L>

Greetings from Global Policy Forum!

In our ongoing effort to improve our web site, we have now started to group our new postings according to topic. You will find this grouping on the "What's New" page as well as in this list- serv message. Several people have already sent us messages to say that they found this useful. We hope you like it too!

Under Security Council, you will find three articles about the diamond trade and the situation in Angola, including a follow-up by Global Witness to the information in their excellent report. The Angola sanctions have proven to be almost completely ineffective, as Angolan diamonds from the UNITA-controlled areas continue to be sold on the world market and as UNITA imports weapons to wage the civil war. These articles take a deeper look at political and economic interests underlying the war. Many countries appear to have a stake in the bloody status quo, including Zambia, South Africa, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland and Israel.

Ambassador Fowler of Canada, the Chairman of the Angola Sanctions Committee, left New York on May 8 on an extended diplomatic and fact-finding mission. We wish him well in this important endeavor. But we offer two recommendations. First, that the sanctions committee, in its search for information, welcome input from concerned citizens and particularly from NGOs. Second, that the sanctions committee invite the United States (and other powers with the technical capacity) to provide it with satellite data that could reveal the flow of light aircraft (that often are used by diamond smugglers) as well as the flow of weapons trafficking. We are convinced that US intelligence knows a great deal about this matter and could easily help to close the loopholes in the sanction regime -- that is, if the US government were not covertly supporting Savimbi.

Like Kosovo, Angola is in large measure an arena of conflict between Russia and the United States. Russia supports the Dos Santos government and has large diamond-mining interests in some areas of the country (Russia is one of the world's largest diamond producers). It is an open secret around the UN that the United States supports Savimbi and that certain important US diamond interests, including Democratic Party magnate Maurice Tempelsman, have made deals with the Savimbi forces. But while the Dos Santos regime leaves much to be desired, it enjoys the legitimacy of a long and arduous peace negotiation in which the United Nations was deeply involved. By overthrowing this process and re-starting the civil war, Washington is opting for a shockingly cruel policy for which the people of Angola are paying a frightful price.

Meanwhile, the Kosovo conflict rages. The U.S. House of Representatives recently voted on several resolutions that addressed U.S. policy in Kosovo. The most important vote failed to authorize additional NATO air strikes, surprising most observers and sending a message that the Congress is split and the public is increasingly dubious about this murderous conflict. Another posting, "Why Presidents Don't Speak the Word War" also considers the politics behind the Kosovo crisis and the political background of US foreign policy more generally.

Under our section on Social/Economic Policy, IMF Director Michel Camdessus discusses the role of private finance in the new financial architecture. We can see in this talk both the worry evoked by recent moments of crisis and the stubborn self- confidence of Camdessus who fundamentally believes, like Doctor Pangloss, that all's for the best, in this best of all possible worlds.

In the section on NGOs, we have a number of documents concerning NGO access to the United Nations. One, a speech by UN Secretary-General Annan, talks about the "powerful partnership for the future" between NGOs and international organizations working together. We have heard such rhetoric often in recent years, but this text is especially interesting.

Unfortunately, such words are scarcely reflected in reality at UN headquarters in New York. In recent weeks, according to reliable reports, the Secretary General's Chief of Staff, Iqbal Riza, has pressed for draconian new measures to restrict NGO access. At GPF, we wish the reality on the thirty-eighth floor were closer to the rhetoric.

NGOs have been asked to give their input to a new report on access to be prepared by the office of the Secretary-General and presented to the General Assembly next fall. On May 5th, the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Status (CONGO) held a meeting at headquarters to discussing the leading issues at stake. Present at the meeting, in addition to many NGO representatives, were several delegations and Secretariat representatives, including representatives from Germany (for the European Union), the United States, China, India and Algeria. GPF is preparing a major paper on NGO access that will be circulated shortly. Meantime, we recommend the excellent brief paper prepared for CONGO by Dennis Frado, the Director of the Lutheran Office for World Community.

We are pleased to announce that the GPF web site has logged nearly 200,000 hits in the past four weeks, double the rate of last year at this time -- and a cumulative projected rate of over two million for the year. To help us attain an even wider outreach, you could provide information that would be of help. We need to know how people are most likely to find our site. So we ask you to email us a list of key words you would use to find our site on internet search engines, e.g. United Nations, Security Council, etc. Also, tell us also which are your preferred search engines. Email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (with "Keyword" in the subject box). Thank you very much.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C íŸ 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.