inside the glass house

Oh to address the UN!
NEW YORK-- The 191-member UN General Assembly is the new battleground for President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who are both vying to upstage each other, come September 22.
Why would two leaders try to battle it out to address an Assembly which has little political clout in an institution which has lost its credibility after the unilateral US war on Iraq?

Former President J.R.Jayewardene never addressed the General Assembly or took time even to visit the UN when he was in New York on his return from a state visit to Washington DC in June 1984. Was he contemptuous of the world body or did he think the UN was an ineffective organisation?

A former confidante of JRJ says that after his San Francisco speech marking the creation of the UN, the ex-president felt that everything else would be an anti-climax.
But a longtime career diplomat, who has closely observed the political scene in Sri Lanka, says that JRJ's refusal to attend any General Assembly sessions should not be interpreted as an anti-UN sentiment. "I think he was too busy intriguing to remain in power," he said.

The dozens of heads of state and heads of government who arrive in New York to address the General Assembly usually play to audiences back home because no one takes them seriously within the precincts of the world body.

For most political leaders, a visit to the UN-- accompanied by advisers, political toadies, press sycophants and at times even a hair dresser-- is usually a first class ego trip in their state-run national airlines.

In his annual report released last week, even Secretary-General Kofi Annan complained that in the General Assembly-- where all member states are represented on a basis of sovereign equality-- the agenda is crowded with over a hundred items that either overlap or are of interest to only a few.

The General Assembly, he said, has developed a notoriety for "repetitive and sterile debates" on subjects that really matter only to individual countries-- not global issues.
So why is everyone scrambling to grab the mike to address the world body?

At his annual state-of-the organisation address last week, Annan once again called for a reform of the entire UN system-- a good try in a long lost cause. As the world body keeps increasing its membership, the question of unanimity keeps receding to the background in a welter of dissident voices making the reform of the organisation an increasingly difficult task.

The only UN organ that exercises political clout is the 15-member Security Council: an elitist body that is run and manipulated by its five veto wielding members: the US, Britain, France, China and Russia. Since there are at least 50 to 60 heads of state or heads of government visiting the General Assembly in any given year, perhaps the only redeeming feature is the opportunity for bilateral talks.

And most heads of state conduct their one-on-one talks inside the UN without even crossing the street. The new General Assembly sessions-- the 58th in a series which began with the creation of the world body-- will run for about two weeks beginning September 22. But few world leaders who arrive in New York will have the guts to stand up at the podium and make a forthright speech either about the ineffectiveness of the organisation or of a world at the mercy of a single superpower.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, who is stepping down end October, is one of the few exceptions who speaks his mind whenever he is at the UN. Days before the UN comemmorated its 50th anniversary in September 1995, he was in New York to address the General Assembly. At a press conference, he was asked why he was skipping the 50th anniversary tamasha when he was already in town.

The reply was characteristic of Mahathir. When it's an event commemorating the 50th anniversary, everyone is called upon to say something good, he said. "We have been given only five minutes each. And I don't think I will have anything good to say about the UN in five minutes time."

But JRJ probably went one better than Mahathir. Just after the ethnic riots in Sri Lanka in 1983, the UN Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva was discussing a draft resolution which was meant to criticise the government for human rights violations.
A high powered Sri Lanka delegation, led by JRJ's brother HW (Harry) Jayewardene, was trying to defuse the situation in Geneva. But the chances of killing the resolution were getting remoter and remoter by the hour.

From his hotel room, where the delegation was planning out its strategy, HW called his brother to brief him with the bad news. As one of the diplomats who was present at the room would explain later, the phone conversation didn't sound optimistic.

"Yes, Dicky, Yes Dicky, But we can't do that Dicky," the brother was heard telling JRJ.
The delegates were awaiting the final word from JRJ. And after finishing his phone conversation with his brother in Colombo, Harry turned to the delegates and said: "He wants us to get out of the UN."

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