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After Millennium Summit
UN Concerns And Priorities

By MR Josse

WHAT are some of the UN’s main concerns and priorities after the much publicised 6-8 September 2000 Millennium Summit which concluded with the adoption by world leaders of a "visionary declaration" on the future of the UN?

EFFECTIVE UN SANCTIONS: One such priority was unambiguously spelt out by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at a dinner in New York recently when he called for more effective UN sanctions saying they should come with built-in incentives for good behaviour.

As he very put it: "States against which sanctions are imposed must believe that if their behaviour changes, the Security Council is genuinely willing to alleviate, suspend or lift the sanctions. Otherwise, they have no real incentive to comply, and ultimately compliance is the only measure of success."

While he acknowledged that sanctions could be used to change the behaviour of a government posing a threat to international peace and security, he "deeply regret the continuing suffering of the Iraqi people" and expressed the "hope that sanctions imposed on Iraq can be lifted sooner rather than later."

Advocating the case for UN sanctions to offer "carrots as well as sticks", the UN top official also pointed out" "Over time, the existence of a sanctions regime almost inevitably transforms an entire society for the worse, as sanctions-evaders, smugglers and the like rise to the top of the socio-economic ladder."

In his balanced view, "If we want to punish let us punish the guilty, and if we want to bring about change, let us target the powerful, not the powerless."

Before moving on to another key UN priority, let us just recall that UN sanctions were effective, for instance, in persuading Libya to hand over two suspects now on trial before an international court in the Netherlands for the 1998 bombing of Pam Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

It should however also be noted that, because of the impact of UN sanctions on Iraq’s powerless segment of its population, even two of its five permanent Security Council members — France and Russia — have recently authorised humanitarian flights to Iraq in which the United States has described as a challenge to the sanctions regime.

Another significant recent UN-related development concerns the blocking of a Bangladeshi proposal that the Security Council help overcome a shortage in peacekeeping personnel by the P-Five states pledging to provide a quarter of all UN peacekeeping personnel.

ALL SHOULD CONTRIBUTE: That idea was apparently sparked by a reference to Kofi Annan’s question at a press conference last month asking" "Can the Council adopt resolutions that require us to deploy troops, and those in the Council do nothing?"

Annan was speaking after Jordan, one of the top troop contributors to the UN force in Sierra Leone, announced it was pulling out its 1,800 contingent by the end of the year. Annan explained that one of Jordan’s reason for doing so was her belied hope that there would be more countries from the developing world joining them on the ground.

It may also be noted that in a recent report to the Security Council, Annan appealed to member states "in particular those with large and well-equipped armed forces, to urgently consider participating in UNAMSIL with troops and/or equipment."

The abortive proposal of Bangladesh, presently a Security Council member, was to amend a Council resolution to commit each of the five permanent members to contribute five per cent of the troops to each peacekeeping operation.

In Bangladesh’s view, its proposal "would not only have ensured the commitment of the permanent members of the Council, but also given credibility to the peacekeeping missions in the future."

(Incidentally, one cannot help but wonder if HMG have developed a position on that interesting initiative not only because Nepal has/thus far, twice served on the Security Council but also since she has a long history of participating in UN peacekeeping operations dating as far back as 1958.)

In the event, it did not fly because it failed to secure the agreement of the Big Give whose contribution — in terms of personnel — is exceedingly skimpy.

As much is indicated by the fact that while Britain, France and Russia have provided a total of 641 peacekeeping soldiers, together with China and the US they have supplied 1,671 police or military observers in all out of a grand total of 38,000 UN troops and civilian police currently serving in 15 peacekeeping operations around the world.

Incidentally, the mood of the Big Five is reflected in the British ambassador to the UN’s retort: "All member states should consider what they can contribute, not just some, not just those which with a large capacity." Contributions to peacekeeping, in his view, ought to be "proportionate and collective."

UN ROLE IN WEST ASIA: Yet another key UN concern spelt out in recent days is the comment of its Secretary-General in a Paris interview wherein he suggested that the Security Council could take charge of Jerusalem’s holy sites via a committee made up of Israelis, Arabs and Christians.

He referred to such a body as a sort of "administrative council (a board) with a governor" that would resolve differences in the city with sites holy to Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

Though official reactions to that off-the-cuff proposal are still awaited, uncertain too, at this time, are prospects for an extra $ 60 million in the UN’s next two-year budget to improve security of UN personnel around the world that Annan said he would seek.

Without security for the UN’s security staff it would be utopian to pin outlandish hopes on the world body, irrespective of the declarations of the Millennium Summit: three UN relief workers in West Timor and one in Guinea were killed after that event.

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