Just another talk fest

Millennium Summit

Asked why he had decided to boycott the celebrations, the outspoken Mahathir was blunt: he could not find any justification to glorify an institution whose failures in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda were unforgivable sins. 

Mahathir said the UN was not only being manipulated by the big powers but that it also had little cause to celebrate- particularly in view of some of its disastrous failures in peacekeeping, and its inability to resolve the growing problems of Third World poverty and debt.

Pointing out that the anniversary summit allowed world leaders only five minutes of speaking time each, Mahathir said: "In five minutes, you only have time to say how good things are." "I am not good at saying how good things are when things are bad." 

But five years later, a cash-strapped United Nations is still not out of the woods: its coffers are near-empty, its blue-helmeted peace keepers under fire, its development budget on the decline, and its poverty alleviation programmes yielding little concrete results.

And next week, the UN will be hosting a Millennium Summit, where over 150 world leaders, up from an estimated 125, are expected to adopt a declaration that will project a global vision for the 21st century.

The summit is due to take place from September 6 to 8 immediately following a similar meeting of the world's religious leaders at the United Nations where the Tibetan spiritual head, the Dalai Lama, has been barred because of China's political sensitivities.

Mahathir is one of several key world leaders who, along with Cuba's Fidel Castro, will skip the Millennium Summit, joining other non-participating heads of state from countries such as Syria, Brazil, Oman, Iraq, Libya, Thailand, Tanzania, Laos, Barbados and Kyrgyzstan.

The pronouncements made at the 50th anniversary celebrations included proposals for the restructuring of the UN system, the reform of the Security Council, the acceleration of global disarmament, the alleviation of poverty, the elimination of Third World debts and a resolution to the UN's ongoing financial crisis. 

But five years later most of these proposals remain unimplemented for political or other reasons. 

The US remains the key player in a post-Cold War UN— even as it continues to hold back some 1.5 billion dollars in unpaid dues; the Security Council is still crying out for reform; India and Pakistan have joined the nuclear club, increasing the dangers of a potential nuclear war; and the number of poverty stricken people in the world have increased, not decreased.

Is the Millennium Summit, therefore, going the way of most other summits: just another occasion for political merry making and public grandstanding?

Mercifully, the UN has requested all heads of state to confine their speeches to only five minutes. 

But already President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who broke ranks from the international community last week by being the first head of state to visit sanctions-hit Iraq, has protested the time slot.

Chavez, who says that five minutes is too short a time to talk about the global vision for the 21st century, is planning to speak for about half an hour threatening to create a logistical nightmare at an event where everything is expected to fall into place with clockwork precision.

Asked for his comments, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard says that when heads of government gather at the UN, the organisers can only make polite suggestions about how long they should speak, "so we don't have to spend three weeks here, instead of three days."

Secretary-General Kofi Annan says that among the most challenging issues facing the world body in the 21st century are how to pull billions of people out of abject poverty, strengthen UN peacekeeping operations, and deal more effectively with the world's environmental problems.

Annan has asked the summit participants to commit themselves to a number of time-bound targets. One such target is, to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, and to reduce and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, and provide basic education for all boys and girls equally.

"I would expect the leaders to agree to specific target dates and identify issues on which we are going to bring our collective influence to bear and try to resolve in the next 15 or 20 years," he said.

But a Millennium Declaration, currently in the process of being finalised, has already split the world body because of wide political disagreements even before the summit could get off the ground.

A nine-page draft, prepared by the President of the General Assembly Theo-Ben Gurirab of Namibia, does not contain any concrete commitments on two key demands made by the world's poorest nations: a substantial increase in development assistance and cancellation of debts.

Judging by the proposed Millennium Declaration, the world leaders attending the summit are not making any commitments on either the reform of the United Nations or the restructuring of the Security Council.

The heads of state say they will "spare no effort" to make the UN more effective and intensify efforts to achieve "a comprehensive reform" of the Security Council. No more, no less.

A Working Group on the reform of the Security Council, which was expected to come up with a compromise formula during the 50th anniversary celebrations in 1995, has continued into a new century with no substantive achievements.

But despite all the negative feedbacks, even critics agree that the UN's notable achievements are mostly in the field of humanitarian assistance: caring for women, children and refugees, mostly caught up in crisis situations worldwide.

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