Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
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Global Policy Forum List-Serv
GPF List-Serve
September 20 - 24, 1999
Greetings from Global Policy Forum,
The General Assembly opened on Monday, September 20. All week long the neighborhood has been in a state of high security as Bill Clinton, Lionel Jospin, Yasser Arafat, Joschka Fischer and other global personalities have come and gone. Serious, beefy guys with wires coming out of their ears paced around everywhere. Security snipers dressed in black stood on the roof of the GA building. Armored limos rolled by. Sniffer dogs, paced in their cages, near temporary concrete barricades, while ominous black vans with tinted windows parked on the sidewalk. Lights flashed, motorcades whirled by, sirens wailed, walkie-talkies crackled. "You can't go that way, sir." "Sorry, the street is closed."
During this time, the really important action takes place not in the GA Chamber, where the leaders give their set speeches, but in private meetings, where negotiations take place, deals are struck, and diplomatic bargains arrived at. For a time, it was hoped that the Foreign Ministers of the P-5 would meet and finally approve a deal on Iraq. Hans von Sponek, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, called for a lifting of sanctions to allow for the basic necessities for ordinary Iraqis. And UNICEF issued a powerful report on child malnutrition in Iraq. So rumors flew that an agreement would emerge after a preparatory meeting of P-5 negotiators in London last week. The Ministers met in New York, but in the end, nothing materialized. The Iraq tragedy continues.
The post-Kosovo mood at the UN has proven sharply critical of the NATO action last spring. Even many NATO members appear chastened in retrospect. One European ambassador, whose country took part in the operation, referred recently to NATO's bombing as "marginally legal" (a polite way of saying "illegal") while another admitted that his country acted against overwhelming public opposition. Secretary General Annan took up the theme of Kosovo unequivocally in his official report to the GA and again in his opening speech (posted on the site this week). In the report, Annan said: "… enforcement actions without Security Council authorization threaten the very core of the international security system founded on the Charter of the United Nations. Only the Charter provides a universally accepted legal basis for the use of force." And he went on to say: "if the primacy of the Security Council with respect to the maintenance of international peace and security is rejected, the very foundations of international law as represented by the Charter will be brought into question." Quite blunt language for a Secretary General.
One of the most impressive personalities in town was Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, an energetic man, who combines the qualities of a longtime politician who has served more than twenty years in the Canadian parliament and those of a scholar who has taught at Winnepeg University and holds a Ph.D. from Princeton. He has taken long-standing Canadian support for the United Nations and pushed it further, especially in the area of "human security." At a New York dinner on September 23, Axworthy spoke of Canada's deep frustration during its current term on the Security Council (where it must deal with the P-5). He talked about Canadian efforts to improve the Council's work and about the hopeful path of strengthened sanctions in Angola to which the Canadian delegation is so strongly committed.
President Clinton's Tuesday morning appearance at the General Assembly drew little enthusiasm from the diplomatic audience in the hall, as applause hardly reached the "polite" level. Everyone was thinking about the huge US debt that he has failed to reduce. The President made his usual weak reference to the subject: "we'll do our very best to succeed this year," impressing no one. A number of editorials in US newspapers this week took far more forceful positions than Mr. Clinton. The Chicago Tribune, for example, said the US debt to the UN has "gone way past humiliating and shameless. It is also ludicrous, needless and intolerable."
In another shameless and intolerable development in Washington, the DC-based Institute for International Finance, a powerful lobby group for 300 banks, insurance companies and investment houses, sent out an aggressive letter to the world's finance ministers. Stung by criticism that they were responsible for the crises in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, the financiers warned that they will not tolerate moves towards regulation and insisted that they will not accept financial responsibility for the human and economic problems that have arisen. "The preoccupation with burden sharing is counterproductive,'' the IFI stated in their letter. ''Private lenders and investors have a responsibility to maximize shareholder value. Officials have broader responsibilities to foster global security and to advance social objectives.'' In short: it's up to governments to clean up when private investors make a mess. For details, see the article by InterPress Service entitled "Revenge of the Financiers" in our postings for this week.
At GPF we added new members to our fall team this week. Returning as our specialist in sanctions policy is Yuko Suzuki of New York University. In addition, we welcome Alexander Arbuckle of Montclair State University and Eleanor Lumsdon of New York University Law School.
