Overhaul of UN likely to fall short of Annan's goals

By Mark Turner and David White
September 14, 2005
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/4c70f252-24bc-11da-a5d0-00000e2511c8.html

World leaders began arriving in New York yesterday for a summit that appeared likely to fall far short of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's grand ambitions for a radical overhaul of the United Nations.
Diplomats were still struggling to agree a text even after a late compromise that would defer until next year decisions on some of the UN's most important issues, including the creation of a new mechanism for tackling human rights abuses.
The UK was still hopeful, however, that a UN Security Council meeting would call on all countries to ban the incitement of terrorist acts.
Summit language on development was seen as keeping pace with previous commitments.
Hopes that the summit would address nuclear disarmament and proliferation appeared to have been abandoned all together.
Attempts to draft language reforming the way the UN is managed - following damaging revelations over the oil-for-food scandal - were also in doubt, although UN officials suggested the reform process would continue with only a general statement of support from leaders.
Diplomats were still reluctant to dub the inevitably weak outcome a failure but a sense of dashed expectations hung heavy in the air.
As somebody said to me in a discussion, the pace of movement is slower than glacial, said John Howard, Australian prime minister.
At the end of the day, those who believe you can invest in one multilateral organisation the potential resolution of all the world's difficulties are always going to be disappointed.
Separately, Unctad, the UN trade and development think-tank, suggested that African countries - seen as the main beneficiaries of global development goals to be discussed by the summit - may be taking the wrong track by placing too much emphasis on wooing foreign investors. It cast doubt on standard policy prescriptions, arguing that there is little evidence of foreign direct investment playing a leading role in growth.
Instead, it urged effective industrial strategies to spur domestic investment and diversification.
Structural adjustment programmes carried out under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, expected to help countries to attract outside investment, had actually had the opposite effect, it said.