Monday, January 03, 2005

We Must Resist America's Attempts to Undermine the United Nations: "In the middle of an extremely complex emergency, [Bush] tells us that the US, Australia, Japan and India will co-ordinate the international response. None of these countries has a strong record in responding to international emergencies, although India takes pride in its capacity to deal with its own problems. This proposal is likely to complicate rather than help international coordination Efforts are now under way to try to ensure that the coalition of four will work with the UN, but it is hard to see where the proposal came from, apart from yet another US attempt to snub the UN.

"I find this growing appetite for UN bashing very worrying. In a period of growing international disorder, humanitarian crisis and environmental threat, there is a major push by the world's strongest power to undermine the only system we have for taking co-ordinated action to enforce peace, respond to humanitarian crisis and reach environmental agreements."

"At a time when the world faces terrible challenges, of poverty, disorder and environmental degradation, there is a real danger that the US government is consistently undermining the only legitimate system of international co-operation that we have. And because the UK sees the US alliance as its foreign policy priority, we are increasingly part of the problem rather than the solution."

Australian PM John Howard, of course, instead of aligning himself, suporting and building the established UN relief and emergency structures, predictably follows the Bush administration's 'UN bashing' 'unitaleral' approach.

No comments: