Seeking A Weaker U.N. Security Council

New U.N. Assembly Head Wants Weaker Security Council

By Patrick Worsnip
Tue Sep 16, 2008 8:07pm EDT
Courtesy Of Reuters

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A former Nicaraguan leftist official became president of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, urging that power be given to its broad membership and taken away from the big-power-dominated Security Council.

In a combative opening statement to a new annual session of the assembly, Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann called for a "democratization" of the United Nations and sharply attacked the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The broadside by D'Escoto, who was foreign minister in the left-wing Sandinista government that ruled Nicaragua from 1979-1990, came just a week before he chairs the annual General Assembly gathering of world leaders in New York.

He announced plans for a "high-level dialogue" to discuss the "revitalization and empowerment" of the 192-nation General Assembly by giving it powers "wrongly accumulated" in the Security Council, World Bank and IMF and the U.N. bureaucracy.

"The General Assembly should become more proactive and its resolutions should be binding," he said. "The idea that the clear and unequivocal voice of 'We the peoples' should be regarded as a mere recommendation with no binding power should be buried forever in our anti-democratic past."

The U.N. Charter lays down that binding votes can be taken only by the 15-nation Security Council, whose five big-power permanent members have vetoes. Changing the charter needs approval by two-thirds of U.N. members, including the five.

D'Escoto charged that at the United Nations the term democracy had become "increasingly empty, with no real meaning or substance." He cited the fact that repeated General Assembly votes against the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba by a majority of more than 95 percent had made no difference.

No countries hold vetoes in the General Assembly.

D'Escoto said his high-level dialogue would also discuss "democratizing" the World Bank and IMF, which, he said, "have been and continue to be used as instruments of domination."

He called for changes in the institutions' share system and method of electing their boards of directors, both of which favor the wealthy countries. The World Bank and IMF, however, are not U.N. bodies.

'ADDICTION TO WAR'

D'Escoto took over the General Assembly presidency from Srgjan Kerim of Macedonia, who on his last day of office on Monday negotiated an agreement to launch inter-governmental talks on expanding the Security Council.

But D'Escoto said simply expanding the council would not resolve what he called abuse of the veto by "some members." He accused unspecified council members of having an "addiction to war" and of threatening international peace and security.

D'Escoto was elected unopposed to the assembly presidency in June after no other eligible country in Latin America, whose turn it was to hold the job, offered a candidate.

Now 75, he was Nicaraguan foreign minister when the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega was battling a revolt by U.S.-backed Contra rebels. He has more recently been an adviser to Ortega, who returned to the presidency in 2006.

The son of a diplomat, D'Escoto was born in Los Angeles and ordained as a Roman Catholic priest. He espoused the left-wing liberation theology movement within the Catholic Church and backed the Sandinistas in the late 1970s, earning a reprimand from Pope John Paul II for involvement in politics.

In a 2004 interview, he called former U.S. President Ronald Reagan an "international outlaw" and "the butcher of my people" and said President George W. Bush was Reagan's "spiritual heir."

But on his election to the U.N. post, D'Escoto said he did "not want to turn this (General Assembly) presidency into a place to take it out on the United States."

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)