UN Assembly opens under shadow of E. Timor crisis

UN Assembly opens under shadow of E. Timor crisis

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters): The UN General Assembly opened its annual three-month talkfest on Tuesday (2 a.m. on Wednesday Jakarta time), overshadowed by the East Timor crisis.

The agenda of more than 160 items runs the gamut from disarmament and economic development to human rights and the environment.

Representatives will discuss a host of world trouble spots. But the 15-nation Security Council, now wrestling with the problem of sending peacekeepers to violence-stricken East Timor, remains the main operating arm of the United Nations, charged with the task of coping with immediate crises.

The General Assembly began its annual meeting at 3 p.m. EDT. It was scheduled to admit three new members at the opening session, the tiny Pacific island nations of Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga, raising the UN roll-call to 188.

Tonga, with about 100,000 inhabitants, has the biggest population among the three, while Nauru, with fewer than 11,000, will become the UN member with the tiniest population.

All the new members will have exactly the same vote in the assembly as such giants as China, India, the United States and Russia.

Also at the opening session, the assembly's new president will be appointed by acclamation.

The post rotates annually among the organization's five regional groups. This year being Africa's turn, the unopposed nominee is Namibian Foreign Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab.

Gurirab, 60, represented the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) at the United Nations from 1972 to 1986 and became foreign minister when his country gained independence from South Africa under UN auspices in 1990.

After dealing with such chores as organizing the agenda, the assembly session begins in earnest on Monday, Sept. 20, when the annual general debate gets under way.

The debate, which lasts for about two weeks, brings many heads of state and government and scores of foreign ministers to New York.

Much of their time will be spent in bilateral and group meetings on the sidelines of the assembly in what is usually one of the busiest spells on the diplomatic calendar.

U.S. President Bill Clinton, as head of state of the UN's host country, normally speaks on the first day of the general debate.

But after the United States failed to get the start of the debate postponed by one day, in deference to the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, Clinton will this year speak on the second day, Tuesday, Sept. 21.

The general debate will be interrupted on Sept. 27 and 28 for a special session of the assembly on the problems of small island developing states.

In arranging the assembly's work, its steering committee will, for the seventh year in a row, almost certainly reject a bid by about a dozen African, Caribbean and Pacific countries to get the issue of UN membership for Taiwan inscribed on the agenda.

Beijing has held China's UN seat since 1971 when Taiwan, to which the Nationalist Chinese government fled in 1949 after defeat by the communists in a civil war, was expelled from the United Nations.

Taiwan's supporters argue that the 22 million inhabitants of the economically dynamic island remain unrepresented in world bodies. China considers Taiwan a renegade province and fiercely resists any move to seat it as a challenge to its own sovereignty.