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[size=+1]Bush team plays hardball on reform plans for UN[/size] 29/08/2005
The US has finally shown its hand-on reform of the United Nations. Sean O'Driscoll in New York examines what critics will see as a regressive intervention by controversial American ambassador John Bolton. But some think he may be right . . .
It was billed as a radical transformation of the United Nations but by the middle of last week the Bush administration had all but ripped it apart.
John Bolton, the new United States ambassador to the world body, introduced an unprecedented 750 amendments to the UN's reform proposals, just three weeks before heads of state were to implement the organisation's most far-reaching restructuring since it came into being in October 1945.
As one of only five permanent members with veto powers on the 15-member Security Council, the body charged with maintaining international peace and security, the US looks set to bring the reform process to a halt with a barrage of amendments designed to break the UN's resolve on the environment, world health, African development and dozens of other measures, including Aids and TB funding.
At the same time, it is hoping to increase the emphasis on anti-terrorism measures and reform of UN management at a time when the UN is gripped by the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.
In a leaked letter to fellow UN ambassadors, Bolton suggested that the 38-page reform package might have to be scrapped completely and asked other countries to be "open to alternative formats if they help us achieve consensus".
Last week, a copy of the Bolton amendments was obtained by The Irish Times. They contain individual edits by named State Department officials on various dates between August 9th and August 12th, just one month before the UN delegates arrive in New York.
The amendments show the US is fundamentally opposed to increasing its foreign aid capacity to 0.7 per cent of national income (the goal set for all nations but achieved by hardly any, Ireland included) and has slashed dozens of proposals aimed at putting definite implementation dates on UN environmental and development conventions.
One amendment deletes proposals to help the victims of terrorism "around the world", as the US fears this may be used against pro-American governments or political movements. It also deletes a statement that military action against member states "should be considered as an instrument of last resort".
On development issues, virtually no paragraph remains unchanged, with references to "concrete measures", "fast tracking" and "timetables" either watered down or deleted completely.
One amendment deletes the word "urgently" from a plan to help African trade. A proposal to set "time-bound indicators" on an agreement to help Africa is also struck out.
A call for "developed countries" to help Africa is changed to "all countries", while measures to help African countries suffering from Aids, malaria and TB by 2010 are also deleted.
In other areas, the US deletes references to "global governance", development aid "arriving in a timely manner" and "the establishment of timetables" to finance developing countries.
The US also seeks to stop the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
The goals are a set of eight targets drawn up at the UN Millennium Summit five years ago to slash a host of socio-economic problems by 2015, including halving extreme poverty and cutting child mortality rates by two-thirds.
The US deletes a sentence which regrets the "slow and uneven implementation of the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals".
The amendments also show that the US wants to weaken dozens of environmental measures and refuses to recognise that global warming is harming the planet.
It agrees that there should be "sustainable" management of "all types of forests" but deletes a reference to the "conservation" of these same forests.
Definite measures to help developing countries overcome the "adverse affects of climate change" are also rejected, as is a recognition that global warming will eventually threaten the world's population.
The amendments also delete a call on members to sign the Convention of Biological Diversity, and definite measures to slow the loss of biodiversity by 2010.
Perhaps the US position is summed up by agreeing to "pledge to make the United Nations more relevant, more effective, more efficient and more credible" while deleting the rest of the sentence, which would "provide the organisation with the resources needed to fully implement its mandates".
Environment and development groups have rushed to denounce the US proposals.
Greenpeace USA spokeswoman, Jane Kochersperger, said the international community should not allow the Bush agenda to dictate important UN reforms.
"There are all these deletions of any reference to climate change and it doesn't surprise us," she said.
"We saw with the G8 summit how much the big oil companies are allowed to influence US policy so that any attempt to address environmental issues gets completely watered down."
Colum Lynch, The Washington Post's UN correspondent who broke the story of the Bolton amendments, maintains that Bolton was getting "way too much credit" for causing so much trouble.
"Nowadays, UN drafts go through a long interagency process, so you're seeing the hands of a lot of US government people in all those deletions," he said.
Lynch and other UN correspondents were not invited to a reception Mr Bolton held for Fox News, The Washington Times and other media outlets on the night that news of the Bolton amendments broke.
"I have a bubbly two-year-old daughter, I'd rather spend the time with her than with John Bolton, but it was kind of extraordinary that the invitees were cherry-picked like that," Lynch said.
He said some of the Bolton measures will prove to be internationally unpopular, such as deleting one that would speed up Security Council action on genocide. "That proposal was suggested because of China's unwillingness to move on Darfur. Here we have the US trying to delete it," he said. With Bolton saying little about the amendments, it was left to a spokeswoman for the US mission to the UN, Monica Cummings, to field questions.
She said the US had made it "abundantly clear" that it is willing to negotiate but certain core principles were at stake, such as terrorism prevention and reform of the UN human rights body.
"The core issues we are really trying to address are the UN management practices, the adoption of the Convention of Terrorism, the Human Rights Commission and the Democracy Fund," she said.
I put it to her that countries like the Maldives Islands, which some scientists believe could be under water in 20 years because of rising sea levels, are far more interested in the threat of global warming than the threat of terrorism.
"There are treaties and things that are already addressing those," she said. "The finished document we hope to get would generally reference some of these items but they would not be our focus."
For Edward Luck, a UN expert and professor of international affairs at Columbia University, the US position may be misunderstood and the "diplomatic train wreck" is a result of overambition in the UN.
"As a proud Democrat, I'm certainly no John Bolton fan but it has taken this bull in a china shop to highlight where UN reform is going wrong," he said.
He said the pre-Bolton reform document was a massively bloated attempt to bring diverse subjects together and was sure to fail.
"This is really how not to reform the UN," he said. "You have a huge package, all tied in together and that simply doesn't work. In the mid-90s, there was serious reform of UN management because there was small pieces brought in individually but that's not happening here."
He said the current reform document "would put anyone to sleep" and included subjects on which the UN has little control, such as development and disarmament.
"They are presenting this as the only wayto save the UN. That approach is always going to lose because the UN never adopts radical transformations, not with 191 members," he said.
"The UN is going to have to slim this thing down before it'll get past the Bush administration. Otherwise, it's all just a waste of time. John Bolton isn't the kind of guy who's going to step down."
