Will the UN summit be able to achieve its objectives?

UN HQ, New York

The delegations of Third World developing countries may return home empty handed poorer than ever before after spending huge amounts on air travel, hotel tariff, limousine fare and satellite charges to send images of razzle dazzle photo opportunities of rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful for spin back home.

The potential threat to the success of the summit has come from intervention of the new US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton who was appointed unilaterally by President Bush after his nomination for Senate approval was stalemated and mired in serious controversy over his questionable background for the UN position. An arch enemy of UN, the hardliner and abrasive John Bolton earlier remarked, 'There is no such thing as the UN, there is only the international community which can be led by the only superpower which is the United States'. He also observed, 'The UN Headquarters building in New York has 38 stories and if it lost 10 stories it would not make a bit of difference'. He has written in the Wall Street Journal that the US has no obligation to abide by international treaties even when they were signed and ratified. He opposed the International Criminal Court and treaties restricting land mines and biological weapons.

According to foreign press reports, Bolton has proposed 450 wide ranging changes to the 36-page draft plan, embodying UN reforms and poverty eradication target, arrived at by painstaking negotiation and debates over last nine months by the UN General Assembly. The US objection to the plan deletes the pledge to devote 0.7 percent of GDP of developed countries as aid to developing countries; it deletes increasing aid for agriculture and trade opportunities for poor countries; it deletes measures to deal with important climate change; it deletes the document language 'force should be last resort' while dealing with security threat; it deletes NPT's three pillars including disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy; it deletes reference to right of self-determination for those 'who remain under colonial domination and foreign occupation'. The US proposal stresses the right of a state to formulate and enforce national immigration policies and rejects linking migrant worker's issue with human rights. It deletes any mention of human rights altogether; deletes all mention of enhancing the authority of the UN and calls for its efficiency and absolute national sovereignty. It undermines the centrality of the General Assembly to legislate international laws and codify international treaties and offers importance to the Security Council and the US in matters of security and UN internal management oversight.

The summit is also in danger of being overshadowed by the publication of an internal UN report, by the American investigator Paul Volcker, into the running of UN's oil for food programme in Iraq from 1996 to 2003, beset by scandal and corruption. The issue can severely damage Kofi Annan's reputation and raise question whether he could continue as Secretary General. The US is not 'terribly' pleased with Annan's comments on occupation of Iraq.

The so called reform of the existing 15-member Security Council by expansion to 25 members including additional 6 permanent members without veto powers and 4 non-permanent members, it seems , is on hold for now, over American opposition and conflicting claims of the contending countries -- Germany, Japan, India and Brazil and the African countries -- for permanent seats. Reform of the Security Council by expansion of any number of seats without abolishing the veto power of existing 5 countries is a misnomer, an exercise in futility.

Bolton's proposed changes, if adopted, will leave the draft plan in tatters shredding the 30-page document into a three page statement. The changes are horrendous and are a recipe for abandoning impoverished nations, rejecting international law, glorifying ruthless market forces over any attempted regulation and weakening the UN itself. This is unabashed, ascendant and rank US unilateralism. The proposals are a threat to 190 other member states, social movements of entire world and the UN itself.

It is not known how the draft plan will be salvaged. The EU, particularly Britain which holds the current presidency of the EU, notwithstanding its 'sympathy' for the draft plan in all probability, will go along and acquiesce to the changes. G-8 countries recently at Gleneagles, Edinburgh meeting pledged to increase aid to heavily indebted African countries by 48 billion a year and cancel 100 per cent of their multilateral debt. But later it transpired by leaked documents that it was essentially a book keeping exercise without much difference in as much as the increase in aid would come from the fund put aside for debt relief.

The UN, governments, civil societies and peoples around the world must mobilise their concerted efforts to reclaim the UN charter to ensure international cooperation for promoting international peace and security, development and human rights and must not allow Washington's apparently sinister design to turn the UN an adjunct of US foreign policy.

The people of the United States, proud of the pantheon of Thomas Jefferson, F.D Roosevelt and Harry Truman who espoused the values of freedom, human dignity and honour, fairness and justice, must arise to put up a united campaign to re-assert internationalism derided and despised by the Bush White House and its neo-con cohorts seemingly in pursuit of empire. Remaining silent at this hour would be disservice to humanity, to America itself.

Abdul Hannan is a former Press Counselor, Bangladesh UN Mission in New York.