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With Bush's Man Installed, Is This the End of Diplomacy? •
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Britain Heads for Clash with US
By Ewen MacAskill
The Guardian UK
Saturday 27 August 2005
Disagreement over America's bid to derail UN reform.
Britain will join an international alliance to confront George Bush and salvage as much as possible of an ambitious plan to reshape the United Nations and tackle world poverty next week .
The head-to-head in New York on Monday comes after the revelation that the US administration is proposing wholesale changes to crucial parts of the biggest overhaul of the UN since it was founded more than 50 years ago.
A draft of that plan had included a review of progress on the UN's millennium development goals - poverty eradication targets set in 2000 for completion by 2015 - and the introduction of reforms aimed at repairing the damage done to the UN's reputation by Iraq, Rwanda and the Balkans.
But it was revealed this week that Mr. Bush's new ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, was seeking 750 changes to the 36-page draft plan to be presented to a special summit in New York on September 14 to 16. Mr. Bolton's amendments, if successful, would leave the plan in tatters.
The Foreign Office confirmed yesterday that Britain was standing behind the original plan, putting it at odds with Mr. Bush.
The concern in British and other international circles is that the American objections, if adopted, would severely undermine the UN summit, the biggest-ever gathering of world leaders.
At least 175 world leaders have accepted an invitation to attend. The UN said yesterday that Mr. Bush had confirmed that he would be there.
A wide range of organizations, from aid groups to the anti-arms lobby, voiced dismay about Mr. Bolton's objections yesterday and expressed concern that the summit may end in failure.
The Make Poverty History campaign said there was a danger that the millennium development goals, the original reason for holding the summit, would be reduced to a footnote.
A source close to the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan said it was too early to declare the UN plan dead. "Bolton wants to knock down the plan and start from scratch," the source said. "He will find that his opinions are not shared by most of the rest of the world."
The president of the UN general assembly, Jean Ping from the Gambia, has been working on the draft, covering issues of poverty, climate change, genocide, small arms, the creation of a permanent UN peacekeeping capability and reform of the UN management structure, for the past year.
A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday that the UK and the European Union, of which Britain holds the presidency, "are broadly content with the summit draft. It reflects the ambitious agenda thrown up by Kofi Annan".
The spokesman said it was "important that we do not row back from previous high-level summits", such as the G8 meeting at Gleneagles in July and the UN millennium summit in 2000.
He stressed that a lot of negotiation on the draft still lay ahead. "There is a long way to go before leaders meet in September."
As well as divisions about the agenda, the summit is in danger of being overshadowed by the publication of an internal UN report into the running of the organization's oil-for-food program in Iraq from 1996 to 2003, which was beset by scandal and corruption, by Paul Volcker.
UN officials are worried that Mr. Volcker's final report, tentatively scheduled for September 6, could severely damage Mr. Annan's reputation and raise questions over whether he could continue as secretary-general.
Mr. Bolton's comments provoked a negative reaction from many agencies involved in development work.
Martin Kirk, the public affairs adviser of Save the Children, said this year had promised so much for the world's poor, but, "instead of a breakthrough we are now looking at a possible retreat from the millennium development goals by the UN".
Nicola Reindorp, the head of Oxfam International's New York office, said: "We are less than three weeks away from the UN world summit and the next two weeks are crucial in determining the outcome ... If the US and other governments substantially weaken the outcome document, the summit will result in failure."
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With Bush's Man Installed, Is This the End of Diplomacy?
By Anne Penketh
The Independent UK
Friday 26 August 2005
An American, Franklin D Roosevelt, coined the phrase "United Nations" three years before the representatives of 50 countries met in San Francisco to found the UN in 1945. Ironically, an American, John Bolton, has just dealt a powerful blow to an organisation whose 191 members aimed to mark the UN's 60th birthday by agreeing a blueprint for UN reform.
The UN was born out of the ashes of the Second World War, inaugurating a new era of international optimism and co-operation as the economic underpinnings of the Bretton Woods system, responsible for the birth of institutions such as the World Bank, were put in place.
US support was key to the process: prime real estate land on Manhattan's East River became international territory to house the UN headquarters, thanks to a unanimous invitation from the representatives of the US Congress. The chief architect was an American, and the money to build the 39-storey tower was an interest-free US loan of $65m.
How things have changed. With the arrival of the hawkish Mr. Bolton to do the bidding of George Bush at the UN, relations between the US and the UN have never looked so bad. UN insiders say the US hostility against Kofi Annan, the secretary general, is much worse than during the time of his Egyptian predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who failed to win a second term after being dumped by the Clinton administration.
US support for the UN has ebbed and flowed over the years as the organization has come into conflict with the strategic goals of the world's sole superpower.
During the Cold War, the UN was stalemated, because the Soviet Union and the US systematically used their Security Council vetoes against each other to paralyze UN action. The institution's glory years came in the early 1990s, after the Americans managed to win UN approval in 1991 to roll back the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Although there was an embarrassing silence over the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, UN interventions were on the rise.
But the euphoria at the UN coincided with the first consistent downturn in US support, amid fears in America that the world body was bent on world government, and the organization's competence and integrity was increasingly called into question.
As Ronald Reagan's radical Republicans took power in the White House and in Congress, the first major budget headaches began for the UN, as Washington began withholding the dues that keep it afloat.
Despite the lip service paid by the Clinton administration, the country that foots a quarter of the UN's budget has consistently dragged its heels in paying its dues. Congress, Republican-dominated, is now talking about withholding half of the US contribution unless US-backed changes are implemented.
Enter John Bolton. His nomination was so controversial the President failed to win cross-party backing and he was appointed in a so-called "recess appointment" valid only until the new Congress in January 2007.
But judging from his few weeks in New York, Mr. Bolton is not at the UN to negotiate. Since Madeleine Albright, President Clinton's UN representative, the US delegate has arrived with a rocket in his or her pocket. In the council, if the other delegates do not like what the Americans want, the US no longer hesitates to act without UN blessing.
Now Mr. Bolton is at the UN with a mission. At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama famously decreed the end of history. We could be witnessing the end of diplomacy.
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