The Lost U.N. Summit Meeting - New York Times
The New York Times

September 14, 2005

The Lost U.N. Summit Meeting

A once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform and revive the United Nations
has been squandered even before the opening gavel comes down this morning
for
the largest assemblage of world leaders ever brought together in a single
location. The responsibility for this failure is widely shared. But the
United
States, as the host nation and the U.N.'s most indispensable and influential
member, bears a disproportionate share.

There are several casualties of this failure of leadership, including the
need to reform the United Nations and to strengthen its role as a monitor of
human
rights. But the most tragic loss is a genuine opportunity to help the one
billion people around the world who each live on less than $1 a day.

Last month, President Bush used a recess appointment to send his notoriously
undiplomatic, and Congressionally unacceptable, choice for ambassador to the
United Nations, John Bolton, to New York. He contended that contrary to all
appearances and to common sense, Mr. Bolton was just the man to achieve the
reforms the United Nations needed. Almost immediately, Mr. Bolton began
proving Mr. Bush wrong by insisting on a very long list of unilateral
demands.
The predictable effect was to transform what had been a painful and
difficult search for workable diplomatic compromises into a competitive
exercise in
political posturing.

With Washington jealously protecting the prerogatives of the Security
Council, where it holds a veto, others chose to be equally jealous in
protecting the
prerogatives of the General Assembly, where the influence of poorer and
weaker countries is greatest. And when Washington challenged the right of
the secretary
general to set specific development goals, others then contested his right
to set standards for management or human rights. And so on.

That extinguished the idea that international security issues and
international development issues are vitally linked, and can be most
effectively tackled
in tandem. By the time Washington retreated to a more realistic position, it
was too late to retrieve much of the bold original agenda, as set out in
earlier
United Nations summit meetings on development, in the thoughtful
recommendations of several high-level panels and in the constructive
proposals of Secretary
General Kofi Annan. The failure is even more poignant because the United
States is clearly on the right side of some important arguments.

Washington, for example, strongly supported the idea of replacing the
discredited United Nations Commission on Human Rights, on which nations like
Sudan,
Libya and Cuba regularly sit, with a new, reformed body that would exclude
such notorious rights violators. The final document dilutes this crucial
provision
to the point of meaninglessness.

On this and other issues, the document offers little more than a fudge of
feel-good phrases and pious wishes for future action that leave everyone off
the
hook from taking entirely practical actions that are needed right now.

This week's summit meeting should have strengthened international
commitments to reach broadly accepted development benchmarks over the next
decade that
could avert tens of thousands of needless deaths from extreme poverty. It
should have given the secretary general the power to bypass patronage and
rely
on merit in choosing and retaining senior officials, creating a crucial
institutional safeguard against a replay of the oil-for-food fiasco. It
should
have reinforced vital international commitments and understandings on
nuclear nonproliferation, including those that Mr. Bolton, in his previous
job, did
so much to undercut.

Although the ceremonial speeches by national leaders are just beginning, the
serious negotiations over this summit meeting's outcome are now over. Every
one of the more than 170 national leaders attending, starting with President
Bush, should be embarrassed about letting this rare opportunity slip away.

posted by Miriam V.