Greetings Gambia-l,
I thought some of you might find this article and the next one posted
seperately interesting.
Momodou Camara
//////\\\\\\\/////=====\\\\\===//////====\\\\\\\///////\\\\\\\///////\\\\/
Title: POLITICS: World Leaders to Adopt a Watered-Down UN Declaration
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 5 (IPS) - Over 150 world leaders, scheduled to
take part in a summit meeting at the United Nations this week, are
expected to adopt a wide-ranging political declaration committing
themselves to resolving some of the world's political, economic
and environmental problems.
But the declaration itself has been watered-down because of
objections from several countries, including the United States,
France, China, Russia and India, mostly against provisions
relating to nuclear dangers.
A nine-page draft declaration, which is to be adopted Friday,
covers several politically-sensitive issues, including human
rights, national sovereignty, global poverty, debt, pollution,
humanitarian emergencies and the reform of the United Nations.
The Millennium Declaration, which was finalised Monday after 19
rounds of informal consultations among the 188 member states, is
to be transmitted to the Millennium Summit in New York Sep. 6-8.
The declaration has been diluted from the original version because
of strong reservations by a handful of countries. Even though the
declaration was adopted Monday, several countries sustained their
objections.
Asked if these reservations will spill over into the summit, the
President of the General Assembly Theo-Ben Gurirab of Namibia told
reporters Tuesday that he was confident that world leaders will
adopt the declaration without reservations.
In the original draft declaration, heads of state and heads of
government were urged to ''sign and ratify the Rome Statue of the
International Criminal Court (ICC).''
But due to objections from the United States, which has refused to
sign the ICC Statute, the final declaration only calls on states
to ''consider'' signing and ratifying the Statute.
The United States also expressed reservations over a proposal to
''cancel all official bilateral debts'' of the Heavily Indebted
Poor Countries (HIPC) ''in return for their making demonstrable
commitments to poverty reduction.'' But that proposal survived the
chopping block.
According to the final declaration, world leaders will also
resolve to halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world's
people whose income is less than one dollar a day.
Meanwhile, amid strong opposition from the US and Western European
states, the developing nations have insisted that world leaders re-
dedicate themselves to uphold and respect the ''territorial
integrity and political independence of sovereign states'', and
more importantly, avoid any form of interference in the ''internal
affairs of states''.
Western nations have argued that the UN Security Council should
have the right to intervene in the internal affairs of a country -
on humanitarian grounds. But that intervention may now be
challenged by the provisions in the Millennium Declaration.
Although the document has no legal status, it still has the moral
force of having been adopted by a summit of world leaders.
The United States also objected to a provision that calls on
member states to ensure the entry into force of the Kyoto
Protocol, preferably by the year 2002. The protocol ensures the
required reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases.
India, a newly-ordained nuclear power, objected to a provision on
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference which
called on all states to sign the NPT. India, which has refused to
be a party to the NPT, insisted that the provision be deleted from
the final declaration.
Perhaps the strongest opposition was to a proposal relating to
nuclear dangers. The original draft asked world leaders ''to
convene a major international conference to identify ways of
eliminating nuclear dangers.''
But the final declaration asks them to ''strive for the
elimination of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear
weapons, and to keep all options open for achieving this aim,
including the possibility of convening an international conference
to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers.''
The world's five major nuclear powers - who are also the five veto-
wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council - strongly
objected to any attempts at highlighting the dangers of nuclear
weapons.
All five countries, namely the United States, Britain, France,
China and Russia, have said that holding a conference on nuclear
dangers is not one of the priorities for the 21st century. All
five have also opposed proposals for the elimination of nuclear
weapons.
The proposal for a conference on nuclear dangers was originally
made by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his Millennium Report to
the General Assembly last March.
In projecting a global vision for the 21st century, Annan warned
that some 35,000 nuclear weapons still remain in the arsenals of
nuclear powers, ''with thousands still deployed on hair-trigger
alert.''
''Whatever rationale these weapons may once have had has long
since dwindled,'' he said, adding that ''political, moral and
legal constraints on actually using them undermine their strategic
utility without, however, reducing the risks of inadvertent war or
proliferation.''
The objective of nuclear non-proliferation, he argued, is not
helped by the fact that the nuclear weapon states continue to
insist that those weapons in their hands enhance security, while
in the hands of others they are a threat to world peace.
''To help focus attention on the risks we confront and on the
opportunities we have to reduce them, I propose that consideration
be given to convening a major international conference that would
help to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers,'' he added.
(END/IPS/IP/DV/td/da/00)
Origin: SJAAMEX/POLITICS/
----
[c] 2000, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
