April 14, 2007	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 25, 1428

UNITED NATIONS: The 130-member Group of 77, the largest single coalition of developing countries, has lashed out at the Security Council, accusing the UN’s most powerful political body of violating the organisation’s charter by planning an open debate next week on energy, security and climate.

The Security Council’s primary responsibility is for the maintenance of international peace and security as set out in the UN Charter, according to the G77.

All other issues, including those relating to economic and social development, are assigned by the Charter to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the General Assembly.

The G77’s strong reaction to the upcoming Security Council meeting, scheduled to take place on April 17, is expected to be reflected in a letter to Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry of Britain, current president of the 15-member Council.

The decision to send a letter to Parry Jones was taken at a closed-door meeting of the G77 on Thursday.

The letter is expected to say that the ever-increasing encroachment by the Security Council on the roles and responsibilities of other principal organs of the United Nations represents a distortion of the principles and purposes of the UN Charter, and also infringes on their authority and compromises the rights of the general membership of the United Nations.

Ambassador Munir Akram, current G77 chair and permanent representative of Pakistan to the United Nations, said that some of the G77 members feel that the Security Council has gone beyond its mandate.

He said issues such as nuclear non-proliferation and even terrorism are issues for the general membership.

“The concept of the Security Council, as I read the UN Charter, is that the Council comes into action when there are actual threats to peace, and breaches of the peace,” Ambassador Akram told in an interview.

On earlier occasions the Security Council had also “encroached” into ECOSOC and General Assembly territory by holding meetings on gender rights, HIV/AIDS, terrorism and UN procurement and peacekeeping.

Last year, the Group of 77 under the chairmanship of South Africa protested the debate on UN procurement. But US Ambassador John Bolton, then president of the Security Council, refused to remove the item from the agenda and continued with the one-day discussion despite protests from the G77.

Akram said that some of these thematic issues are not threats to peace or breaches of the peace. But, of course, it is a matter of interpretation.

Terrorism may be a threat to peace, he argued, but the Security Council is not dealing with an actual situation when it is involved in setting norms and creating international laws.

“Law-making powers, according my interpretation of the charter, are clearly assigned to the General Assembly, not to the Security Council,” he added.

At a press conference last week, Parry Jones told reporters the very fact of holding a meeting on climate change and highlighting it was important.

The meeting is to be chaired by British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, but there are no plans either to issue a presidential statement or adopt a resolution on climate change, the British envoy said.

Meanwhile, the 117-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has also criticised the British proposal to hold a meeting on climate change. —Dawn/The IPS News Service