WE AREN'T THE ONLY ONES.....
OTHER COUNTRIES HAVE CONCERNS
TOO!
Historic Summit: Collection Of
Firsts
September 9, 2000 8:15 pm EST
Security Council Endorses Beefed-Up
U.N. Peacekeeping Operations
UNITED NATIONS, SEPT. 8, 2000 (CBS News) - The U.N. Millennium
Summit comes to its
historic close Friday with the adoption of a wide-ranging wish list
that promises to cut poverty,
protect planet Earth and improve the ability of the United Nations
to keep the peace.
The summit declaration, negotiated for weeks but expected to be adopted
by acclamation, also
commits the 150 heads of state and government who gathered for the
three-day meeting to
promote democracy, strengthen respect for human rights
and reverse the spread of AIDS.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned that he would not be satisfied
unless the leaders
actually implement the pledges in the document. He told a press conference
on the eve of the
summit that he expected every one of them "to go back home and begin
to do something about
it."
U.S. President Bill Clinton held a private meeting with Chinese leader
Jiang Zemin before the
Friday morning U.N. session began. Mr. Clinton said he had assured
Jiang that the U.S. Senate would approve permanent trade relations with
the world's most populous country, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark
Knoller.
The last day of the summit opened Friday morning with a speech by Gambian
President Yahya
Jammeh, at 35 the youngest African leader attending. The last scheduled
speaker was Techeste
Ahderom, who chaired a May summit of grass-roots organizations who
gave their own advice on
how the United Nations could remake itself to better address the challenges
of the 21st century.
On Thursday, it was the Security Council's turn to take up that task,
pledging an overhaul of
U.N. peacekeeping operations so troops can respond more quickly
and robustly to world trouble spots.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Source: Reuters
The council's pronouncement, however, was not in the typical
form of a Security Council
resolution - an indication that the 15 presidents and prime ministers
weren't entirely comfortable with making such concrete, legally binding
pledges to better finance peacekeeping operations.
But the document will nevertheless be one of the major outcomes of the
summit, which featured
a notable first - a chat and handshake between President Clinton and
Cuban President Fidel
Castro. But Mr. Clinton said later that the unexpected handshake resulted
from Castro suddenly
appearing behind him. The president said "I turned around and he was
standing there."
Another summit legacy will be the apparent failure to reach
a Mideast peace deal. Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat on Thursday rejected Mr. Clinton's proposal to
split control of Muslim and
Jewish holy sites in east Jerusalem.
But the three-day meeting, which clogged New York City streets with
motorcades and protests,
will likely be hailed as a success merely for having occurred,
drawing more leaders together than ever before to discuss the challenges
confronting the globe in the third millennium.
"What's the point of stepping foot on Mars if there is still hunger
in several regions of our
planet?" asked Rene Preval, the president of Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's
poorest country.
Such questions were raised throughout the second day of speeches Thursday
and continued
Friday with a speech by one of Africa's most respected leaders, Nigerian
President Olusegun
Obasanjo, who called for the world's wealthy countries to cancel all
the debts of the developing
world.
"This is the only way these countries can be given the chance to effectively
plan for the
improvement of living standards of their peoples," said Obasanjo, the
current chair of the
"Group of 77" developing countries, which actually includes 133 nations.
Mr. Clinton raised the issue of the disparities between rich and
poor in his address to the
council, saying it must address broader security issues related
to disease, poverty, education and climate change if it wants to make a
change in keeping the peace.
"Until we confront the iron link between deprivation, disease and war,
we will never be able to
create the peace that the founders of the United Nations dreamed of,"
he said.
The world body is currently engaged in 14 peacekeeping operations - most of them in the world's poorest countries - with more than 37,000 troops and civilian police deployed from East Timor to Cyprus and Sierra Leone at an annual cost of about $2.2 billion. Nearly 1,000 U.N. civilian staff are engaged in 14 other political and peace-building missions from Afghanistan to Burundi and Guatemala.
Council members met against a sobering backdrop: the killing of three
U.N. relief workers
assisting refugees from East Timor; the rebel seizure of 500 U.N. peacekeepers
in Sierra Leone;
highly critical reports of the U.N. role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide
and the 1995 slaughter of
thousands of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica. Indonesian President Abdurrahman
Wahid said Friday that Jakarta had sent in extra forces to restore calm
in West Timor and would investigate the attack of the aid workers by pro-Indonesian
militias. He blamed the rampage on "criminals" who had infiltrated the
ranks of Jakarta's supporters in West Timor. "Everything is under control,"
he assured the leaders, who resoundingly condemned the killings and demanded
Indonesia do more to disarm the militias in the heads of state Security
Council meeting on Thursday.
At the end of the two-hour meeting, the council leaders - from Argentina,
Bangladesh, Canada,
China, France, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mali, Namibia, Netherlands, Russia,
Tunisia, Ukraine, Britain
and the United States - vowed "to strengthen the central role of the
United Nations in
peacekeeping."
They underlined the importance of rapid deployment of U.N. peacekeepers
and called for
realistic mandates that the soldiers can fulfill, proper training and
equipment for them, and an
overhaul of the U.N. peacekeeping department.
But their proclamation wasn't in resolution form. A one-paragraph resolution
was adopted, but it
said only that the council "decides to adopt" the attached annex, which
contained the text of the
council pledge.
Diplomats were divided on whether the annex itself was legally binding.
It was a compromise after more than a week of closed-door negotiation.
Council diplomats said several countries couldn't agree to make such
specific pledges in a full-fledged resolution.
Rather than watering down the resolution to be palatable to all, they
decided to adopt the
declaration as an annex to a resolution, the diplomats said.