Poor outcome of UN summit

THE year 2005 was expected to be a landmark year for shaping the global economic and security system. It was to bring together on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the United Nations 150 leaders for a major summit in New York to review progress on the decisions made five years earlier at the millennium summit held in September 2000 and, more important, to look at a new set of global threats pushed to the surface by the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001. Expectations at the beginning of the year were high, but the actual outcome has been disappointing.

The use of force by the United States and some of its allies against Afghanistan in October 2001, with the approval of the United Nations and another attack against Iraq in April 2003, without UN approval, has led to a major international debate to determine as to when and by whom can force be legitimately employed to address actual or potential security or humanitarian threats.

Many US think tanks and diplomats have been arguing that the UN system, based on the sovereign equality of all states and non interference by others, is no longer viable. New kinds of threats have emerged from non-state entities or individuals whom the state concerned is unable to control. Weapons of mass destruction with irresponsible states or terrorist groups pose a major new threat to internal peace and security. In some states, massive human rights violations lead to civil conflict and ethnic cleansing that spill over borders, leading to large exodus of refugees to neighbouring countries.

There is, thus, a need, it is being argued, for a new system and new principles so that if the Security Council is unable to authorize the use of force, the countries actually or potentially threatened should have the legitimate right to use force unilaterally or pre-emptively to counter these threats.

In this debate, significant differences had emerged across the Atlantic as most European leaders and opinion makers do not accept the legitimacy of the use of force without the approval of the UN Security Council. However, there is some support for humanitarian interventions, as in the case of Kosovo and Darfur, but many differences over the efficacy of these and over the distinction between atrocities, genocide and crimes against humanity.

In practice, the Security Council has been able to achieve a consensus in favour of intervention when the chances of success were brighter, but the basic legal issue of deciding the threshold, beyond which international intervention would be justified, remains unresolved. Ideally, the newly-created International Criminal Court would be the right forum for determining such a threshold but many countries including the United States have not yet accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC.

There has been much greater support for collective action against terrorism because self-defence, as compared to prevention or pre-emption, is at the highest rung of legitimacy, but in practice the efficacy of such an action is relatively low, because of the faceless and ethereal nature of the terrorists and their networks. Despite overwhelming support for the international campaign against terrorism, it has not so far been very effective partly because of inadequate attention to the root causes.

The use of force to pre-empt nuclear proliferation has emerged as the most problematic area in this debate. This is mainly because the “normative framework” for nuclear issues has virtually broken down. Article 6 of the NPT had called for nuclear disarmament but that has not taken place. Subsidiary pillars like the CTBT have also proved ineffective. So who decides on the nature of the threat from weapons of mass destruction? Are the five legitimate holders of nuclear weapons under the NPT (P-5) under any constraints or should international law on the subject become an instrument of the powerful?

These issues and options were debated extensively in preparation for the summit of world leaders held in New York last month. Fully aware of the importance of this debate for the future of the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan had set up a high level panel on “Threats, Challenges and Change” in November 2003. The panel submitted its report in December 2004. The recommendation of this panel on security issues and on the reform of the Security Council were taken into account by the secretary-general in preparing his landmark report for the last month’s summit. This July 2005 report entitled “In Larger Freedom” covered four areas: development, peace and collective Security, human rights and the rule of law and strengthening the United Nations.

After intense debate and night long negotiating sessions, the UN summit finally endorsed an agreed outcome document for formal adoption by the 60th anniversary session of the General Assembly. It is quite revealing to compare the agreed text of the outcome document with the recommendations put forward by the secretary-general on different issues and proposals.

On the question of the use of force, while the summit has reiterated “the importance of promoting and strengthening the multilateral process” and reaffirmed that the Security Council has primary responsibility in the maintenance of peace and security, it did not endorse the specific recommendation of the secretary general “for the adoption of a resolution by Security Council setting the principles for the use of force to preserve international peace and security and the need to consider the seriousness of the threat, the proper purpose of the proposed military action, whether means short of military action might reasonably succeed in stopping the threat, whether military option is proportional to the threat at hand and whether there is a reasonable chance of success”.

On terrorism, the outcome document recognized the role of United Nations and stressed the need for a comprehensive convention on international terrorism but failed to reach an agreement on the definition of terrorism, without which the proposed comprehensive convention to replace 12 existing conventions on terrorism cannot be finalized.

But the most serious failure has been in the area of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. In the second chapter of its report entitled “Freedom from Fear”, the secretary-general has made six specific recommendations to strengthen the multilateral framework for non-proliferation and disarmament. In other sections, at least a watered down version of the recommended action was adopted. In this case, the reluctance of the powerful P5 (permanent five) states to accept the same framework that they wanted other states to follow was so great that the entire chapter on this subject was deleted from the outcome document.

In the area of human rights, the summit accepted the recommendation of the secretary-general to create a smaller human rights council as a principal organ of the United Nations to replace the human rights commission. The summit also agreed to create a peace building commission as an intergovernmental advisory body to evolve a coordinated approach to post-conflict peace building and reconciliation.

The summit could not agree on the reform and expansion of the Security Council, even though this subject pre-empted much greater time and attention during the preparatory process of the summit. Both the proposed models called for an increase in the membership of the Security Council from 15 to 24. Under model ‘A’, six of the nine new seats would be permanent seats without veto power, with two each going to Africa and Asia and one each to Europe and the Americas. This is the model being put forward by the G4 — Brazil, India, Japan and Germany.

Under Model ‘B’, eight new four-year renewable seats and one two year non-renewable seat would be created. This model supported by the so called consensus group, led by Pakistan and Italy, would have provided continuing (but not permanent) membership to some countries while leaving open the scope for rotation on some of the four-year renewable seats. In the absence of an agreement, the summit only committed member states to continue its efforts to make the Security Council “a more broadly representative, efficient and transparent body”.

Even on the development agenda, the outcome document adopted by the summit has been disappointing. It only reaffirmed the statements and the commitments made earlier at the millennium summit, the Monterrey conference on financing and the Johannesburg summit on sustainable development, but in most statements, there is a subtle attempt to dilute the commitments made earlier. Even the centrality of the millennium development goals has been eroded by referring repeatedly to “internationally agreed development goals including the millennium development Goals”.

On the important issue of trade, the secretary-general’s recommendation: “to address this priority, the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations should fulfil its development promise and be completed not later than 2006” has been replaced by an insipid sentence namely “we will work expeditiously towards implementing the development dimension of the Doha work programme”. This does not augur well for the forthcoming WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December.

When historians will look back on the history of the United Nations over the past six decades and gaze into the future, they will no doubt be struck by several paradoxes:

— The UN is not a supra body or a ‘world government’ as many had expected it to become, and its ability to act is seriously circumscribed by the unwillingness of its members to allow it to act, yet it is blamed, as an institution, for all the failures and inadequacies.

— In the Cold War era, the rivalry between two superpowers provided some balance in dealing with issues of peace and security. Now with a single superpower, its dominant role is resented by most other countries. They think the UN is subservient to the US but paradoxically, the US is not happy with the UN because it does not always provide legitimacy for its unilateral actions.

— In the wake of the events of September 11, there was an urgent need to strengthen the multilateral system to counter the new threats in a rapidly changing world. The opportunity to do so was thrown away at the September 2005 summit, leaving scope for alternative initiatives and actions outside the UN system. That will further weaken the multilateral system at a time when it needs to be strengthened.

These glaring paradoxes clearly portray the grim realities of a unipolar world. The US is determined to manage the world according to its own national interests and priorities and to use force if necessary for this purpose to counter not just actual but also potential threats. And the use of force is not confined to conventional forces, but under its new nuclear doctrine also its nuclear arsenal.

Most European nations, however, believe that disputes and problems between nations should be resolved through diplomatic means rather than the use of force, which should be an instrument of last resort, to be used only with the approval of the UN Security Council. They also accord high priority to the underlying causes and to the strong inter-connection between development, security and human rights.

The future of this planet might well depend on the ultimate choice between these two approaches.

The writer is a former finance minister.

Foreign funding for political parties

THERE is nothing new in the charge about foreign money coming to India during elections. This has been repeated time and again. Once the government got so irritated that it ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to inquire into “the nature and extent” of foreign assistance.

To its horror, New Delhi found that many countries had provided funds to political parties through “overt and covert” channels, institutions and individuals. The home ministry which examined the report came to the conclusion that “several countries have been providing financial assistance for diverse activities,” mostly political.

The ministry observed that financial assistance from Soviet and American sources had been, however, “more sustained and much larger” as compared to such assistances from other countries. The ministry recorded its main reading: some instances of overt assistance had been provided with ulterior motives. Thus, in the case of some American funds it was found that the “ultimate source” was the CIA.

The ministry considered two courses of action to check the various forms of overt assistance. One was that foreign foundations and organizations which received funds “reasonably suspected to have originated from intelligence agencies, such as the CIA,” should not be permitted to carry on their activities. Nor should they be allowed to extend further assistances to any institution, organization or individual in India, irrespective of the purpose for which such assistance was extended in the past. Because of such thinking, the government stopped giving funds to the Asia Foundation in the country.

The second course of action considered appropriate was that receipt of donations and other forms of financial assistance from foreign sources should be subjected to more rigorous control and activity. A new legislation was contemplated.

During the course of the probe by the CBI, it was discovered that overt assistance was coming in two ways. The first was through direct payment in foreign currency outside the country to selected individuals for being passed on to political or other organizations. Foreign embassies located in India or organizations and prominent individuals were also associated with the funding of political parties.

The second course was indirect payments through commission on the sale of literature imported from abroad. The modus operandi was subventions paid out of trade profits through bilateral understanding between commercial enterprises and political parties; advertisement charges, translation charges, etc., to newspapers and periodicals at very high rates. I recall that the USIS was cheated by a contractor who printed the same material under different covers.

The revelations made by The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World, are, however, startling. It is alleged that late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the Congress party used to receive money from the KGB during the Cold War. In April 1971, a second secret fund of 2.5 million rubles was reportedly made available for “operations” in India. The book describes how the “honey trap” was set up to seduce Indian diplomats and lower ranks working at the Indian mission in Moscow.

No doubt, the allegations and counter-allegations of political parties being on the payroll of foreign countries have stopped for some years. Still, the general impression a few years ago was that the Congress was flushed with funds. The accusing finger was always directed at the USSR.

But Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once the American ambassador to India, accused Mrs Indira Gandhi directly of accepting money in his post-retirement book, A Dangerous Place. He wrote: “In New Delhi I had pressed the embassy to go back over the whole of our quarter-century in India, to establish just what we had been up to. In the end I was satisfied we had been up to very little. We had twice, but only twice, interfered in Indian politics to the extent of providing money to a political party.

“Both times this was done in the face of a prospective communist victory in a state election, once in Kerala and once in West Bengal, where Calcutta is located. Both times the money was given to the Congress party, which had asked for it. Once it was given to Mrs Gandhi herself, who was then a party official. Still, as we were no longer giving any money to her, it was understandable that she should wonder just to whom we were giving it. It is not a practice to be encouraged.”

The Congress did not counter Moynihan formally but there were general protests against America’s claim of giving financial assistances to political parties. Despite Moynihan’s charge, the Congress coffers were said to be filled by Soviet money. But there was no proof. Before the Congress split in 1969, N. Nijalingappa, the harassed Congress president, wrote in his diary that Mrs Gandhi was getting money from the Soviet Union. The then Congress leader S.K. Patil from Maharashtra alleged that suitcases were coming from the Soviet embassy located in Delhi.

The reason why the charge has surfaced again is the material available from the archives of Moscow. All secret papers of the Cold War days have been made public. The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World, incorporating some of the information, is the first in the series. The next one, I believe, names some 375 Indians who were on the Soviet Union’s payroll.

The BJP has gone to town on the charges. The party did not exist at that time. I do not know how reliable the accusations are. When I was India’s high commissioner in London in 1990, I inquired from a Soviet busybody, who wanted a free Air India ticket to travel to Delhi, what type of information had come out of the Soviet archives thrown open. I was interested to find out if there were some papers on the death of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri at Tashkent. There was a categorical ‘no’ to my queries on Shastri. “But other types of papers are there,” he said. During the talks he hinted at the money paid to Indian political parties and newspapers. He was not willing to give their names.

I do not know whether the BJP is all that pure as it claims to be. After all, its earlier incarnation was in the shape of the Jana Sangh. In the CBI probe, the party was said to be involved. The BJP’s sin is even greater because the Atal Behari Vajpayee government is said to have financed elections in some neighbouring countries. When I was in Dhaka last, top Awami League leaders told me: “Your government financed Khaleda’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) during the last elections in the country.”

I am not opposed to the probe that the BJP has demanded after the publication of extracts from The Mitrokhin Archive II. But the probe, if it is to be held, should cover all foreign sources of funding to all political parties. It is no use beating about the bush. My feeling is when in the bath all are naked.

Return of self-belief

SOMETHING really rather important may be happening to Britain’s Conservative party in Blackpool this week. It is something with big implications for British party politics.

After eight years, the Tories seem at last to have got it. Not all of them, of course. That would be too much to expect. The Winter Gardens still contains too many Tory party members who tenaciously cling to the view that it is the country, not them, that needs to change.

From the top, though, and among several of the candidates to succeed Michael Howard, there comes an unmissable sense that a third successive election defeat has at last forced the Tories to blame themselves rather than the voters for their predicament. Speaker after speaker, in the hall and on the fringe, has told the Tories they must learn from Labour’s wilderness years and must have the courage to change.

George Osborne made a particularly effective contribution. In the past this has not been what the ageing and demoralized Tories wanted to hear. But now there is beginning — but no one should get too carried away — to be a different feel. Judging by the responses in the hall so far this week, the message is gradually getting through to a lot of the party activists as well.

It is not hard to see that the new mood has a lot to do with Mr Blair’s departure and with the Tories’ perception that Gordon Brown offers them a much easier target.

— The Guardian, London