UN approves watered-down reforms
Global poverty, environmental protection, disarmament among issues not addressed 

By Shawn McCarthy 
September 14, 2005
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United Nations — After bitter and divisive negotiations, the 191-member General Assembly yesterday approved an agreement to reform the UN that is a shadow of the ambitious agenda laid out by Secretary-General Kofi Annan only six months ago.
In a press conference last night, an embattled Mr. Annan acknowledged that many critics will judge the deal — to be endorsed by some 170 world leaders gathered here this week — to be a failure, but they'll be wrong, he said.
We didn't achieve everything that we wanted, but we have got quite a lot of the proposals that we put forward, Mr. Annan said.
The 35-page document was supposed to galvanize the world community into a new era of collective security and aggressive action on global poverty and environmental protection.
Instead, in order to reach a deal, negotiators were forced to gut many of the commitments contained in Mr. Annan's proposed blueprint and substitute broad principles, many of which have long been accepted. Countries were unable to agree on a definition of terrorism, or to replace the discredited human-rights commission with a more effective body. Nuclear proliferation and disarmament were dropped from the text altogether.
Efforts to reform the inner workings of the United Nations, a key U.S. goal shared by allies such as Canada, resulted in modest measures that were described by U.S. Ambassador John Bolton as a first step.
The Secretary-General, whose credibility has been undermined by scandal and divisions at the UN, expressed disappointment that some countries, which he would not identify, could not see past their immediate national interests and embrace the concept of collective security.
The United States and Mr. Bolton have come under particular fire from non-governmental organizations for playing hardball in the negotiations, while Cuba and Venezuela refused to endorse the agreement in the General Assembly yesterday.
Mr. Annan met for more than an hour yesterday with U.S. President George W. Bush, just before Mr. Bolton endorsed the deal at the General Assembly. However, hawkish Republicans in Congress are certain to be dissatisfied with the pace of UN reform, and have threatened to withhold UN dues if sweeping changes were not undertaken. Mr. Bush is scheduled to address the General Assembly this morning, while Prime Minister Paul Martin, who landed in New York late yesterday, will mount the same podium on Friday.
UN ambassadors had appeared to reach broad agreement on Monday night but were forced to work through the night and today to hammer out final wording and, in the end, simply deleted clauses for which there was no agreement.
One significant breakthrough was the General Assembly's acceptance of a new responsibility for the UN to protect civilians, with military force if necessary, from genocide, ethnic cleansing or other massacres when their own government cannot, or will not, protect them.
Canada has long backed the so-called responsibility to protect, which is viewed as necessary to prevent global inaction in the face of genocides such as the one in Rwanda in 1994 or more recently in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Canadian Ambassador Allan Rock, one of a core group who hammered out the compromise document, said the new principle will not mean automatic Security Council action when governments conduct war on ethnic minorities within their borders.
It tips the balance in favour of intervention in the name of humanity. And that's why it's an important first step, he said.
Like other diplomats, Mr. Rock judged the glass of UN reform to be half full, though he was disappointed that other key elements of the deal were left undone.
I think we made important advances on UN management, understanding that it was very difficult to get what we got because a lot of the countries of the world are reluctant to give up the power of the General Assembly over the management.
Under the agreement, there will be new auditing and oversight mechanisms for the UN administration, while the secretary-general will get more authority to direct resources to priority areas. Currently, Mr. Annan must get the approval of the General Assembly to make even modest changes to UN staffing and priorities.
Some diplomats praised the document as a breakthrough after such a lengthy and divisive debate.
Don't expect Rome to be built in a day; it wasn't, Britain's UN Ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry said. Against the difficulty of this negotiation, its complexity, this is a very substantial gain.
Anti-poverty and environmental activists condemned the agreement for falling well short of the ambitious actions that Mr. Annan himself had called for only six months ago.
While the United States did back off some of its demands, the sections of the accord dealing with development and the environment mostly rehash former commitments, many of which remain unfulfilled.