UN panel for efforts to resolve Kashmir, Palestine issues
By Masood Haider
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1: A United Nations panel which recommended sweeping reforms in the organization, on Tuesday called on the world body to "redouble its efforts" to resolve festering Kashmir
, Palestine and Korean disputes which pose new threats to the international peace and security.
In a letter sent to Secretary General Kofi Annan, the chairman of the blue ribbon panel, former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun, said: "No amount of systematic changes to the way that United Nations handles both old and new threats to peace and security will enable it to discharge effectively its role under the charter if efforts are not redoubled to resolve number of long-standing disputes which continue to fester and feed the new threats we now face."
"Foremost among these are the issues of Palestine, Kashmir and the Korean peninsula," he added. Mr Panyarachun lamented that although the mandate given to the panel precluded any in-depth examination of individual conflicts but asserted that the panel members "would be remiss " if they failed to point out the disputes which undermine the working of the organization.
Underscoring that the "unresolved regional disputes in South Asia, North-East Asia and the Middle-East continue to threaten international peace and Security," the panel report said that these disputes may unravel 40 years of efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and more than 75 years of efforts to banish the scourge of biological and chemical weapons".
"In turn, the inter-state rivalry in some regions fuels and exacerbate internal wars, making them more difficult to bring to a close, the panel said. The report also warned that "war and ongoing instability in Iraq and Palestine have fuelled extremism in the parts of Muslim world and the West. "
The report said that the Palestinian issue "is complex and multidimensional and defies any simplistic categorization." It asserted that "one cannot ignore the ability of the extremists groups to foster perceptions within west and within the Muslim world of cultural and religious antagonism between them, the dangers of which is left unchecked are profound."
Speaking about the legitimacy of the use of force, a source of crippling tensions at the United Nations last year when the United States was seeking Security Council authorization to go to war in Iraq, the panel said it found no reason to amend the United Nations charter's Article 51, which restricts the use of force to countries that have been attacked.
The report said this language did not constitute, as some have charged, a summons on nations to wait to be attacked and that many countries had exercised the right to go on the attack themselves if they felt threatened. But it acknowledged that a new problem had arisen because of terrorism "where the threat is not imminent but still claimed to be real: for example, the acquisition, with allegedly hostile intent, of nuclear weapons-making capability."
It said if the arguments for such "anticipatory self-defence" were good ones, they should be put to the Security Council, which would have the power to authorize military action.
Besides Mr Panyarachun, the chairman, the panel members included Yevgeny Primakov, former prime minister of Russia, Qian Qichen, former foreign minister of China, Gareth Evans, former foreign minister of Australia, Amre Moussa of Egypt, secretary general of the League of Arab States, Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway, Jõao Baena Soares of Brazil, former secretary general of the Organization of American States, David Hannay, former British ambassador to the United Nations, Robert Badinter, a member of the French senate Satish Nambiar of India, Mrs Nafis Sadik of Pakistan and Brent Scowcroft, former US national security adviser under the first President Bush.
The UN officials and diplomats here said that many of the panel's recommendations can be put into effect by the Secretary General himself or the various organs of the United Nations involved.The report will be formally presented to UN Chief Kofi Annan, on Thursday morning.
