UNITED NATIONS, 15 September 2005 — The United Nations rolled out the red carpet yesterday for more than 170 leaders attending the world’s largest summit. It called for collective action to prevent conflict and genocide and to protect human rights, one day after approving a watered-down blueprint to restructure the embattled world body.
Crown Prince Sultan and a high-level Saudi delegation, including Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Turki Al-Faisal and Finance Minister Dr. Ibrahim Al-Assaf, are all in attendance.
Crown Prince Sultan will address the UN General Assembly today.
The politically star-studded event, which marked its 60th anniversary at its opening Tuesday evening, is billed as one of the largest summits in history — kings, presidents and prime ministers have converged at the Manhattan, New York headquarters of the UN.
Speaking at the UN summit yesterday, US President George W. Bush told members that the United States was prepared to drop all trade tariffs, subsidies and other barriers if other nations did the same.
Eliminating trade barriers “could lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the next 15 years,” Bush said, calling for a successful conclusion to World Trade Organization talks on trade and development, known as the Doha Round of negotiations.
Bush told the UN members that the United States had previously signaled its willingness to eliminate agricultural subsidies and other barriers “to open markets for farmers around the world.”
“Today I broaden the challenge by making this pledge: The United States is ready to eliminate all tariffs, subsidies and other barriers to the free flow of goods and services if other nations do the same,” he said.
The 15-member Security Council, a symbol of the inability to adapt the world organization to the 21st century, held a rare top-level session to adopt a resolution on terrorism proposed by Britain following the July 7 London bombings.
“We have a solemn obligation to stop terrorism at its early stages,” President Bush told the session. “We must do all we can to disrupt each stage of planning and support for terrorist acts.”
But Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the gathering that despite some progress, negotiators had failed to achieve the profound overhaul of UN policies and institutions he sought.
It was inexcusable that nations had failed to agree on a common approach to the spread of weapons of mass destruction, one of the greatest security threats of the 21st century, he told the leaders in an opening address.
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin served a reminder of the topicality of the issue, warning Iran that it faced referral to the UN Security Council unless it met its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Tehran insists it has the right to enrich uranium for what it says is a civilian nuclar program, but Western nations suspect it of a clandestine drive to develop an atom bomb.
Annan said it was a breakthrough that the international community had agreed for the first time it had a responsibility to intervene to protect civilians against genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing.
“But let us be frank with each other, and the peoples of the United Nations. We have not yet achieved the sweeping and fundamental reform that I and many others believe is required,” Annan told a sprawling gathering overshadowed by a scandal over abuses of the UN oil-for-food program in Iraq.
Bush referred obliquely to the scandal, saying the United Nations must be “free of corruption, and accountable to the people it serves” and practice the high moral standards it preached.
BUSH COMBATIVE The US leader focused on his priorities of spreading democracy and eliminating barriers to free trade, as well as using military force, to defeat terrorism and transform the troubled Middle East.
Addressing a world body whose members are still deeply divided over the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, he insisted Iraqis were on the road to building a model democracy despite yet another day of bloodshed in Baghdad in which more than 150 people were killed.
While Bush emphasized the fight against terrorism and extremism, Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, one of the co-chairmen, said the main point of the summit should be “to get the fight against world poverty back on track.”
Many of the world’s poorest countries were falling short of the ambitious goals to halve world poverty by 2015, combat disease and promote development agreed at the 2000 UN Millennium summit, he said.
“If we allow this to happen, millions of lives will be lost and we will pass on a more unfair and unsafe world to the next generations,” Persson said.
In a veiled criticism of the United States, the world’s richest nation, Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende said the Europeans had agreed to boost development aid spending but “we need to see more equal burden-sharing.”
Annan said preparatory negotiations for the summit had unlocked more aid and debt relief, triggered the creation of a UN Democracy Fund and led to a convention against nuclear terrorism.
But negotiators were also unable to adopt a new definition of terrorism because Islamic countries blocking a Western-led attempt to brand any targeting of civilians unacceptable.
Still, the somewhat weakened document saved the summit from failure. UN officials highlighted initiatives, including the establishment of a new human rights body and a peacebuilding commission to help nations emerging from war.
Human rights, anti-poverty and other advocacy groups said the outcome was disappointing.
“We wanted a bold agenda to tackle poverty but instead we have a brochure showcasing past commitments,” Nicola Reindorp, head of Oxfam’s New York office, said in a statement.
