United Nations ready for reform, panel member says
Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A member of the high-level panel that issued a key report suggest sweeping reforms at the United Nations believes the international community is open to changes at the world body.
Lord David Hannay, one of the 16 eminent international figures on the select panel, expressed relative confidence that the panel's recommendations would be well received and eventually carried out by the UN member states.
"The timing is reasonably propitious," Hannay said in an interview with The Jakarta Post here on Friday. Hannay, the United Kingdom's former permanent representative to the UN, was in Jakarta on Friday in a private capacity.
"This panel report has arrived at a time when the international community has been more conscious than it has ever been of the weakness of its institutions when it has been brought up against the reality of the fragility of the international community, as displayed at the time of the Iraq war," he said.
The panel was established in 2003 and presented its report to the UN secretary-general earlier this month. The panel's mandate included looking at threats and challenges faced in this new era, and determining how the UN could deal with these challenges more effectively.
Among the key reforms suggested by the panel was the expansion of the UN Security Council from 15 members to 24, without taking away or extending veto powers. Other suggested changes include making the General Assembly more effective and establishing a Peace-building Commission to help focus on failing states and post-conflict issues.
The 95-page crisply written report was prepared by the 16- member panel -- which included former Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, former Egyptian foreign minister Amr Moussa, former Chinese vice premier Qian Qichen and former U.S. national security adviser Brent Scowcroft -- with assistance from a research team headed by Steve Stedman of Stanford University.
Various proposals for UN reforms have failed in recent years and discussion of the issue itself has largely remained stagnant at the world body.
Hannay believes there is probably a greater willingness for radical and fundamental thinking now than there has been for several years.
While stressing that he does not wish to overstate this positivity, given that there is still "great inertia in the (UN) machine", Hannay nevertheless believes that 2005 could be a year of reform for the UN.
"We have now a time and a conjuncture which lend themselves to a really serious debate in 2005, with a summit coming along in September of that year to review the Millennium Development Goals, and to take decisions on the panel's report," he said.
When asked whether governments had reacted to the report, Hannay replied that it was still far too early to expect significant feedback.
"There's been some very good welcoming comments from a number of governments ... I'm hoping the European Union will have something, of a supportive kind, to say at its meeting in Brussels which is going on at the moment," he said, adding that the United States had not taken a position as yet.