UN set for difficult development debate

Analysis By Paul Reynolds World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website

An ideological clash about the role of the United Nations and how the developing world can best be helped lies at the heart of a row in advance of a summit of 175 world leaders.

John Bolton proposed 750 amendments to the UN document

The summit, held at United Nations headquarters in New York from 14-16 September, aims to agree a document taking forward the Millennium Development Goals and laying out how the United Nations organisation should itself be changed.

It was designed to be the culmination of a process of re-establishing confidence in the UN and re-engaging its largest member state, the United States.

Tension has been raised by the just-released report into the Iraq oil-for-food programme which found corruption in the UN and which criticised the Secretary General, Kofi Annan, for not doing enough to stop it.

Mr Annan's position therefore has been weakened just before the summit and the report gives further ammunition to a very determined new American UN Ambassador, John Bolton, one of the chief tacticians of the Bush administration.

Clash of philosophies

The underlying deal in the negotiations is that richer countries will help poorer ones, and in exchange the UN will reform itself and will also be given greater powers to intervene in failed states.

A Convention against Terrorism, to be completed next year, is on the agenda. The British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also calling for a resolution opposing terrorism during the summit.

The point of this summit was to make a step forward. The United States want to take a step back Dr Claire Melamed, Christian Aid

However, one key reform, the possible enlargement of the Security Council, has got bogged down and will not be settled at this session.

The clash of philosophies can be seen most clearly in the arguments about development.

Basically, the Bush administration believes that the free market will spread prosperity far more widely and quickly than UN and government-led targets. This happened, it argues, in the Asia-Pacific region with the growth of economies such as South Korea and Malaysia.

It is therefore not keen on grand declarations and keeps a sharp eye on the details of timetables and targets.

Aid agencies accuse the US of trying to blunt the UN's attack on poverty; and many other governments, including the British, accept that UN-set goals, properly implemented, are useful incentives.

The row came to a head when Ambassador Bolton sought major revisions in the summit's draft text. He has since offered concessions, but the argument has revealed the gulf that still exists between the United States and many other members of the UN.

Wading in

It goes back to September 2000, before Mr Bush became president, when the US agreed to a UN Millennium Development Declaration. This set out a number of major aims, mainly to do with reducing poverty and improving health and education.

Mr Bush said on taking office that he accepted these aims, but there were exceptions, one of which was the Kyoto climate control treaty.

The US proposed removing references to free primary education

The US now argues that the Declaration was then converted into a series of "goals", which went beyond what was agreed.

Kristen Silverberg, assistant secretary of state for International Organization Affairs, said recently: "Separate from the Millennium Declaration, the UN Secretariat created a document that provides a number of indicators, ways to measure, ways the UN Secretariat thinks would be appropriate to measure progress towards those goals.

"Some of them we agree with, some of them we don't agree with. The US never signed onto it. Other member states didn't sign onto it."

Mr Bolton then waded into the summit text. At first he wanted the phrase "Millennium Development Goals" removed completely in favour of the more general "internationally agreed development goals".

He recently said the US could accept the original phrase so long as it was "properly defined". With little time before the summit, negotiators accepted language that would "ensure the timely and full realisation of the development goals and objectives... that have been known as the Millennium Development Goals..."

US 'step back'

Cutting through the diplomatic complications, what this means is that the US is still pledged to the achievement of the development targets, but not necessarily all of them and not necessarily the ways to reach them.

A small example of the latter - Mr Bolton's 750 amendments extended to removing a reference to the need for primary education to be free, since the original Declaration was simply that such education should be provided. The US felt that fee paying should be an option.

Dr Claire Melamed, head of trade policy for the charity Christian Aid, said that the US was trying to "wriggle out of its commitments".

Annan's position has been weakened ahead of the summit

"Now it is being held to account and it is trying to renege," she said. "This exposes the limited nature of its commitment.

"The point of this summit was to make a step forward. The United States wants to take a step back."

An agreement over development is supposed to be matched by an agreement on reform of the UN.

The background to this is the detachment of the US from the UN, symbolised by its war with Iraq, which was undertaken without specific UN approval.

The United States has argued that the UN has been corrupt as well as ineffective, and needs internal change as well as a new role if it is to be taken seriously.

Washington feels that a new world came into being on 9/11 and that the UN must be more active in preventing failed states from breeding terrorism; otherwise the US will do the job itself.

Multilateralism

Some US allies, including Britain, have watched with concern and are anxious that the negotiations succeed in drawing Washington back into more multilateralist policies, in areas such as climate change. Britain currently holds the presidency of the EU and has opposed Mr Bolton's efforts to blur the issue of the Millennium Goals.

Last year a high-level panel set up by Mr Annan recommended significant reform, including the end to the formerly rigid principles of not intervening in the internal affairs of member states.

It also wanted an enlarged Security Council but this issue has been delayed by discussion on all the rest.

Lord David Hannay, the former British UN ambassador who sat on the panel, says that the summit could agree on four issues.

The first is a strategy on terrorism including a definition of terrorism that would outlaw attacks on innocent civilians.

"This would end the argument that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, " said Lord Hannay.

The second is a Peace Building Commission.

"This would play a major role in handling failed states," he said. "I do not think however that it would be into conflict prevention enough, though that could come later."

The third is a standing Human Rights Council to replace the present Human Rights Commission. The Commission has lost western support because any member state, however bad its record, can be elected onto it.

"We must prevent the real nasties from joining," said Lord Hannay.

The fourth is the establishment of the principle of a "Responsibility to Protect".

This would supersede a state's right to tell everyone else to mind their own business.

"The relaxing of the rules on the use of force by the UN have not got very far," said Hannay, "but in any event the whole package depends on the willingness of people not just to say but to do."

The scene is set for a difficult encounter.

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