UNITED NATIONS, 26 August 2005 — Three weeks before a scheduled summit of world leaders tasked with endorsing a sweeping reform of the United Nations, member states are under growing pressure to break the current deadlock standing in the way of an acceptable compromise document.
The summit’s so-called outcome document “is moving in the right direction but we still have lingering differences in a number of major areas, substantive issues on which we will have to negotiate,” the current president of the General Assembly, Gabon’s Jean Ping said Wednesday.
Ping, who has been tasked with drafting the document and has been holding consultations with the various UN regional groups this week, said he had set up a small negotiating group — 20 to 30 members — to try to work out a compromise in the “six or seven areas where differences still persist.”
The summit, which will bring together a record 180 heads of state or government, is to be held here Sept. 14-16, ahead of the annual session of the UN General Assembly, which will mark the 60th anniversary of the creation of the world body.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had hoped that member states would seize the historic occasion to push through a sweeping overhaul of the UN to make it better able to meet today’s challenges and also to announce bold decisions relating to development and the fight against poverty.
But after months of heated debate, consensus remains elusive on key issues, with many UN watchers predicting a failure of the summit.
There is still no agreement on enlarging the 15-member Security Council, the key plank of the reform package, with three rival proposals on the table and no support for the plan from the United States and China, two of the Council’s five veto-wielding members.
But on this issue, Ping said there was no reason for pessimism although he expressed doubt that a deal could be sealed next month.
“I believe we can find a solution, but it will probably emerge in the next few months,” he noted.
“In the other areas, I think we should be able to find a solution by September. If not, do you really think we are going to ask 180 world leaders to come here without a deal?,” he added.
Other issues still unresolved include a universal definition of terrorism, disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, replacing the discredited Human Rights Commission by a leaner Human Rights Council made up of members fully committed to the highest human rights standards and the responsibility of the world community to protect peoples threatened with genocide.
“Time is short. In order to maximize our chances of success, I suggest we begin the negotiations immediately,” US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said in a letter addressed to his 190 UN counterparts.
