John Metzler Archive

Sounds of convening General Assembly: Bombast, peace talk, hammers

The 65th annual session of the UN’s main membership body will debate issues ranging from battling global poverty to promoting human rights and international security. Yet the setting will be shadowed by the usual controversary as leaders from Bolivia, Iran, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are set to speak to the proceedings with the usual political pyrotechnics against America and the West.

Significantly the presidency of the year-long session has gone to Joseph Deiss, a distinguished diplomat and former Swiss President and Foreign Minister who brings a level of gravitas to the chamber in contrast with last year’s Assembly president from Libya. Not to be confused with Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon of South Korea, Dr. Deiss will oversee proceedings in the 192 member assembly.

The opening debate will see the president of the United States Barack Obama, and his political counterparts from Brazil, Turkey, People’s Republic of China and Iran all speak the same day. The following day the new British Prime Minister David Cameron will address the meeting along with counterparts from Japan and Afghanistan, and leaders from Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

The actual Assembly agenda being considered over the next few months contains 163 items including such perennial political issues as question of Palestine, and the question of the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) to the more recent role of blood diamonds in fueling conflict and situation in Afghanistan.

Items on the perennial buzzwords, the Millennium Development Goals, sustainable development and “globalization and interdependence” are also on the agenda. A plethora of disarmament items, human rights issues, and matters dealing with far-flung UN peacekeeping operations will round out the list.

But beyond the standard set piece agenda items which rarely change, political action and lobbying is traditionally set on the sidelines of the discussions where pressing hot button issues like Iran’s emerging nuclear program, Sudan’s massive human rights violations, and Somalia’s slide deeper into anarchy will dominate discussions..

The Islamic Republic of Iran continues to confront the global community and directly threaten Israel (and equally frighten neighboring Arab states), with its nuclear proliferation. Though Tehran has been slapped with four separate sets of economic sanctions, the fact remains that Mahmoud Ahmadinjad’s regime presses ahead with its illegal proliferation. The permanent members of the Security Council (P-5) and Germany will continue to push Iran for transparency in its nuclear efforts but don’t expect much.

Sudan’s horrible human rights crisis continues both in the destitute region of Darfur and the largely Christian south. Sudan’s strongman General Omar al Bashir has balked at holding an agreed to referendum in Sudan’s south where a thirty-year rebellion had raged until 2005. The Sudan regime is equally intransigent of dealing with the genocide in its western Darfur province where UN peacekeepers and aid agencies are mired in limbo. In both cases the People’s Republic of China, Sudan’s chief commercial and political protector assures the Khartoum rulers that they have friends in high places.

Somalia remains a perennial crisis. Not only is the country being wracked by inter-Islamic violence, but Somali has emerged a haven for all kinds of terrorists and Al Qaida franchise operations. The strategic country bordering Kenya and Ethiopia, and straddling vital maritime sea lanes off the Horn of Africa, has become a hornets nest of terror and piracy. Somali based piracy has emerged as a major challenge to shipping off East Africa. The UN regularly addresses the deteriorating situation in the Security Council.

Humanitarian crises are no less important as this column often stresses. Rebuilding Haiti after the devastating January earthquake and helping Pakistan in the midst of the ongoing deluge of flooding, are two key issues confronting the overstretched UN humanitarian system.

Still despite the pressing political challenges, the atmosphere of this somewhat off- balance session is set not only to the backdrop of tumultuous international events but to the disruption of most of the UN complex itself. Given that the entire UN is under massive renovation and looking more like a banging and clanging construction site than the setting for diplomatic decorum, the session takes on a different aura and feel.

With the exception of the cavernous General Assembly hall where the major speeches are made, the rest of the complex is a work site including the 38 story Secretariat building. UN administrative offices are scattered around New York City. Crucial operations are centered in a modular building on the north lawn which evokes an IKEA store and not the setting, nor the agora, of international affairs.