSC will meet fierce resistance from the five veto-wielding permanent members, who are unlikely to relinquish their rights easily, said Akonor, who is also director of the Centre for African Studies and the African Development Institute, a New York-based think tank.

Addressing the General Assembly sessions last month, Joyce Banda, the president of Malawi, said Africa makes up the single largest region within the United Nations, and a very significant proportion of issues discussed in the Security Council concern the African continent.

But still, she said, Africa’s longstanding demand is in limbo.

Robert Mugabe, the longtime president of Zimbabwe, was one of the most vociferous in demanding representation in the Security Council.

“For how long will the international community continue to ignore the aspirations of a whole continent of 54 countries?” he asked.

“Is this good governance? Is this democracy? And is this justice?” he asked. “We shall not be bought off with empty promises, nor shall we accept some cosmetic tinkering of the Security Council disguised as reform.”

The president of Gambia, Yahya Jammeh said, “Our collective security will continue to be undermined by geopolitical considerations unless and until we find the courage to reform the Security Council.”

The demand for permanent representation in the UNSC also came from several other leaders and officials from Africa, including Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic and Tanzania.

At a meeting of African leaders in Ethiopia in March 2005, the African Union (AU), which represents virtually all of the states in the continent, adopted a resolution calling for two permanent and five non-permanent seats.

But the AU did not identify the two countries for the permanent seats because that question has remained divisive, with at least three countries making claims: South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, among others.

The resolution laid down the following conditions: Even though Africa is opposed in principle to the veto, it is of the view that so long as it exists, and as a matter of common justice, it should be made available to all permanent members of the Security Council.

Secondly, the African Union should be responsible for the selection of Africa’s representatives in the Security Council, and most importantly, the question of the criteria for the selection of African members of the Security Council should be a matter for the AU to determine, taking into consideration the representative nature and capacity of those chosen.

Akonor told IPS that for Africa, the question of representation is more fraught because it cannot seem to agree on which country (or countries) to represent it at the Security Council.

“The paralysis, amongst African leaders, when it comes to how it will be represented has contributed to the continent’s marginalisation on discussions on any plausible reform measures,” he said.

One solution, he argued, is for African states to take the concept of Pax Africana seriously and rely on themselves when it comes to the establishment, enforcement and consolidation of their own peace and security.

As current negotiations stand, there are four countries (G4) who are frontrunners for permanent seats (without vetoes): India, Brazil, Germany and Japan.

A longtime political observer who has been monitoring the negotiations told IPS the simple answer is that the G4 never gave the African countries a firm commitment for two African seats (with veto powers).

Subsequently, the G4 gave up their bid for veto powers, agreeing to a new category of “permanent seats WITHOUT veto power”. But this is not acceptable to the African Group.

Had the Africans ever come on the side of G4, they would have had the required two-thirds majority in the General Assembly to push forward their claim for permanent seats, he added.

Rev. Gabriel Odima, president of the Africa Center for Peace and Democracy, told IPS there is no doubt the West has marginalised the African continent. But he also blamed African leaders for the status quo.

Impoverishment and conflict are the basic tools and economic forces which have engulfed the continent of Africa for years, he pointed out.

“The rampant corruption in countries like Uganda, Nigeria and Kenya provides an opportunity for the major players at the Security Council to block Africa from occupying the two permanent seats at the Security Council,” he said.

The absence of democracy, human rights abuses and poor governance continue to undermine Africa’s effort to play a role on the world stage, said Rev Odima.

“How could (permanent UNSC seats) be possible when the continent has failed to prevent the massacre in the Democratic Republic of Congo, human rights violations in Uganda and the looming crisis in Kenya? How could this be possible when African leaders have failed to manage their own affairs at home?” he asked.

The international community should help Africa move from the stigma of colonial legacy to a viable society where hunger is no longer a threat to human existence, where ballots replace guns, and where dictators will be brought to justice and held accountable for their atrocities against their people, he added.

Major donors to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) should withhold aid to both governments until they comply with prior agreements to pacify the DRC’s mineral-rich Kivu provinces, states a new report released Thursday by the International Crisis Group.

The report, “Eastern Congo: Why Stabilisation Failed“, argues that deploying a 4,000-strong neutral force along the border between the two countries – the solution promoted by the 12-state International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) – is unrealistic and unlikely to be effective.

“The Kivus do not need a new strategic approach; rather the peace agreements and stabilizing plans should no longer be empty promises,” says the report, which was written in French. “This requires co-ordinated and unequivocal pressure from the donors that pay the bills or the Rwandan and Congolese regimes.”

The report comes amidst continuing violence by a number of militias active in the Kivus, most notably the March 23 (M-23) Movement led by Bosco Ntaganda, a warlord in the eastern DRC who was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague in 2006 for recruiting and deploying child soldiers earlier in the decade.

Despite his indictment, Ntaganda was inducted into the Congolese army as part of an effort to stabilise the eastern part of the country. In 2009 he was promoted to the rank of general.

Last April, however, after DRC President Joseph Kabila, under pressure from western donors, ordered his arrest, the Rwandan-born Ntanganda staged a mutiny which many analysts believe was instigated and supported by Rwanda.

Since then, the two countries have exchanged a war of words, and violence has intensified across the region. Hundreds of people have been killed in the fighting and nearly 500,000 people are believed to have fled their homes.

At the end of June, the United Nations Security Council released a report that detailed Rwandan support for the mutiny and M-23 Movement. It alleged that Kigali recruited and deployed Rwandans to join Ntaganda’s forces and transmitted key intelligence to the rebels.

Kigali has vehemently rejected allegations that it supports M-23, whose name refers to a 2009 peace agreement between the Kinshasa and the Rwanda-backed National Council for the Defence of the People.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a longtime favourite of the United States, who, according to various accounts, sought to delay the report’s release, has insisted that the mutiny was caused by Kinshasa’s failure to pay Ntaganda’s troops and that it had nothing to do with the rebels.

“I’ve never seen such a stupid story like that,” Kagame told TIME magazine in an interview in September. “They wanted Rwanda always to be seen as the culprit in the problems of Congo. Congo is a victim, always.…It doesn’t need a rational story, it doesn’t need facts or logic. It’s just how they want it.”

The Kivus have been in turmoil since the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda against members of the Tutsi ethnic group. As Kagame’s Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriot Front (RPF) swept across the country, tens of thousands of Hutus, including army officers and militias that carried out the genocide, fled into eastern DRC, where their remnants have remained active.

More than five million people are believed to have died, most from starvation and disease, as a result of the fighting among some two dozen militias and the military intervention of eight of the DRC’s neighbours, including Rwanda, according to an International Rescue Committee study published in 2008.

The region is rich in minerals, including tin ore, gold, diamonds and tantalum, a rare metal used in cell phones and computer parts. Much of the fighting, including by M-23, has been for control over areas where these resources are mined.

At the urging of human rights and peace activists, the U.S. Congress last year passed legislation that requires U.S. companies to put forth their best efforts to avoid acquiring these minerals from the DRC. Although the move has apparently marginally reduced demand, Asian companies have reportedly moved to fill the vacuum.

In a report published last month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused M-23 of committing war crimes, including summary executions, rape and forced recruitment of children. The New York-based group also charged that Rwanda has deployed military units in DRC to support M-23 and thus may also be liable for the crimes committed by the movement.

Yet Rwanda has pointed to atrocities committed in eastern Congo by Mai-Mai militias, particularly against the Banyamulenge, an ethnic group related to the Tutsis and mainly descended from Rwandan immigrants. Indeed, Thursday marked the anniversary of a notorious massacre in South Kivu of seven Banyamulenge humanitarian workers, which renewed a low-intensity conflict in the area. The Congolese government has not arrested the perpetrators.

The United States and members of the European Union (EU) have cut or suspended aid to Rwanda, where external assistance comprises 40 percent of its budget, to compel it to drop its support for M-23, although rights groups and others are calling for even more pressure.

Last week, the Enough Project, a Washington-based anti-genocide group, released a report arguing for the United States and other donors to base approval  World Bank support to Rwanda – 135 million dollars are pending – on Rwanda’s cutting support for and dismantling M-23.

“The U.S. should delay the vote on this package until these conditions are met,” said the authors, Aaron Hall and Sasha Lezhnev.

The ICG report stressed that donors should withhold aid to both governments, noting that the Mai-Mai groups were continuing to commit atrocities in rural areas with impunity.

International donors and African mediators, it said, should seek to resolve the ongoing crisis rather than merely managing it, as they have with the deployment of a 17,000-strong U.N. force whose ability to keep the peace has been severely limited given the vastness of the territory for which it is responsible.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week convened both Kabila and Kagame for a meeting at the United Nations during which she “emphasised the need for honest and sustained dialogue between both countries in pursuit of a political resolution to the crisis”, said a senior State Department official.

“She noted that any solution must include bringing M-23 leadership to justice and both countries committing to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the other,” the official added. No breakthrough was achieved, however, at the ICGLR meeting that took place the next day.

To move toward a resolution, the ICG called for the urgent negotiation of a ceasefire between the Congolese authorities and M-23 as well as for the consideration of an arms embargo against Rwanda.

Aid to Kigali should also remain suspended pending the release of a new report by the U.N. Group of experts, the group added, while donors should withhold funding for stabilisation and institutional support for Kinshasa as long as it fails to improve political dialogue, governance, and its army’s performance in the eastern part of the country. Ntaganda, it said, should be arrested and handed over to the ICC.

As the situation in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continues to deteriorate in the wake of an armed rebellion that began in April, some activists have strengthened calls for foreign military intervention.

“The idea of an international force has divided us, but we have decided that there is indeed a need for a military force in the region,” Baudoin Hamuli Kabarhuza, national coordinator with the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, told a panel discussion here on Wednesday, speaking from Kinshasa.

Kabarhuza stipulated that such a force would need to be international and under the auspices of both the African Union and the United Nations.

The issue is also currently being debated within the U.S. government.

“Is there a military solution to this problem? Can we effect a military change on the ground militarily to change a political outcome?” Steven Koutsis, acting director of the Office of Central African Affairs in the U.S. State Department, said on Wednesday. “If you boil everything down, that is the question we are discussing within the U.S. government and with our partners.”

Since April, eastern Congo has been increasingly torn apart by rebels that have specifically targeted civilian populations. Taking advantage of desertions among the Congolese armed forces in the spring, multiple armed groups have launched a series of bloody sectarian attacks.

At least one of these groups, known as the M23, accuses the Kinshasa government of violating a 2009 peace agreement with Rwanda. According to a U.N. report released in June as well as multiple other sources, the M23 is receiving support directly from the Rwandan government.

While there is currently an unofficial cessation in fighting between the M23 and the DRC government, there is no ceasefire agreement and no monitoring is taking place.

Meanwhile, according to Koutsis, “Both sides are reinforcing their positions, and if for some reason the ceasefire fails, the return to military action would be much more violent than we’ve seen so far.”

According to the U.N.’s refugee agency, more than 470,000 Congolese have fled their homes since April.

On Wednesday, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay noted the “sheer viciousness” of the violence, stating, “In some cases, the attacks against civilians may constitute crimes against humanity.”

Most capable force?

The United Nations itself already has a military contingent operating in Congo, an 18,000-strong peacekeeping force known as MONUSCO. But this “stabilisation mission” has come under increased criticism for a perceived failure to protect civilians.

“We are facing, again, a fundamental humanitarian crisis in eastern Congo, and thus far the international community, and in particular MONUSCO, have not taken the action essential to bring it to a rapid end,” Mark Schneider, a senior vice president with the International Crisis Group, a watchdog organisation, said in Washington on Wednesday.

“We believe that unless there’s more demonstrated willingness by MONUSCO to use its forces in a more robust manner within its mandate, it’s very unlikely that you’re going to be able to get the political backing that’s necessary.”

While there are differences in perception over exactly what MONUSCO’s mandate allows for, and thus to what extent it would be able to unilaterally confront the armed groups in eastern Congo, Schneider suggested the issue is fairly clear.

“There is substantial authorisation for MONUSCO to give the protection of civilians top priority – this is not an offensive action, but rather is designed to protect civilians,” he said.

“MONUSCO is a capable military force if it is directed to carry out the mission. Yet in the DRC, the people cannot understand why the most capable military force in the country is unwilling to use its firepower to implement its mandate.”

At the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the DRC, Roger Meece, underlined the priority that MONUSCO places on civilian protection. Yet he also characterised the “deterioration of the overall security situation” in parts of eastern Congo as “extremely alarming”.

Time for durable peace

The Security Council meeting was convened to discuss the Rwandan government’s continuing support for certain armed groups operating in eastern Congo.

On Wednesday, citing the unique relationship between the United States and the Rwandan government, Kabarhuza repeatedly called on the United States to step up its engagement in Congo.

For the past two decades, Washington has been a major financial backer of the Rwandan government. The United States also provides more than a quarter of the budget for MONUSCO.

The international community must call on the DRC’s neighbours, Kabarhuza said. At the same time, “America has an important role to play in the region, as it has a good relationship with the DRC government as well as with Rwanda and Uganda.”

“We are fed up with war; we are fed up with suffering. It’s time for the international community to support durable peace here.”

While Washington has made clear its determination to assist the Congolese government in fighting the Lord’s Resistance Army, which operates in four central African countries, Kabarhuza said that U.S. officials as yet have “said nothing” about the armed groups’ fuelling violence in eastern Congo, particularly the DRC-based Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a group associated with the 1994 anti-Tutsi genocide.

Following speculation that the U.S. government sought to hold up the June publication of the U.N. report for including critical reference to Rwanda’s continued support of rebels in the eastern DRC, Washington did in fact withhold a token amount of funding, around 200,000 dollars, from the Rwandan government.

But on Wednesday, the State Department’s Koutsis expressed frustration with the U.S. government’s failure so far to significantly sway the Rwandan government’s actions.

“What do you do when you have a partner and it does something that’s so against what we see as our interests and the interests of other partners and the interests of its neighbours? How do you convince that country to change its policies?” Koutsis asked.

“Sure, we’ve made some strong statements and done some actions against Rwanda, but ultimately we need to try to convince Rwanda that it’s not in its own interests to continue” to support the M23, he concluded.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly I. Churkin briefs correspondents following the Security Council’s unanimous decision to extend the mandate of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) for 30 days. Credit: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 23 2012 (IPS)

Just before the Western-inspired resolution against Syria was vetoed in the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted as saying the United Nations was trying to support a revolutionary movement inside the country – which happens to have strong political, economic and military links to Moscow.

“If we are talking about a revolution,” he said, “then the U.N. Security Council has no place for this.”

As a former Russian permanent representative to the United Nations, Lavrov knows the Security Council inside out because he not only served in the U.N.’s most powerful political body but also presided over some of its meetings.

But when Russia cast its veto, along with China, to “protect” the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow sent a strong message to the United States and Western powers: the United Nations will not be party to a conspiracy to oust the Syrian president, as the Security Council did in Libya last year.

Last week’s double veto – for the third time against threatened sanctions on Syria – proved once again that Western nations have limitations on the exercise of their power in the Security Council chamber.

The vetoes also demonstrated there are limits to the extent to which the United Nations can be mobilised as an instrument of Western policy in the Middle East – despite the unilateral 2003 U.S. attack on the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq without Security Council authorisation.

Having reached a dead end at the United Nations, and with no appetite for a new war in the Middle East, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), spurred by the United States, will try to undermine Assad by providing increased support for rebel groups and tightening Western sanctions, according to diplomatic sources here.

“The Western powers have hit a brick wall,” says one Asian diplomat, “and the United Nations has turned out to be an insurmountable barrier.”

Mouin Rabbani, a contributing editor to the Middle East Report, told IPS: “If the Western powers do reach the conclusion that it is in their interest to intervene in Syria, don’t expect them to wait for UNSC authorisation. Remember Iraq?”

A series of newspaper articles, moreover, have demonstrated that the U.S. and other Western powers, and a number of their Arab allies, are essentially doing as they please in Syria, he said.

This includes the delivery of weapons and intelligence to the armed opposition, choosing which elements of this opposition obtain such weapons and intelligence, the infiltration of intelligence officers into Syria, and other activities that can hardly be characterised as consistent with UNSC resolutions or the Kofi Annan Six Point Plan.

“In other words, these states are doing more or less as they please, and are acting on the basis of their evaluation of how to implement a Syria policy, rather than being governed by constraints imposed on activities by the absence of U.N. cover,” said Rabbani, a veteran Middle East analyst.

The Syrian uprising, which began about 17 months ago, has claimed more than 10,000 lives, including civilians and also military personnel defending the Assad regime.

On Friday, the Security Council approved a one-month extension of a 300-member U.N. monitoring mission in Syria, which has been trying to track the situation inside the war-torn country.

Asked about a new threat of chemical weapons, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters Monday he has heard about the possibility of Syria using chemical weapons.

“But I am not able to verify that it is true that Syria has a considerable amount of chemical weapons,” he said.

Ban said what is of concern is that Syria is not a party to the chemical weapons convention which bars the deployment of these weapons of mass destruction.

Still, he said, all countries have an obligation not to use any weapons of mass destruction – whether or not they are state parties to the convention.

Analysing the ongoing developments, Rabbani told IPS there is a widespread belief that China, and even more so Russia, are today seeking to teach the West a lesson in the context of the manner in which Russia and China believe NATO abused UNSC resolutions in early 2011 to invade Libya and manage regime change – or, for that matter, abused the UN Charter a decade ago with the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

“There’s likely an element of truth to that, and senior Russian and Chinese officials have more or less made this point themselves,” he said.

Nevertheless, he pointed out, “I wouldn’t exaggerate this point. It was abundantly clear from the moment the UNSC Libya resolution was passed that there was going to be an armed attack on that country, and it materialised almost immediately.”

“I have difficulty believing that seasoned Russian and Chinese diplomats were so tremendously naive they had no clue about the consequences of permitting that resolution to pass, and about what would come next,” said Rabbani.

In terms of an explanation of Russian policy, he argued, this is not the Cold War, where Washington’s loss is necessarily Moscow’s gain.

Thus America lost Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Zine el Abdine Bin Ali (Tunisia) and Ali Abdullah Saleh (Yemen), but Russia did not gain Egypt, Tunisia or Yemen.

“Syria is the only remaining unambiguously pro-Russian Arab state, and rather strategically situated at that, and I think this, more than factors such as access to the Tartus naval base and military sales and debts, explains Russian support for the regime in Damascus,” Rabbani said.

“I’d be surprised if the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, hasn’t offered to settle Syria’s military debt to Russia and provide Moscow with additional blandishments.”

There are apparently more important strategic considerations, and not just quantifiable interests, at stake, added Rabbani.

He pointed out that Bashar’s father Hafiz emerged from the twin blows of the Muslim Brotherhood uprising and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon stronger and more secure, so much so that upon his death in 2000 power easily passed to his son.

“It seems inconceivable that Bashar can emerge from the present crisis in similar fashion, if at all,” he added.

Rabbani said there is much talk in the Arab World that for the West and Israel the preferred outcome is a weakened and more pliant Bashar – “preserving the neo-liberal brat but jettisoning the ally of Iran and Hezbollah.”

Bashar Ja’afari (left), Permanent Representative of Syria to the UN, converses with Vitaly I. Churkin, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, prior to the vote. Credit: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2012 (IPS)

Syria became the first country in the history of the United Nations to be “protected” for an unprecedented third time by double vetoes cast by Russia and China in the Security Council.

Jose Luis Diaz, head of the U.N. Office of Amnesty International, told IPS that in recent history, Myanmar (Burma) and Zimbabwe have benefited from double vetoes, but on one occasion each.

As a result of the three double vetoes over a 17-month period, the United Nations will remain politically paralysed – even as a growing civil war, which has already claimed the lives of over 10,000 civilians, continues to spin out of control.

“I think the repeated double vetoes by Russia and China on Syria, other than feeding the perception of a Security Council outliving its usefulness, will justifiably draw attention to the need to curb or limit that power when crimes against humanity, war crimes and massive human rights violations and abuses are being committed, as some countries have proposed,” Diaz said.

The vetoes were cast against three Western-inspired resolutions threatening to penalise the government of President Bashar al-Assad since the outbreak of an ongoing uprising 17 months ago.

On Thursday, the third of the resolutions, this time the brain child of Britain, garnered 11 out of 15 votes, with two abstentions (Pakistan and South Africa).

But it failed to be adopted because of the vetoes by Russia and China, two of the five permanent members of the Security Council besides the United States, Britain and France.

The failed draft resolution expressed support to special envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan.

But if the Syrian government fails to stop using its heavy weapons on civilians, the resolution left open the possibility of diplomatic, economic and military sanctions against Syria under Chapter VII of the U.N. charter.

Asked what comes next, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told reporters, “Sadly the message from the two permanent members (Russia and China) is that they are willing to support Assad to the bitter end.”

In a statement released Thursday, U.S. Senator John Kerry, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that Russia and China’s veto of the Syria resolution is as surreal as it is dangerous.

“As Rome burns, they’re worried about saving Nero,” he said, adding that Assad and his supporters need to hear unequivocally from the international community that they are losing.

Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, told IPS that all the outside powers are focused far more on their own self-defined national interests than they are concerned about the people of Syria.

She said that Russia’s veto is based partly on the need to continue its longstanding commercial and military alliance with the Assad regime, but more urgently and immediately on a commitment to maintain its sole military presence on the Mediterranean – its naval base at Tartus, on the southern Syrian coast.

China’s veto, she said, is almost certainly framed by its longstanding resistance to any Council approval of military intervention anywhere, out of concern it could be a precedent.

For the U.S. and its European allies, the concern is primarily to maintain control or at least significant influence over any potential post-Assad regime.

“That explains the official CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) focus on aiding its Saudi, Qatari and Turkish allies by helping decide who among the opposition forces should actually get the arms being shipped in,” she said.

Israel has not been a major force demanding regime change in Damascus, for the simple reason that both Assad regimes (Bashar and his father Hafez) have been more or less reliable neighbors – keeping the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the Syria-Israel border largely quiet, and helping the U.S. when it comes to interrogating/torturing suspects in the global war on terror, sending warplanes to join the U.S. coalition against Iraq in 1991, etc., said Bennis.

Amnesty International’s Dias told IPS that in the case of Syria, it’s not so much the Security Council “outliving its usefulness”, but of not having been very useful, period.

For better or worse – and in this case, for worse – the Council can only be useful when the interests of its permanent members are aligned or at least don’t contradict each other, he said.

“When those interests don’t align, as in this case, they use their veto,” he added. “This is obviously not the way it should be.”

Dias also said the Council is an anachronism, but it is not going away anytime soon.

Pending reform, however, its members, especially the permanent ones, should really exercise the utmost restraint in using the power they accorded themselves decades ago and which they use ostensibly in the name of the whole international community, Dias said.

“If they’re perceived as acting based on narrow or national interests, then the Council will rightly be judged irrelevant, or worse.”

And there are risks to that, not least that it could encourage states to bypass the Council and act outside the international legal framework, he added.

Meanwhile, the mandate of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS), led by General Robert Mood, and which has been monitoring the situation in Syria, expires Friday.

Bennis told IPS that extending the U.N. observer team mandate is vital, particularly as the military battle inside Syria escalates. With increasing threats to Syrian civilians, any potential for negotiations must be taken seriously.

Gen. Mood’s assessment that the bottom-up negotiations beginning in places like Deir Ezzor and then expanding to a national phenomenon as a way to lessen the violence could be a crucial last-ditch effort to achieve a diplomatic, rather than military resolution of this crisis.

“It is not surprising that Russia rejected the U.S.-led resolution to extend the mandate given Washington’s insistence on the resolution being taken under the terms of Chapter VII – U.S. claims that its goal is ‘only’ increased sanctions ignores the reality that Chapter VII is also the necessary precursor to military force – and the Libya model looms large in which an officially narrow Council resolution under Chapter VII was quickly transformed into an all-out U.S.-NATO war against Libya,” said Bennis.

By insisting on the link between extending the observer mandate and Chapter VII, the U.S. is essentially holding the Council hostage to its own intentions of escalation, she added.

While reports of two mass killings in Syria by pro-regime forces in the past week have increased pressure on President Barack Obama to intervene more directly in support of the opposition, his administration appears determined to avoid any military involvement.

Citing the increased violence, neo-conservatives and other hawks have been pressing their case for Washington to arm opposition forces and aid Turkey and Jordan in creating and enforcing “safe zones” for civilians along their borders with Syria, at the very least.

“In addition, the U.S. and our NATO allies could strengthen sanctions on Syria by mounting a naval blockade of the Syrian coastline,” according to Max Boot, a prominent neo-conservative at the Council on Foreign Relations, this week.

“This would make it more difficult for Syria’s principal supporters, Russia and Iran, to provide arms to the regime,” he wrote in the Los Angeles Times, noting that airstrikes to take out the regime’s key military assets – as they did in Libya – should also be considered.

For now, however, the administration, concerned about the possibility of being drawn into yet another Middle East quagmire and worried that further militarising the conflict risks destabilising Syria’s neighbours, is firmly resisting such advice.

While expressing growing scepticism about efforts by U.N.-Arab League Envoy Kofi Annan to implement a ceasefire and a transition plan that would eventually remove President Bashar al-Assad from power, the administration is standing by the former U.N. secretary-general, who will meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton here Friday.

Citing reports of a massacre of 78 civilians in a village in central Hama province Wednesday, Clinton toughened her rhetoric in an appearance with her Turkish counterpart in Istanbul Thursday. Assad, she said, has “doubled down on his brutality and duplicity”.

“Syria will not, cannot, be peaceful, stable or certainly democratic until Assad goes,” she declared, stressing that Washington intends to intensify economic and diplomatic sanctions against the regime and encourage other governments to do so as part of a coordinated effort to persuade Assad’s supporters in the military and the business community to abandon him.

Annan himself also suggested that more pressure should be brought to bear on Assad in remarks to the U.N. General Assembly Thursday. Conceding that his five-week-old ceasefire plan was “not being implemented”, he said it was time to consider “what other options exist to end the violence”.

“The violence is getting worse,” he said. “…(T)he country is becoming more polarised and more radicalised. And Syria’s immediate neighbours are increasingly worried about the threat of spillover.”

According to the well-connected Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Annan hopes to gain the U.N. Security Council’s approval for the creation of a “contact group” composed of the Council’s five permanent members, a representative of the Arab League, Turkey, and Iran to draft a detailed transition plan that, among other things, would provide Assad with safe exile in either Russia or Iran, new presidential and parliamentary elections, and reform of the country’s security forces.

Involving both Russia and Iran – both of which have, to a limited extent, distanced themselves from Assad, particularly in light of the latest reports of regime-backed mayhem – in this process could reassure them that their interests will be protected in a post-Assad regime.

The administration is expected to support the proposal, at least as it regards Russia, which has long been seen by Washington as the key to diplomatic efforts to persuade Assad to step down.

Iran’s involvement, however, is considered far more problematic, as Clinton made clear Thursday, saying it was “hard…to imagine that a country putting so much effort into keeping Assad in power …would be a constructive actor.” She added that Iran would not be considered an “appropriate participant at this point”.

Meanwhile, hawks here have cited the mass killings Wednesday in Hama and in Houla last week as proof that Annan’s diplomatic efforts – which included the deployment of up to 300 monitors – were a waste of time at best.

“One immediately required action is to abandon any wishful thinking that (Annan’s) …efforts will help the situation, or that Russia’s conscience will finally be shocked straight,” wrote Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a rising star in the Republican Party with neo-conservative views, in the Wall Street Journal Thursday.

“The U.S. should urge Mr. Annan to condemn Assad and resign his job as envoy so that Syria’s regime and other governments can no longer hide behind the façade of his mediation efforts.”

Arguing that diplomacy “doesn’t stand a chance …unless the military balance tips against Assad”, Rubio, who is reportedly being considered by presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as his vice-presidential running-mate, went on, arguing “empowering and supporting Syria’s opposition today will give us our best chance of influencing it tomorrow…”

Earlier this week, Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defence policy studies at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), urged the administration to “double down on the light arms that the Saudis and Qataris are supplying to the Free Syrian Army” and transfer “more substantial weaponry to groups reportedly in line to be vetted by the CIA”.

“Far from intensifying a conflict that is claiming thousands of lives, effective weapons may finally give the edge to the opposition and coax more significant defections from the Syrian army,” she argued, noting that such bold moves could bolster Obama’s re-election prospects.

In recent days, the neo-conservatives have been joined by a few liberal interventionists, including former secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s spokesman, James Rubin, who argued in foreignpolicy.com that overthrowing Assad could forestall an Israeli attack on Iran, and her ambassador to Morocco, Marc Ginsberg, who called for the administration to “send the Neville Chamberlin (sic)-wannabe former SecGen (Annan) back to his rocking chair.”

At the same time, there has been substantial pushback by leading figures of the foreign policy establishment, including former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

“We cannot afford to be driven from expedient to expedient into undefined military conflict taking on an increasingly sectarian character,” he warned. “In reacting to one human tragedy, we must be careful not to facilitate another.”

Similarly, Fareed Zakaria, former editor of the Foreign Affairs journal and Time magazine’s editor-at-large, defended the administration’s approach of working with other countries to impose and tighten sanctions on the regime and its key supporters and pressing Russia to abandon Assad.

“It would be morally far more satisfying to do something dramatic that would topple Assad tomorrow,” he wrote in his weekly column in Time. “But starving his regime might prove the more effective strategy.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Victims of the massacre at Houla. Credit: Freedom House 2/CC By 2.0

By Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 1 2012 (IPS)

The United States and its Western allies appear increasingly inclined to push for regime change in Syria, although the latest round of diplomatic talks at the U.N. Security Council Wednesday suggest that it remains a distant possibility.

Both Russia and China, the two leading members of the Shanghai Cooperation Pact, a growing military alliance in Asia, have made it clear that they do not wish Syria to become another Libya.

“The opposition groups are taking opportunities for killings,” said Russian ambassador Vladimir Churkin, alluding to the mass slaughter of civilians in the Syrian town of Houla last weekend.

The United States, Britain and 11 other nations jointly expelled Syrian ambassadors and diplomats following the May 25 killings of more than 100 people, including dozens of children, which the U.N. and witnesses say were likely perpetrated by pro-government militias known as Shabiha.

In contrast, the Russian envoy asserted Wednesday that all the parties involved in the Syrian conflict were responsible for the incident and said that they must resolve their differences by peaceful means.

Churkin seemed supportive of the Syrian government’s contention that Al-Qaeda and other extremist elements were being armed by outside forces, but did not give details.

“I don’t know,” he told IPS in response to a question the sources of funding and weapons to the Syrian opposition.

Syrian ambassador Dr. Bashar Ja’afar, however, reiterated that weapons were coming from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the closest U.S. allies in the region and major suppliers of oil to the West.

On Wednesday, following the Security Council meeting, U.S. ambassador Susan Rice hinted that Washington and its European allies might take action “outside” the fold of the U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan’s plan for peaceful settlement of the Syrian conflict.

The plan put forth by Annan, a former U.N. secretary general, calls for an end to the violence, access for humanitarian agencies to provide relief, the release of detainees, the start of political dialogue, and access for the media.

Talking to reporters after the closed-door meeting, Rice acknowledged that there were “serious differences” on the question of possible sanctions against the Syrian government in the Security Council.

“We need to explore with Russia and others about what other steps can be taken,” she said. “We will continue negotiations in the next few days.”

Some long-time observers of political conflicts in the Middle East see a certain degree of ambivalence in the West’s posture toward Damascus.

“I think the U.S. and its Western allies are desperate to figure out a strategy in Syria, and they don’t have one,” Phyllis Bennis, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think-tank in Washington, told IPS. “Athough regime change is clearly on their wish list now, it wasn’t until pretty recently.

“Syria, despite its anti-imperialist rhetoric, was pretty useful for Israel. (It) kept the Golan Heights quiet. (It kept) the Israeli border relatively peaceful,” although it was “a bit troublesome hosting/supporting Hamas and Hezbollah”, she added.

“The recent massacre in Houla meant they had to figure out an immediate response, and this was about all they could think of that wouldn’t make everything worse. It’s a disaster on all fronts.”

The Golan Heights of Syria were occupied by Israel during the 1967 war with Egypt and other Arab nations. Since then, Syria has continued to support not only the Palestinians, but also democratic struggles in several countries in the so-called Islamic world.

In addition to Russia, Syria has close ties with Iran and Lebanon’s Shia leadership, as well as with the militant Palestinian groups, which has become a constant source of irritation for the West and Israel.

On Wednesday, U.N. observers reported that 13 more bodies were discovered in eastern Syria. All the victims had their hands tied behind their backs and some appear to have been shot in the head from a short distance.

The U.N. estimates that more than 9,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed and tens of thousands displaced since the opposition campaign against President Bashar al-Assad began some 15 months ago.

The massacre in Houla will be the subject of a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday.

“It’s important that the truth, the facts be established in a way that nobody can challenge,” Annan’s deputy, Jean-Marie Guehenno, said in a statement. “That is essential.”

“The government of Syria needs to take steps to convince, I would say, not only the international community but more importantly the Syrian people that it is ready for a new course,” he said.

As chief mediator of the conflict, Annan is due to attend the Arab League meeting on Jun. 2 in Doha on the Syrian situation.

The Russians say they want to see Annan’s plan implemented effectively and that any move by the West to oust the government by force would be unacceptable.

The U.N. Security Council president’s statement concerning the killings in Houla “is a strong enough signal to the Syrian parties and is a sufficient reaction,” Churkin told Interfax news agency earlier this week.

Any new measures to affect the situation, he said, “would be premature for the Security Council”.

China is siding with Russia regarding the Syrian conflict. On Wednesday, the spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Liu Weimin, confirmed that Beijing would oppose any foreign military intervention into Syrian affairs.

France, the former occupying power in Syria, appears to be taking a middle path. In a recent statement, the French president noted that “another solution” is preferable. He called for more sanctions to be imposed on the Syrian government.

On Wednesday, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, who faces a general election in November, added new sanctions on a Syrian bank to increase the pressure on the Assad government.

“Elections do affect these things,” James Paul of the Global Policy Forum, which tracks international politics at the U.N., told IPS. “It’s a way of saying they have no rights. It’s part of a propaganda campaign.”

Paul, who is critical of the regime in Syria, described the Syrian situation as a “conundrum”.

“The regime in Damascus has more support internally,” he said. “It’s a very complicated issue.”

In his view, much of the media reporting on Syria is “basically Western propaganda, which does everything to prevent focus on Palestine.

“The press has brought this campaign to turn Assad into Hitler of the month, but it has failed.”

Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, has called on the country’s government to take bold steps to prove its commitment to restoring peace during a visit to Damascus.

Annan arrived in the Syrian capital on Monday for talks with high-level officials as world leaders said his peace plan was the only way to solve the country’s conflict.

The former U.N. chief called on “every individual with a gun” in Syria to lay down arms, saying he was horrified by a weekend massacre in Houla that killed about 110 people, including 49 children.

“I urge the (Syrian) government to take bold steps to signal that it is serious in its intention to resolve this crisis peacefully, and for everyone involved to help create the right context for a credible political process,” Annan said.

“I am personally shocked and horrified by the tragic incident in Houla two days ago, which took so many innocent lives, children, women and men.”

He was to meet Walid al-Muallem, Syria’s foreign minister, on Monday before holding talks with President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, a Syrian official source said.

Earlier in the day, William Hague, the UK foreign secretary, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, called at a joint press conference in Moscow for greater efforts to implement the plan, which calls on both government forces and rebels to cease hostilities and for a Syrian-led political process.

Lavrov said that “who is in power” in Syria is less important than that the bloodshed is brought to an end.

‘We don’t support the Syrian government, we support Kofi Annan’s plan,” he said.

Civil war warning

For his part, Hague warned of the possibility of a civil war.

“The alternatives are the Annan plan or ever-increasing chaos,” he said, calling on all parties to cease violence. “We are not arguing that all violence in Syria is the responsibility of the Assad regime, although it has the primary responsibility for such violence.”

World powers want Russia, a close ally of Syria, to exert pressure on Assad’s government.

“Russia is in a difficult and isolated position,” according to Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from the Russian capital. “Moscow has been a friend of Syria for decades, and has vetoed two U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning the killing. It needs to look after its strategic and economic interests in Syria, but not appear too much like the protector of a repressive and violent government.”

Lavrov met Hague a day after the U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned the use of heavy weapons in the Houla massacre.

The world body said in a press statement issued after an emergency meeting on Sunday that the “outrageous use of force” against civilians violated international law and that “the attacks involved a series of government artillery and tank shellings on a residential neighbourhood”.

Major-General Robert Mood, head of the U.N. monitoring mission in Syria, said some of the dead had been killed by shelling and others shot at close range, but did not attribute responsibility for the close-range killing.

Activists said several children had been stabbed to death.

‘Entire families executed’

The U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch said it interviewed survivors and local activists who said “the Syrian army shelled the area on May 25, and armed men, dressed in military clothes, attacked homes on the outskirts of town and executed entire families.

“All of the witnesses stated the armed men were pro-government, but they did not know whether they were members of the Syrian army or a pro-government militia, locally referred to as shabiha”.

Human Rights Watch said “most of those killed belonged to the Abdel Razzak family”.

“Local activists provided Human Rights Watch with a list of 62 dead members from the Abdel Razzak family,” it said.

The Syrian government has blamed the killings on “terrorists” and denied that its forces had used any heavy weaponry in Houla. It said security forces had suffered losses in clashes with rebels.

Activists have confirmed that opposition fighters attacked a checkpoint, but said it happened after government forces opened fire on a demonstration.

The Security Council asked Ban Ki-moon, U.N. secretary-general, and the U.N. observer mission in Syria, or UNSMIS, to continue investigating the attacks in Houla.

There are now more than 280 unarmed military observers in Syria to monitor a cessation of hostilities that started on Apr. 12 but lurches closer to collapse each day.

Annan is to brief the Security Council on Wednesday on his efforts to end the 15-month old crisis. The U.N. says more than 10,000 people have been killed in the uprising against Assad, while Syrian activists put the figure at more than 13,000.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

At the height of the Cold War, a Peruvian diplomat, Dr. Victor Andres Belaunde, publicly expressed scepticism about the ability of small countries to survive the diplomatic might of the big powers in the world body.

The United Nations, he was quoted as saying as far back as the 1960s, is an institution “where there is always something that disappears”.

“When two small powers have a dispute,” he observed, “the dispute disappears. And when a great power and a small power are in conflict, the small power disappears.”

That’s presumably what happened last week when five of the U.N.’s smallest member states, describing themselves as the “small five” (S5), challenged the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council, namely the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, over the misuse of their veto powers.

Hours before it was to be debated and voted in the 193-member General Assembly, the resolution unceremoniously disappeared from the hallowed precincts of the United Nations – and probably from the face of the earth.

As former New York Times Bureau Chief Kathleen Teltsch recounts in her 1970 “Crosscurrents at Turtle Bay”, the Peruvian diplomat went one step further when he added: “When two great powers have a dispute, the United Nations disappears.”

Mercifully, both the United Nations and the S-5 – Costa Rica, Jordan, Liechtenstein, Singapore and Switzerland – survived the ordeal last week and lived to tell the tale.

The aborted resolution, couched in delicate diplomatic jargon, “recommended” that the P5 members of the Security Council consider “refraining from using their vetoes on action aimed at preventing or ending genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

But right from the beginning, the P5 clearly signaled that the General Assembly has no business offering such recommendations to the Security Council.

William Pace, executive director of the World Federalist Movement- Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP), told IPS that even though the S5 were compelled to withdraw their historic resolution, non- governmental organisations (NGOs) hope this is just the opening chapter to the General Assembly – after 67 years – beginning to work with the Security Council to address the U.N.’s massive need to improve the organisation’s ability to maintain international peace and security.

“The dysfunctional pillars of the Cold War Security Council must be remolded, and by the Council agreeing to the provision not to use the veto to block action on major war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity would be an indispensable beginning,” he said.

Pace said it was “outrageous” that the issue of a recommendation is being opposed.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS the withdrawal of the resolution shows the P5 still run things in the world body.

“But they are coming under increasing challenge, their credibility is weakening, and their moral failure is becoming increasingly obvious to an ever larger majority of the international community,” he said.

The importance of this resolution is that it implicitly challenges not just the Chinese and Russian vetoes regarding repression in Syria, and the Chinese vetoes regarding genocide in Sudan, but U.S. vetoes and related policies to block U.N. action regarding Israeli war crimes as well, said Zunes who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council.

“These small countries pushing this resolution recognise that violations of international humanitarian law are inexcusable regardless of any of the P5s relations with the offending government.”

He said it is particularly timely not only because of the ongoing repression in Syria, but the nearly-unanimous vote of the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month which stated it is the official policy of the United States to veto any one-sided U.N. Security Council resolutions critical of Israel.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Third World diplomat told IPS the S5 withdrew the draft resolution last Wednesday – the very day on which action was planned, after they came under intense pressure from the P5, both in New York and in the capitals.

The Office of Legal Affairs (OLA), he pointed out, also complicated matters by putting out the opinion that the resolution needed a two- thirds majority before it could be adopted, implying it involved the reform of the Security Council.

“The OLA was probably doing the bidding of the P5 – and it is interesting that China circulated the OLA text to all member states even before it was made public indicating the P5 had advance notice of OLA’s opinion,” he said.

“This has stymied all momentum behind the reform of the Security Council. It has also undermined the effectiveness of the Council,” he said.

By blocking the slightest of reforms, the P5 might have won the battle for now, but in the long run they might have done untold damage to the credibility of the Security Council.

“We might increasingly see many countries bypassing the Council or refusing to comply with its decisions,” the diplomat said.

Pace told IPS that besides the P5 opposition, the S5 could not convince enough governments to separate the Charter amendment issues of Security Council expansion from the issue of reforming the working methods and procedures of the Council.

This is also constrained by the 1993 General Assembly resolution requiring any decision should have a two-thirds majority of all member states of the U.N., or 129 countries.

“A key goal, I believe, is to separate non-Charter amendment issues from the 1993 restrictions. This can be done by a majority decision of the General Assembly,” Pace said.

While the issue of expansion of the Council is extremely important, said Pace, these will require years, probably decades, to resolve, and the other reforms of the Council must be addressed immediately, by both the General Assembly and the Council.

The S5, he pointed out, was not challenging the legitimacy of the veto, but the misuse of the veto, which is responsible for millions upon millions of deaths.

Criticising the overwhelming silence in most of the mainstream media, Pace said, “The fact that Inter Press Service (IPS), and only a few other media in the world covered the S5 resolution, is a frightening comment on the status of international relations journalism.”

(END)

Amnesty International delivered a scathing condemnation of global and national leadership in its 2012 global human rights report on Tuesday, conveying profound disappointment in such leadership for its failure to match the determination and resilience of ordinary civilians in their resistance to repressive regimes.

Amnesty International has sharply criticised the U.N. Security Council for leadership failures, including inaction on government violence in Syria. Credit: Freedom House/ CC by 2.0

The report deemed the United Nations (U.N.) Security Council “increasingly unfit for purpose”, according to Salil Shetty, secretary-general of Amnesty International, one of the world’s most prominent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) focusing on human rights.

The report cited several areas of failure and called for a strong Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) with human rights provisions to ensure that politicians prioritise human rights over profit and power.

The veto power of the Security Council’s five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the UK and the U.S., who also happened to be among the world’s top arms suppliers, is “problematic”, said José Luis Díaz, head of office and U.N. representative at Amnesty’s U.N. office in New York.

With a single veto, these countries can put an end to proposed resolutions on international matters, regardless of other countries’ positions.

The “fragile situation” created by the momentous uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East over the past year and a half highlight the importance of global cooperation and action. The situation “could revert if the global powers don’t step up to the plate,” Díaz told IPS.

Failure to act

In the context of global decision making, “opportunistic alliances and financial opportunities” have “trumped human rights as global powers jockey for influence”, according to Shetty.

A prime example is Syria, which has continued violently cracking down on its own people without restraint. The Syrian government has been shielded by Russia’s and China’s vetoes on a Western- sponsored resolution threatening sanctions against Syria for civilian killings.

“The veto makes no sense,” Omar al Assil, an activist in the Syrian nonviolence movement, told IPS. “It makes people in Syria feel that they have been left alone to face the brutality of the regime, whilst China and Russia continue to sell arms and other countries just go on talking.”

Since the outbreak of Syrian protests in February 2011, over 9,000 people have been killed, according to U.N. estimates.

They have been targeted by weapons provided by Russia, France, Egypt and India, as documented in Amnesty’s 2005 report on arms in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). Russia is reportedly Syria’s biggest arms provider, while France supplied the country with more than 1.25 million dollars worth of munitions between 2005 and 2009.

Critiquing Amnesty

While a critical eye upon U.N. proceedings is not undue, the organisation NGO Monitor added a new layer to an already complex situation when on Wednesday it presented the results of its research into NGO conduct in the MENA region.

NGO Monitor concluded that organisations including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch had neglected to expose human rights violations in the decade leading up to the uprisings.

Syria again stood out as a case in point. U.N.-accredited organisations had been operating on a policy of “file and forget”, said Gerald M. Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor.

“Amnesty is the most influential NGO in the framework of the human rights council. Where was it on the issue of Syrian violation of human rights for the last decade? Criticism should begin at home, before blaming outside powers,” Steinberg told IPS.

Meanwhile, in Syria, activists have taken the promotion of peace into their own hands, with the Syrian non-violence movement rallying people in peaceful acts of resistance, even as violence rages between the Syrian army and the loose network of resistance fighters known as the Free Syrian Army.

“Our weapon is civil disobedience,” said Assil. Civil disobedience through “strikes, the delayed payment of bills, and the blocking of traffic in Damascus” is seen as a means of involving those who fear speaking out against the regime.

It sends the message to the government that Syrians will not accept the torture, killings and detention of fellow civilians.

Although the free flow of arms allows for brutal crackdowns on protests, silencing individuals critical of oppressive states, “the violence makes us more determined,” Assil continued.

“After being held in detention centres, we participate in protests the next day. It reminds us that it is no longer about reforms – we need complete change.”

The Arms Trade Treaty

The international community has attempted to restrict the transfer of arms in conflict zones including, Bahrain, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Yemen, but “arms embargoes are usually a case of ‘too little, too late’ when faced with human rights crises,” said Helen Hughes, Amnesty’s principal arms trade researcher on the 2005 report.

“The current framework is inadequate,” Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty’s Africa program director, told IPS. “An Arms Trade Treaty with a strong human rights language…would address some of the problems we are seeing today.”

Without comprehensive, legally binding international rules governing the arms trade, guns, bullets, tanks, missiles and rockets frequently end up in conflict zones and in the hands of those who commit war crimes and grave human rights abuses.

The Arms Trade Treaty has been in the making since 2006, and definitive discussions on its development are due in July of this year.

“The challenge now is that it is a strong treaty that ensures no arms are exported to countries where they might be used to commit human rights violations,” Van der Borght told IPS.

Amnesty’s report urged the international community to support grassroots struggles for justice by controlling the free flow of arms, realigning strategic interests in terms of greater global responsibility and following the lead of those whose collective moves for justice have set an example for leadership.

But by the same token, Amnesty should adhere to its own standards for global leadership through greater accountability and self-criticism.

“Protestors have shown that change is possible. They have thrown down a gauntlet demanding that governments stand up for justice, equality and dignity,” said Shetty.

“After an auspicious start, 2012 must become the year of action,” he added, and Amnesty is not exempt.

(END)

The Security Council meets to consider the maintenance of international peace and security, but political wrangling often prevents swift action. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 15 2012 (IPS)

The 193-member General Assembly is expected to vote on a resolution – described as “historic” – requesting the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council to consider “refraining from using their vetoes on action aimed at preventing or ending genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

But the P5 has already indicated that the General Assembly, the U.N.’s highest policymaking body, has no business offering such recommendations to the Security Council.

The resolution, being co-sponsored by five of the world’s smallest member states, namely Costa Rica, Jordan, Liechtenstein, Singapore and Switzerland, is aimed at “enhancing the accountability, transparency and effectiveness of the Security Council” with the long list of recommendations.

The five countries, who describe themselves as the “Small Five” (S5) are in a virtual battle with the P5. A vote is expected later this week.

“It’s an uneven battle,” an Asian diplomat told IPS, “but still, let’s see how the voting goes.”

The resolution is being strongly backed by a coalition of non- governmental organisations (NGOs), including the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect and the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), a court that tries those accused of war crimes and genocide.

Asked how confident he was that the Security Council will go along if the resolution is adopted, William Pace, convenor of the CICC told IPS the S5 resolution properly asks the General Assembly to make recommendations to the Security Council, as one principal organ to another.

Such a resolution, he said, would not be binding, but the political and moral impact of such a resolution over time could be tremendous.

“If the General Assembly were to adopt the S5 resolution, and the Council to implement the 20 recommendations, it could result in one of the most important advances in the Security Council,” Pace said.

As a result, he said, millions of lives would be saved and scores of wars and rebellions could be prevented during the next 30 years.

In a statement released here, James Christie, chair of the Council of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy, said his organisation “strenuously disagrees” with the P5 contention that the General Assembly should keep out of Security Council affairs.

“That the General Assembly elects 10 (non-permanent) members of the Security Council every two years and that the General Assembly authorises the budgets proposed by the Security Council are only two major reasons such a view of the P5 is irrational,” he added.

Pace commended the S5 for having the courage of its convictions to co-sponsor the five-page resolution which recommends several measures “for consideration by the permanent members of the Security Council”.

These include “explaining the reasons for resorting to a veto or declaring its intention to do so, in particular with regard to its consistency with the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations and applicable international law.

“A copy of the explanation should be circulated as a separate Security Council document to all members of the organisation,” he said. The resolution has taken added importance in view of the two vetoes cast last year by Russia and China over a Western-sponsored resolution threatening sanctions against Syria for the killings of civilians.

According to U.N. figures, more than 7,500 civilians, on both sides of the conflict, have died since the uprising began in March 2011.

The Security Council was also slow in reacting to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda where over 500,000 were killed.

In April 1994, the Council condemned the killings but refused to describe it as “genocide”.

Pace told reporters that the S5 resolution has no bearing on the ongoing negotiations for the reform and expansion of the Security Council which he described as “divisive” because it also involves an amendment to the U.N. charter.

In a statement released here, Dr. Andres Serbin, chair of the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect, said Article 24 (2) of the U.N. charter clearly requires that all decisions of the Security Council, including the use of the veto “must be made in a manner that are consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations”.

Tragically, he pointed out, almost every year and even at present, the international community witnesses Council deliberations where use of the veto (or its misuse) is inconsistent with these provisions – a situation that this measure in the resolution attempts to address.

Meanwhile, in a letter to member states, the S5 say that a draft text of the resolution was presented about a year ago “hoping to engage the Security Council on a constructive dialogue about our proposals.

“After a year of consultations, we believe that the time is ripe to give the General Assembly an opportunity to pronounce itself on the issue.”

The only self-interest the S5 has, the letter says, is to make the United Nations work a little better.

Currently, the Council has 15 members: the P5 and 10 non-permanent members which are elected every two years on a geographical basis.

The letter adds: “Most of us are (non-permanent) members of the Security Council once in a lifetime. Some have never been or will never be.

“Now, we are offering you a toolbox which allows the wider membership to be better informed and consulted on what is going on in the Council.”

Seeking support from the membership, the letter says: “Would you keep things as they are or would you rather prefer to be treated with some more transparency and openness. The choice is yours.”

(END)

After three years of frozen relations between North Korea and the United States, the two longstanding adversaries are on the verge of a thaw.

In what has been called the “leap day deal”, North Korea has pledged to stop uranium enrichment and suspend nuclear and missile tests. The United States, meanwhile, will deliver 240,000 metric tonnes of food to the country’s malnourished population.

The Barack Obama administration has maintained a policy of “strategic patience” toward North Korea, which amounted to a wait-and-see approach while Washington was preoccupied with other foreign policy issues. Obama administration officials portray the leap day deal as a modest first step in reengaging the North.

“After the really tough sanctions that were put in place by the U.N. Security Council and the North Koreans announced that they wanted to return to Six-Party Talks, talks that they had previously abandoned, we and our allies made clear that North Korea needed to take a number of steps that would demonstrate their seriousness of purpose,” said a senior U.S. official at a background briefing on Feb. 29.

“We were firm that we were only interested in credible negotiations leading to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.”

The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in late 2011 interrupted the preparatory steps toward this deal. Although the country remains officially in its 100-day mourning period, the leader’s youngest son and successor, Kim Jong Un, has continued key elements of his father’s policies. Foremost among these is the more energetic diplomacy North Korea has conducted over the last year.

As the Obama administration attempts a “Pacific pivot” to refocus its geopolitical energies from the Middle East to Asia, North Korea has been executing a pivot of its own. The centennial of the birth of the country’s founder Kim Il Sung, 2012 is also the year that North Korea has pledged to achieve the status of kangsong taeguk: an economically prosperous and militarily strong country.

To attract the economic investment necessary to achieve this goal, North Korea has reached out to friend and foe alike.

North Korea has been negotiating with Russia, for instance, over a natural gas pipeline that would extend down the peninsula to customers in South Korea and possibly Japan. Extensive deals with China have been concluded over access to minerals and ports. Even inter-Korean relations, which bottomed out over the last several years as a result of low-level military clashes and high-level belligerent rhetoric, promise to improve as both ruling party and opposition party leaders in the South lean toward a more conciliatory policy.

Meanwhile, the industrial zone at Kaesong, run by 123 South Korean firms on North Korean territory, has expanded to employ more than 50,000 North Korean workers.

But the focus of the North Korean negotiating strategy has been the United States, with whom it has frequently insisted on bilateral discussions.

“The North Koreans have been interested in reaching some accommodation with the United States for a while now,” observed Joel Wit, a former State Department official and currently a visiting fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

“It’s been a year now that they’ve been sending signals that they’re interested in talking and taking some limited steps forward. The Obama administration didn’t take them up on it because the South Koreans were against it. But South Korea’s position changed last summer,” he said.

Another reason for the North Korean pivot is its perennial push-pull relationship with China.

“The North Koreans feel that they’ve become very close to China over the past few years because of the U.S. policy of ‘strategic patience,’ which has forced them into the Chinese arms,” Wit continued. “But the North Koreans aren’t comfortable with that. They’re trying to create some distance with the Chinese, using the United States as a balancer.”

U.S. reaction to the leap day deal has ranged from relief at North Korea’s moratorium on testing and missile launches to scepticism that the deal represents anything new.

“North Korea’s promise to suspend certain nuclear activities can’t be taken at face value, given the almost certain existence of several undeclared nuclear facilities,” said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a press statement. “Pyongyang will likely continue its clandestine nuclear weapons program right under our noses. We have bought this bridge several times before.”

North Korea, meanwhile, seems to interpret the agreement somewhat differently from the United States. A Korean Central News Agency article reported that the Six-Party Talks would prioritise “the lifting of sanctions on the DPRK and provision of light water reactors”, neither of which are mentioned in U.S. government statements.

The humanitarian community has reacted with unambiguous support for the resumption of food aid, which will consist of nutritional supplements designed particularly for children and pregnant women.

“There have been over six nutritional assessments, most everything done on our own dime, to verify that there is a need for food,” says Robert Springs, the head of Global Resource Services, one of the five NGOs involved in the last round of U.S. food aid distribution. “We welcome this nutritional assistance. It’s responding to a need. It should have been done a long time ago.”

A new round of multilateral negotiations through the Six-Party Talks has not yet been announced. North Korea must first make arrangements for International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to return to the country after being expelled in 2009. Monitoring protocols for the U.S. food aid deliveries must also be negotiated.

U.S. officials remain upbeat. “They’re doing it within the 100-day mourning period that’s self-declared in North Korea,” says a senior administration official. “So it shows that they’re interested with some alacrity to reach out, to get back to the table, and begin to try to make diplomatic progress, and I think that’s a positive sign.”

(END)

Three years of deployment of naval fleets by some of the major powers has failed to stamp out the modestly-equipped, ransom-seeking pirates. Credit: Surface Warrior/CC By 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 21 2012 (IPS)

The international community has failed to grapple with the real underlying political and economic issues facing the troubled East African nation of Somalia, which has been surviving without an effective government for over two decades, according to a new study released here.

With the country’s 3,300-km coastline virtually unprotected, industrial fishing vessels from Europe and Asia have entered the area in large numbers and are plundering Somalia’s rich maritime resources.

“Having over-fished their home waters, these sophisticated factory ships are seeking catch in one of the world’s richest remaining fishing zones,” says the report published by the New York-based Global Policy Forum (GPF).

“The foreign boats are illegal, unreported and unregulated – part of a growing international criminal fishing enterprise,” it says.

Authored by Suzanne Dershowitz and James Paul, the report was released ahead of a high-level international conference on Somalia scheduled to take place in London Feb. 23.

Despite the efforts of the African Union (AU), the United Nations and the international community, international policy towards Somalia is not succeeding, admits the British government, which is convening the London meeting, to be hosted by Prime Minister David Cameron.

“After 20 years of sliding backwards, Somalia needs a step-change in effort both from the international community, but also Somalia’s political leaders,” the report adds.

The organisers are expecting around 40 governments to attend the London conference, along with representatives of the United Nations, the AU, the European Union (EU), World Bank, the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development, the Organisation of Islamic Conference, and the League of Arab States.

Britain has also invited representatives of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Institutions, as well as the presidents of Somaliland, Puntland, Galmudug and Ahlu Sunnah wal Jamaah (ASWJ).

The GPF reports says: “The battles off the coast of Somalia are closely connected to the onshore crisis in the country, where again we find heavy foreign use of military force.”

During the Cold War, the primary importance of Somalia was its geostrategic location. Today, there are new interests, including mineral reserves of iron ore, tin, uranium, copper and other metals.

U.S., Australian, Canadian and Chinese and other companies are already at work to tap these rich resources.

Somalia remains the prototypical “failed state” – a government that does not rule over its national territory. The Cold War drew the country into regional rivalries and conflict, including the brutal Ogaden War with Ethiopia.

The Somali army grew to be one of Africa’s largest and a military dictatorship ruled. Eventually, the unpopular and bankrupt state collapsed. There followed a series of failed foreign military interventions to restore order.

A U.N. peacekeeping force (UNISOM I – 1992) was soon followed by a U.S. military force (UNITAF – 1992-93), and then another U.N. peacekeeping mission (UNOSOM II – 1993-95).

Still, after three years of deployment of naval fleets by some of the major powers, and in spite of their massive electronic gear and aerial surveillance systems, they have not stamped out the modestly-equipped, ransom-seeking pirates. In fact, pirate attacks apparently have increased substantially since 2008, the GPF report says.

Predictably, the navies have done nothing whatsoever about the other “pirates” – the illegal fishing operators and the toxic dumpers.

James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum and co-author of the new report on Somalia, remains sceptical of the upcoming London Conference.

He told IPS the conference claims to represent an improved international response to the crisis in Somalia, but in fact it is just escalation of the same old strategy of violence.

“Far from addressing root causes and using a holistic approach as the UK government has announced, the conference seeks mainly to rally public opinion around more violence, more intervention, and more counterterrorism options that have failed for the past 20 years and are failing today,” he said.

“We should remember that the conference will be giving its implicit blessing to the recent invasions from Ethiopia and Kenya, that it will be tacitly approving the drone strikes and secret military operations bein gcarried out by the UK, the U.S., France and perhaps others,” he added.

It will also turn its eyes away from the secret prisons, targeted assassinations, shadowy military contractors, and extremely violent behaviour of the African Union forces, which act under the authorisation of the U.N. Security Council, he said.

Some human rights and humanitarian NGOs have been promoting this kind of narrow approach, but the most constructive stance is to reject the violence-centered military policies, as the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs did in “an important and courageous statement” in December of last year, he added.

Paul said the violence-prone naval approach has not worked, because it ignores the illegal foreign fishing and toxic waste dumping that is taking place off the Somali coast.

The fishing and dumping provokes the piracy and has led ordinary Somalis to approve the piracy as a legitimate form of national defence.

But powerful members of the Security Council, notably the U.S. and the UK, have blocked any action on fishing and dumping.

“They pretend that there is no information about the matter, even while their naval fleets are closely monitoring the movement of all ships in Somali waters,” Paul said. “So much for root causes and holistic approaches. Violence is virtually the only option allowed onto the table in London.”

Excerpt:

When Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin briefed reporters recently, he offered some biting criticisms of the growing political manipulation of the most powerful body at the United Nations: the 15-member Security Council.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin had strong words for the veto-wielding Western powers, although analysts point out Russia is hardly blameless. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

Implicitly targeting some of the Western nations – specifically the United States, UK and France – he said “words no longer mean what they used to be”.

When Security Council resolution 1973 approved a “no-fly zone” inside Libya last March, it was meant to neutralise the Libyan air force and prevent it from bombing civilian demonstrators.

Accusing the military forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) of exceeding their authority, Churkin said that in the good old days, “no-fly zone meant nobody is flying.”

“In the brave new world, no fly zone means free-wheeling bombing of targets which you choose to bomb in whatever modality and mode you want, including the bombing of TV stations,” he said.

“It is of grave concern to us to see the enormous ability of some of our colleagues to interpret resolutions” to suit their own interests, he added.

“It was not a perfect day for diplomacy, and it was not a perfect day to work in the Security Council,” said Churkin, who currently holds the rotating monthly presidency of the Security Council.

After another divisive meeting of the Council last week, Churkin complained, “I saw every trick in the book thrown at me, short of trying to strangulate the president of the Security Council.”

But the accusations against the three veto-wielding permanent members of the Council – the United States, UK and France, and their allies – can be equally applied to the other two permanent members, Russia and China.

As they try to protect their own political, economic and military interests worldwide, the Big Five have remained deadlocked on several political hotspots, including Yemen, Bahrain and Israel (protected by the three Western powers) and Syria and Iran (protected by Russia and China).

Chris Toensing, editor of the Washington-based Middle East Report, told IPS that Churkin’s criticisms cannot be taken at face value because Russia’s narrow interests have so clearly driven its own behaviour at the Security Council this year.

“I don’t buy Russian outrage over Libya. (Former U.S. Defence Secretary) Robert Gates was crystal clear, long before the vote on Security Council resolution 1973, that a no-fly zone would be preceded by massive bombing,” Toensing said.

The Russian and Chinese decision to abstain on resolution 1973 was a case of sacrificing a regime to which they had minimal ties.

“Where they do have meaningful ties, as in Syria, they dig in. The United States has, of course, used the Security Council in an equally utilitarian fashion,” said Toensing, who is also the executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP).

James A. Paul, executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum, told IPS the Security Council is a political body that operates despotically.

It has 15 members, including five permanent members, but in fact it is run almost exclusively by the P-3: the United States, the UK and France, he said.

Those three countries draft the great majority of the resolutions and shape the business of the Council in every way, said Paul, who closely monitors the workings of the Security Council on a daily basis.

Most importantly, he pointed out, the P-3 count on the more-or-less automatic support of at least six of the 10 elected members, meaning that they have a voting bloc that can carry nearly any resolution.

Through pressure and mutual deals, they can often bring all Council members, including China and Russia, into their orbit.

“This P-3 domination is increasingly anomalous, in light of the waning global power of these states, but their hegemony in the Council remains very strong,” he noted.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS the Security Council has always been manipulated by the prerogatives of the P5 – the United States, UK, France, China and Russia.

The biggest change in recent years, he pointed out, is that P5 members used to allow resolutions critical of allies to be adopted, but simply made sure they were under Chapter VI (peaceful settlement of disputes) rather than Chapter VII (measures to prevent breach of peace and acts of aggression).

“For decades, the U.S. and its allies supported or abstained on resolutions aimed at Indonesia, Morocco or Israel regarding their territorial conquests, for example, but made sure they were never enforced through sanctions or other mechanisms,” Zunes said.

More recently, however, members of the P5 have been more prone to veto such resolutions, prevent them from coming to a vote, or insist on watering them down until they are meaningless, said Zunes, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council.

A case in point: In the 1970s, the United States abstained or voted in favour of four resolutions citing the illegality of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and calling on the Israelis to dismantle them.

This February, however, the United States vetoed a resolution which reiterated their illegality and simply called on Israel to freeze the construction of additional settlements.

“Unfortunately, this trend is likely to escalate as a result of NATO’s decision to go well beyond the mandate granted in the Security Council resolution to enforce a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians and instead effectively become the air force of the Libyan rebels,” Zunes said.

This has undoubtedly contributed to the Chinese and Russian willingness to block even such reasonable Security Council initiatives as the recent draft resolutions on Syria, he added.

Paul told IPS that during 2011, there has been an interesting group of elected members on the Council, namely, India, Brazil and South Africa, in particular, bringing a spirit of independence.

“And they have not always been willing to go along with the P-3,” he said, pointing out that they have preferred alternative policies, especially the use of mediation and negotiation, as opposed to the use of force.

“They are sufficiently strong member states to withstand pressure from the P-3, and they have strong, democratically-based political systems, that do not simply replicate Western thinking or follow in the wake of Western interests,” Paul said.

Western critics of the Council these days often argue that it is blocked by spoilers who are preventing urgent humanitarian action in places like Syria.

This is missing the point, since the evidence is very strong that the Western powers do not act on the basis of human rights or humanitarian motives, he said.

The blockages reflect the insistence of the P-3 to have their way in a changing world, coming up against new and emerging power alignments.

“This reminds us that the Security Council is an organ in great need of membership reform, if it is to play a creative role for peace and better reflect the world that is emerging and not the world of 1945,” Paul added.