inside the glass house

Is it the US Security Council?

NEW YORK-- Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, is one of the most outspoken world leaders who never hesitates to speak his mind in public.

Back in January 1997 when the US threatened to cut off some $120 million in American aid if South Africa went ahead with a proposed $640 million arms deal with Syria, Mandela said his country will continue to exercise its sovereign right to conclude agreements with any country-- whether or not the West liked it.

During the same year, his much-publicised visit to Libya-- another country which, like Syria, in on a US hit-list of "terrorist states"-- also drew a sharp negative reaction from the US.

But he brushed off American criticism by pointing out that "Libya is not on our list of pariah states." "How can they have the arrogance to dictate to us where we should go and who our friends should be?", he asked.

Since he is still held in high regard for his unrelenting battle against the white-ruled apartheid regime in South Africa while still a political prisoner at that time, Mandela continues to command respect internationally.

Last month, Mandela spoke out against the impending US war against Iraq calling it totally unjustifiable.

Speaking at a meeting in South Africa last month, he also said he was disappointed that not a single world leader had publicly condemned the recent US decision to grab the 12,000-page Iraqi arms dossier and spirit it to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before the other 14 members of the UN Security Council could even peek at it.

"This was an act of piracy which must be condemned by everyone," Mandela said, criticising Washington for its "arrogant conduct."

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has also expressed reservations about a new war in the Middle East, described the US action on the Iraqi arms dossier as "unfortunate".

"I hope it is not going to be repeated," he added, while denying the widespread characterisation of his organisation as a "puppet" in the hands of the United States.

The accusations come at a time when the United Nations is being browbeaten and manipulated by a US administration that has abandoned multilateralism in favour of unilateralism.

The implied US threat to launch a military attack on Iraq without Security Council authorisation and the tacit US support for Israel's continued defiance of the United Nations have jeopardised the credibility of the world body.

Caught in a bind over a new crisis in North Korea-- which has openly defied the US by throwing out UN arms inspectors and threatened to continue its nuclear programme-- the Bush administration now wants the Security Council to impose sanctions on Pyongyang. "The Bush administration has no regard for the United Nations," says a veteran Asian diplomat here. "The world body is deemed useful to Americans only as long as they can manipulate it to their own selfish ends."

Last month, the US vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have condemned the killing by Israeli military forces of several UN humanitarian workers. The resolution would have also castigated the Israelis for the "deliberate destruction" of UN warehouses storing food for Palestinians.

The four other veto-wielding members of the Council-- Britain, France, China and Russia-- voted in favour of the resolution. But a single American veto once again saved Israel from UN condemnation for the killing of four UN humanitarian workers last year.

"In the end, it all seems to come down to what the United States wants," says Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights.

The irony of it all is that the US threatens war against Iraq for so much as lying to a UN official, while Israel is allowed to kill UN officials with total US approval.

In the face of US and Israeli recalcitrance, the United Nations has been reduced to an entity which cannot even protect its own employees-- much less Palestinians. As a result, the US has seriously undermined the authority and the credibility of the United Nations.

While the US blocked a proposal for UN observers to be posted in the Israeli-occupied territories last year, the Israelis blocked a UN investigation of the "massacre" in the Jenin refugee camp last April.

Denis Halliday, a former assistant secretary-general who headed the UN humanitarian programme in Iraq, says the world body is "conspicuously absent and is seen to be shut out by Israel backed by the United States".

This is most damaging to the United Nations since Israel is the product of a UN resolution, he argues.

The inability of the UN to carry out an investigation of the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp marked an all-time low point in UN effectiveness.

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