UNITED NATIONS, Aug 27: After months of bitter debate, UN member states agreed on Friday to allow 30 nations, including Pakistan, to take the lead in trying to resolve major differences over an UN reform plan that world leaders can adopt at next month’s summit.
UN General Assembly President Jean Ping told journalists that the ‘’core group’’ representing all regions and groups at the UN would start negotiations on Monday and was prepared to work nights, if needed, to finalize a document by September 2.
The text would then be submitted to the 191 member states on September 6 for approval, he said. The summit is on September 14-16.
Pakistan’s Ambassador Munir Akram reportedly told the UN members that on the outcome document, ‘our position will be judged on the basis of the content on the section on development.’
While acknowledging that it would be difficult to bridge the differences with less than three weeks left, Mr Akram, however, said: “This is important for our leaders — to have an outcome, to have something that they can adopt when they are coming together on the 60th anniversary (of the UN).’
“It will be a bad reflection on the United Nations, and all our leaders, if we are not able to agree,” Mr Akram said.
For the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), top priority is development and action to meet UN goals that include cutting extreme poverty by half, ensuring universal primary education, and stemming the AIDS pandemic, all by 2015.
“I think we’re making progress,”’ US Ambassador John Bolton said. “We’re prepared to be flexible on format and process. We want a strong outcome document.”’
He called the US agreement with the NAM — that all governments should be able to contribute and the entire text should be open – ‘a good sign.’
The US has submitted hundreds of proposed amendments to the 39-page draft currently on the table, and Russia, the NAM representing 116, mainly developing, countries, and dozens of other countries have submitted hundreds more.
The negotiators will be focusing on seven key issues where there are still serious differences: defining and tackling terrorism, disarmament and non-proliferation, a new human rights council to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, a new peace building commission to help countries emerging from conflict, overhauling UN management, taking collective action to protect people against genocide, actions to fight poverty and promote development.
But other issues could also be raised, and even though about 30 countries would be leading the negotiations, any other UN member state could step in with proposals during the negotiations, Mr Ping said.
He said the key negotiators were the five permanent members of the Security Council, Malaysia, which heads the NAM, Japan, India, Pakistan and representatives from every region.
