UN reform deal set to dash hopes of overhaul

By Mark Turner
September 13, 2005
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/cce69548-23fb-11da-b56b-00000e2511c8.html
 
Last-ditch talks to save tomorrow's summit of world leaders from fiasco lurched towards an uneasy compromise last night, but the resulting reforms were likely to fall far short of the ambitious overhaul many had hoped for.
Proposals to establish a smaller, more effective UN human rights body were emasculated amid objections from Russia, China and a number of developing countries. As fears grew that the idea would die altogether, Britain tabled a sparse text that merely resolved to create a new Human Rights Council, but left decisions on how it would work for later.
Diplomats said they could live with the compromise as a lowest common denominator, as it kept the idea alive, but many were disappointed at the failure to gain something more substantive on human rights. We will agree, but we are not happy, said a US official.
Similarly, language that would have partially defined terrorism as including deliberate killing of civilians was abandoned after some developing countries insisted it be balanced by an explicit statement of the right to resist foreign occupation. Western countries saw that as an unacceptable get-out clause.
Calls to move executive control of the UN away from the General Assembly to the Secretariat, in return for more transparency and better auditing, were also facing opposition by developing countries, although there were hopes that the summit would establish tighter external oversight.
Hopes that Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, would gain chief executive-style powers appeared to have fallen by the wayside.
Diplomats claimed prog-ress in securing language that mentioned the Millennium Development Goals, after the US initially sought to delete these targets halving extreme poverty by 2015. The draft text also backed moves to increase aid.
India had some objections to language on the establishment of a new international legal principle, the responsibility to protect people from atrocities in countries unable or unwilling to do so. It was concerned that permanent members of the Security Council continued to insist on their right to veto any decisions relating to the principle.
One UN official said that even if no real decisions were taken at the summit, the process would continue. Talks on UN management reform, human rights and, perhaps most importantly, Security Council enlargement would be certain to continue afterwards.
Other analysts suggested that delaying a decision can be tantamount to burying it. Hopes the summit would expand the Security Council died this summer when would-be new members failed to agree a common position on such reform.
In Washington yesterday, Richard Haass, former director of policy planning at the State Department, and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said: The most significant institution at the UN is the Security Council. Ideas about how to reform it have been a cottage industry, and it's not happening. Any plan will create losers and winners. Significant reform will not happen now or any time soon.
Additional reporting by Caroline Daniel in Washington