Global Policy Forum

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If Friday, November 19, seemed a bit odd, it was no accident. According to information we received over the internet, that particular day had unique properties. Its date, expressed as 11/19/1999, was entirely composed of odd numbers, a very rare occurrence. Our source affirmed that the next time such a calendrical quirk will occur will be 1/1/3111 -- more than 1111 years in the future.

Perhaps it was the oddness of the day on Friday that put the Security Council in such bad humor. Observers scarcely remember such a rancorous open meeting of the Council during the post-Cold War era. "Tempers flared," said New York Times reporter Barbara Crossette. The Council's elected members gave the public a rare glimpse of their annoyance with the permanent members, and permanent members clashed openly among themselves. Such drama, usually confined to the privacy of the consultation sessions, showed the Council in a decidedly non-consensual mood.

The Council was meeting to renew the "Oil-for-Peace" program for Iraq, a process that usually takes place once every six months. But this time renewal came amid stalled negotiations for a comprehensive new agreement on Iraq. An accord could lead to suspension or lifting of sanctions, in exchange for a new UN disarmament monitoring program. But permanent members have been negotiating in private, among themselves, for many months and remain deeply divided over a possible resolution. The ten elected members of the Council have had virtually no voice in this process.

Netherlands Ambassador Peter van Walsum, Chairman of the Iraq Sanctions Committee, spoke to the meeting of the anger and impatience of the Council's elected members at the P-5. His words (taken here from the verbatim record) are worth quoting at length:

"We have been too intimately involved in the process for us to underestimate the difficulties," he said, "but we cannot conceal the fact that my delegation is far from happy with the way the Iraq file is being handled in the Security Council today. While the P-5 have been struggling with this issue for almost six months, we, the nonpermanent members, have had no more than approximately one progress report per month, courtesy of the United Kingdom delegation. It is possible that this way of functioning and this speed is acceptable to the permanent five. But we, the elected members, simply cannot go on telling the other United Nations members that elected us that we are content to sit and wait for white smoke to emerge from the 'H-5' chambers. I use the expression 'H-5' because in my delegation we have started to call the permanent five 'the hereditary five,' which makes a better contrast with the elected ten.

"We have been happy to go along with the roll-over for two weeks, but for two weeks only, because we hope that this will be a way to keep the pressure on the permanent five to complete their work on an omnibus drat resolution on Iraq within that time period."

And the new resolution followed precisely the ambassador's formula. Though the United States lobbied for a six-month renewal of the program, the final resolution give just a two-week extension -- a clear deadline for US concessions and P-5 action.

The stinging moniker "hereditary five" served as a warning and a measure of the depth of discontent with the permanent members and their special power and privileges. Recalling the recent abolition of hereditary peerage in the British House of Lords, the term has a mocking quality that will give it great power to undermine P-5 claims to special, invulnerable status. By Friday afternoon, UN corridors buzzed with jocular references to "hereditary" members. It was an odd moment to remember.

The humanitarian emergency in Iraq, created by the general UN trade sanctions, deepens periodically when the United States (and sometimes also the UK) blocks approval of contracts for Iraq imports under the UN program, claiming that imports may be destined for weapons programs (so-called "dual use"). Most observers believe that the US imposes these blocks (or "holds") for purely political reasons. Sanctions critics point out that the blocks prevent imports of urgently-needed goods, such as water-treatment machinery, electrical generating spare parts, medicines and hospital equipment. Recently the US has blocked an especially large number of contracts, against the wishes of all other Council members. Ambassador van Walsum's Sanctions Committee inevitably gets the blame.

On Thursday, after an Iraqi complaint, UN sources told Reuters News Agency that $1.042 billion worth of contracts were listed as blocked -- 337 by the United States, 29 by the UK and 23 by both countries. Last spring, UK Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock admitted that these "holds" had been politically abused in the past, but gave assurances that his government was now ready to take a new and more selective approach. United States "holds" show that Washington has been little inclined to follow the lead of its Brittanic junior partner.

As the two-week Council deadline begins to tick, the US government must contend not only with the opinion of the "international community" but also domestic public opposition. Pickets and protesters have dogged Secretary of State Madeleine Albright of late. At a major policy speech she gave in Chicago recently, protesters rose indignantly in the hall, including a number of Catholics in religious orders. Even controversy-shy public television aired a show that raised serious doubts about US policy.

To conclude with other matters, we call your attention to late-breaking developments on the financing of the UN. We have posted various articles on the subject to the site this week. Of note -- not only the Faustian bargain between the Clinton administration and Congress, but also the failure of the grandiose NetAid scheme to fund UNDP. Additionally -- the long awaited report of the Secretary General on NGOs has now been released, after many weeks of delay and months of drafting. We wonder why such a timorous document could have taken such a long time to produce and where it leaves the vexed question of NGO access. We will have more to say in future on the report and its consequences and on UN financial matters as well.

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