UN needs to take new initiative

UN needs to take new initiative

By Agus Tarmidzi and Imron Cotan

JAKARTA (JP): When the Cold War era closed its final chapter,
many enthusiastically predicted that the world would then be
pacified and, hence, conflicts would also become a thing of the
past.

History has accurately recorded the fact that the
international community has been successful in avoiding a head-on
collision between the superpowers. We, however, failed to contain
the emergence of the new types of conflicts originating inter
alia from racial hatred, religious discord and ethnic animosity.
Some have occurred within internationally recognized boundaries
of a sovereign state, while others have crossed national
boundaries.

These conflicts have caused the loss of life of many innocent
people and incalculable material damages. Worse still, while
wasting the already infinite natural resources, these conflicts
also provided grounds for irresponsible elements to flagrantly
violate the human rights upon which the fundamental fabric of
society is based.

At the global level, many attempts have been taken to prevent
such tragedies from continuously unfolding. Boutros-Boutros
Ghali, the former United Nations secretary-general, introduced
"An Agenda for Peace" as a road map to preserve and promote
international peace and security. The agenda contained the
concept of "peacekeeping, peacemaking and peace-building", which
required the settlement of any conflicts by using peaceful means
in accordance with the principles contained in the UN Charter.

The objectives were indeed noble. Unfortunately, the
initiative went unheeded, for members of this global organization
differed on how to implement the concept. The expensively
prohibitive costs incurred by such peacekeeping, peacemaking and
peace-building activities had sent the concept to its final rest.

As we witness the conflicts continue unabated. It is for this
particular reason that UN secretary-general Kofi Annan recently
introduced a new concept of "humanitarian intervention". It
envisages that the international community, the UN in particular,
should be able to intervene in any conflicts around the world to
save the lives of innocent people, to protect human rights as
well as to put off and find solutions to the prevailing
conflicts.

Developing countries have cautiously studied this initiative,
for they would obviously be at the receiving end of such
humanitarian intervention for at least the following reasons:
first, conflicts normally occur in the developing countries,
second, humanitarian intervention cannot successfully be
performed without military backups, and, third, humanitarian
intervention can only be performed against the developing
countries.

This is because developed countries -- especially those
permanent members of the UN Security Council -- will block any
decisions to conduct such an operation in their own backyards.
There is no doubt that Russia, for instance, will veto any
decision of the UN Security Council to conduct a humanitarian
intervention in Chechnya or in the Ingushtia Republics.

Another issue of similar importance over which the world has
so far failed to properly address is nuclear disarmament. We have
recently been confronted with an unprecedented phenomenon in
which two archrivals in the South Asian region, Pakistan and
India, finally posited themselves as the new nuclear-weapon
states.

While adding a new dimension to the regional political
interactions, this mere fact has furthermore cast doubts over the
achievement of nuclear disarmament under strict and effective
international control, as required by the 3rd UN Special Session
Specially Devoted to Nuclear Disarmament (1978), and the
objectives and principles agreed upon in the Conference of Non-
Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1995).

The situation becomes more alarming for the two major nuclear
weapon states, the United States and Russia, have continued to
develop their nuclear technology. The world was stunned when the
media reported that the United States had managed to produce a
prototype of a mini-nuclear warhead (W-88) which could be used to
achieve a limited military target. The three major nuclear weapon
states, especially China, will certainly use this discouraging
development as a pretext to develop their own "mini-nukes". A new
nuclear arms race now looms large, making it almost impossible to
achieve nuclear disarmament.

The efforts of the United States to review the Anti-Ballistic
Missiles Treaty (ABM Treaty) and the failure of this country to
ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) have
furthermore aggravated the situation. As a sign of
relentlessness, Russia has recently conducted a missile test
capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads. If the
international community fails to check these worrisome
developments, the reemergence of a new round of Cold War will be
unavoidable.

In short, as the new millennium inches nearer, the world is
still being confronted with conflicts with ethnic, racial,
religious and human rights notions and, second, a nuclear arms
race which may trigger a new Cold War. It is therefore timely for
the UN to ponder organizing a "millennium summit" to deal with
all the remaining issues of the 20th century in which all
countries could, on an equal footing, participate in charting the
future of our planet. The summit's agenda should be overarching,
covering social, economic, environmental, and political issues
including the two most pressing issues identified earlier.

If the UN manages to organize the summit, we may hope the
world would be a safer place to live in the next millennium.

Agus Tarmidzi is former Indonesian ambassador/permanent
Representative to the UN Office in Vienna and Geneva Switzerland
respectively. Imron Cotan is currently the deputy assistant state
secretary for political affairs.