United Nations ready for reform, panel member says

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.