UN president: World powers 'addicted to war'

Sep 17 2008 WalesOnline

THE new president of the United Nations General Assembly has accused some of the world body’s most powerful members of relying on warfare.

“It is a sad but undeniable fact that serious breaches of the peace and threats to international peace and security are being perpetrated by some members of the Security Council that seem unable to break what appears like an addiction to war,” Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann said, without naming any countries.

Mr d’Escoto’s comments came as he opened the assembly’s 63rd annual session yesterday.



During his acceptance speech in June, he criticised what he called “acts of aggression” in Iraq and Afghanistan without mentioning the US by name.

Mr D’Escoto, a Nicaraguan Roman Catholic priest allied with his country’s left-wing president, also took a swipe at the US for what he said was its “unjust” 46-year-long trade embargo against Cuba.

His remarks before a half-filled chamber were his first as president of the 192-nation assembly. He will preside over its year-long session, including two weeks of ministerial meetings that begin next week.

Much of Mr d’Escoto’s antipathy was directed at the 15-nation UN Security Council, the United Nations’ most powerful body, which is dominated by the US, China, Russia, Britain and France – the five permanent members with veto power.

That configuration reflects the balance of power at the end of the Second World War, when the UN was created. It was much on Mr d’Escoto’s mind as he dedicated his presidency to seeking “the democratisation of the United Nations” and to helping the “dispossessed”.

Turning to Cuba, Mr d’Escoto wondered aloud why the United Nations has been powerless to overturn the US trade embargo imposed on Fidel Castro’s government in February 1962.

“If the opinion of more than 95% of the membership of the United Nations can be so casually ignored, of what use is this General Assembly?” he said.

The General Assembly’s resolutions aren’t binding, unlike the Security Council, which can set international law. But the assembly controls the UN budget and serves as a world forum for debate.

Mr D’Escoto has long been a supporter of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, who once allied himself with Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union and won re-election as Nicaragua’s president in 2006. Mr D’Escoto was foreign minister of Nicaragua when the Sandinistas ruled in the 1980s.

The assembly’s presidency rotates by region and lasts for a year. The assembly elected Mr d’Escoto, who was born in Los Angeles, to succeed Macedonian diplomat Srgjan Kerim.

Meanwhile UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said he would use the assembly’s ministerial session to hold talks with world leaders on issues ranging from climate change to the detention of Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

He called it a top priority “to mobilise and galvanise all political wills and resources starting from now” to craft a new climate change agreement next year to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Speaking about Suu Kyi, Mr Ban said Burma’s military junta “should release her from house arrest” to allow the 63-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has been on a recent hunger strike, to lead “a genuine and free life”.