UNITED NATIONS: Calling for the need to “decentralize the power accumulated in a small group of states,” the newly elected president of the 63rd United Nations General Assembly, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, started off his term attacking the domination of big powers in the body’s Security Council.
The 75-year-old former Nicaraguan leftist, who is a Roman Catholic priest, called for the urgent need for the democratization of the UN.
He criticized the United States and Europe for their control over the world’s largest development banks, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
D’Escoto singled out the Security Council as problematic, because its five permanent members “use the veto privilege to do as they please without consequences.”
The five permanent members to the Security Council are: France, China, Russia, the UK and the United States.
The council also includes a rotating roster of 10 other members.
Together these 15 members hold considerable sway in UN decisions and can veto decisions made by the General Assembly. Instead, D’Escoto said he would like to see greater decision-making powers for the UN’s 192-member General Assembly.
He has called for three special sessions of “high-level dialogue” to this end, admitting that his reforms plans would probably stir up a “hornet’s nest.”
D’Escoto said he would like to make the General Assembly’s resolutions binding, rather than just some of the decisions made by the Security Council.
“The idea that the clear and unequivocal voice of ‘we the people’ should be regarded as a mere recommendation with no binding power should be buried forever in our anti-democratic past,” he said.
He cited resolutions against the 45-year-old US embargo of Cuba and Palestinian autonomy as examples where the General Assembly passed resolutions that should have been binding in his opinion.
“What good are votes if they can be ignored or have no real consequences?” he said.
But such reforms may be difficult. Strengthening the General Assembly’s power requires a change to the UN Charter, which itself requires approval by two-thirds of the parliaments of all member states.
D’Escoto also took the opportunity on Tuesday to criticize the war in Iraq, saying that it made “no sense to kill hundreds of thousands of people with the purported aim to support democracy.” Without specifically naming the United States, D’Escoto then said the same forces that claim to be delivering democracy to Iraq are hindering efforts to make the UN more democratic.
He also said that no state has a right to decide “which states are terrorists or sponsors of terrorism and which are not.”
D’Escoto took over the General Assembly presidency from Srgjan Kerim of Macedonia, and will be chairing the annual General Assembly gathering of world leaders in New York next Tuesday where US President George Bush will give his last speech at United Nations as president.
