How Kofi Annan Can Stop The War

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
1

Will Bush bomb the UN weapons inspectors too?

[thumb=B]bilde.JPG[/thumb]Kofi Annan (AP)

How Kofi Annan Can Stop The War](http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2003/03/35982.php) Vancouver Indy Media Centre March 14, 2003

The U.S. has no authority to evict the inspectors, who are United Nations employees. And it is unlikely that President Bush and his advisors would proceed with an attack, which would be a public relations nightmare as long as the inspectors are still in Iraq.

According to recent reports, the United States may be about to warn the U.N. inspectors and reporters to leave Iraq within three days.The purpose of this warning will be to protect the inspectors and reporters from harm when U.S. forces attack Iraq, perhaps late next week. The situation provides an interesting opportunity for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. If the U.S. issues the expected warning, he can and should announce that the U.S. has no authority to evict the inspectors, who are United Nations employees. Furthermore, Annan can say that he will not withdraw the inspectors from Iraq unless he is ordered to do so by the U.N. Security Council or the inspectors report that they are not being allowed to do their job.

Any effort to get the Security Council to order the inspectors out under current circumstances would undoubtedly fail, and if by some miracle it did get the needed nine votes it would certainly be vetoed by France, Russia, or China. Such an announcement by the Secretary General would have three very beneficial consequences. First, it is unlikely that President Bush and his advisors would proceed with an attack, which would be a public relations nightmare as long as the inspectors are still in Iraq.

Second, the announcement would not undermine the work of the inspectors, but could even increase their clout, and that of the Secretary General, vis-à-vis Saddam Hussein. As long as they remain, the inspectors would protect Iraq from an American attack, but if not given carte blanche to do their work they will leave. Third, the announcement would become a precedent for greatly enhanced power to be exercised by the Secretary General of the United Nations. This person is the closest thing we have to a chief executive for the world, and he is in a position from which it is natural to consider the welfare of the people of the world as a whole.

Until now, the veto power enjoyed by the five permanent members of the Security Council (U.S., Great Britain, France, Russia, and China) has generally been considered to be a limit on the power of the United Nations. However by assuming the power to act on behalf of the human race unless the Security Council tells him he cannot, the Secretary General can make the veto work to increase his own power, and thus the power of the United Nations.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if today’s tragic world conditions provided the opening for a great leap forward in our world institutions! If he seizes the opportunity fate has given him, Kofi Annan may well go down in history as a “Machiavelli for peace,” one of the greatest people of the twenty first century. And it will be the Bush Administration that made it all possible!

2

I don't know about this, but within 48 hours of the start of open hostilities I'm sure someone will invoke resolution 377 to bypass the US & UK's veto in order to condemn the action and request a pull-out.

3

Yes I was going to post a separate thread on the little know UN Resolution 377, but I’ll post an article on it here.

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=386906

The forgotten power of the General Assembly

For 30 years, America’s veto policy in the United Nations has been central to its foreign policy. More than 70 times the United States has shamelessly used its veto in the UN, most recently to crush a Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli killing of the British UN worker Iain Hook in Jenin last December. Most of America’s vetoes have been in support of its ally Israel. It has vetoed a resolution calling for the Israeli withdrawal from the Syrian Golan Heights (January, 1982), a resolution condemning the killing of 11 Muslims by Israeli soldiers near the al-Aqsa mosque (April, 1982), and a resolution condemning Israelis slaughter of 106 Lebanese refugees at the UN camp at Qana (April, 1986). The full list would fill more than a page of this newspaper. And now we are told by George Bush Junior that the Security Council will become irrelevant if France, Germany and Russia use their veto? I often wonder how much further the sanctimoniousness of the Bush administration can go. Much further, I fear. So here’s a little idea that might just make the American administration even angrier and even more aware of its obligations to the rest of the world. It’s a forgotten UN General Assembly resolution that could stop an invasion of Iraq, a relic of the Cold War. It was, ironically, pushed through by the US to prevent a Soviet veto at the time of the Korean conflict, and actually used at the time of Suez.

For UN resolution 377 allows the General Assembly to recommend collective action “if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”. This arcane but intriguing piece of UN legislation – passed in 1950 and originally known as the “Uniting for Peace” resolution – might just be used to prevent Messrs Bush and Blair going to war if their plans are vetoed in the Security Council by France or Russia. Fundamentally, it makes clear that the UN General Assembly can step in – as it has 10 times in the past – if the Security Council is not unanimous. Of course, the General Assembly of 1950 was a different creature from what it is today. The post-war world was divided and the West saw America as its protector rather than a potential imperial power. The UN’s first purpose was – and is still supposed to be – to “maintain international peace and security”.

Duncan Currie, a lawyer working for Greenpeace, has set out a legal opinion, which points out that the phrase in 377 providing that in “any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression”, the General Assembly “shall consider the matter immediately” means that – since “threat” and “breach” are mentioned separately – the Assembly can be called into session before hostilities start. These “breaches”, of course, could already be alleged, starting with the American air attack on Iraqi anti-ship gun batteries near Basra on 13 January this year. The White House – and readers of The Independent, and perhaps a few UN officials – can look up the 377 resolution at Redirect to New Website - Dag Hammarskjöld Library If Mr Bush takes a look, he probably wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But today the General Assembly – dead dog as we have all come to regard it – might just be the place for the world to cry: Stop. Enough.

4

Malik, That’s a very powerful article - sadly, one that is likely to be completely neglected, just as 377 will be. Whatever happened to the General Assembly? What has happened to the voice of the United Nations, not the Security Council ? Here is the almost-silenced Kofi Annan during an "off the cuff" press conference:

Q: Mr. Secretary-General, you said that an attack on Iraq without a second Council resolution would not be legitimate. Would you consider it as a breach of the UN Charter?

SG: I think that under today’s world order, the Charter is very clear on circumstances under which force can be used. I think the discussion going on in the Council is to ensure that the Security Council, which is master of its own deliberations, is able to pronounce itself on what happens. If the US and others were to go outside the Council and take military action it would not be in conformity with the Charter.

5

If the US and others were to go outside the Council and take military action it would not be in conformity with the Charter.

Exactly, and that is the UN Secretary General saying that. The US-UK going to war without a second resolution is illegal and they know it, or else they would not have spent so much trying to get the votes to pass this resolution.

6

DHP:
I guess Kofi decided not to take the advise contained in the lead article in this thread. He has now ordered all UN personnel to leave Iraq.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2393618