UN: Sweden's incoming president of the General Assembly, Jan Eliasson, will be centrally involved in attempts to reform the UN this summer. He talks to Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Reform of the United Nations is "crucial" if the world body is to remain relevant to the task of resolving global problems, incoming General Assembly president Jan Eliasson said during a visit to Dublin yesterday. Currently Sweden's ambassador to the United States, he takes over as General Assembly head on September 13th, just in time to chair a three-day summit of world leaders from September 14th-16th, when a major package of reforms is to be considered.
Although he stressed he hadn't yet been formally elected to the post, Eliasson is the only candidate. The presidency rotates between different blocs of member states and this year is the turn of the "Western European and Others Group". He expressed his appreciation that Ireland was the first member state to back his candidacy, even before the other Nordic countries.
As part of his Dublin visit, Eliasson had a working lunch with Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern, who was last month appointed as a special envoy by secretary general Kofi Annan to promote UN reform, mainly among governments on the continent of Europe.
"We are facing a test of multilateralism right now," Eliasson told a news conference afterwards. "Can we prove that the UN, the international system, can give relevant answers to the global problems or not? And that's why the reform effort is also crucial." Progress was needed on development issues, human rights and security.
"The most difficult issue right now is the Security Council enlargement."
In an interview earlier with The Irish Times, Eliasson expressed the hope that significant progress would be made at the September summit and that it would generate momentum for change. The issues were "very complicated" and some of them could not be resolved all at once.
Following a report by the secretary general last March, 10 "facilitators" based in New York were consulting the member states on a draft declaration on reform to be presented by incumbent president of the General Assembly Jean Ping, foreign minister of Gabon, at the end of this month or in early June. The draft declaration would be subject to further negotiation over the summer prior to coming before the summit of world leaders in September.
"We are in a hurry," Eliasson said. "I want to keep the pressure up and keep expectations high."
On Security Council enlargement, he pointed out that a group of four leading member states which aspired to hold permanent seats on that body - Brazil, Germany, India and Japan - were preparing an initial resolution on the issue which was expected to come before the General Assembly in June. A subsequent resolution would seek permanent seats for specific member states, which would obviously include the group of four.
"This is evidently their plan and there are some member states who are opposed to that. And that's where we have - let's face it - the biggest difficulty, because the Security Council is, of course, a major body which has the responsibility for international peace and security, and that involves not only interests related to the UN, but national interests." Annan had urged a "quick decision" on council enlargement to try to get it "out of the way" prior to the September summit.
"But what I hope is that the Security Council enlargement issue will not stop other necessary reform efforts," Eliasson said. "That is crucial."
There has been much discussion of the "responsibility to protect" which has replaced the concept of "humanitarian intervention" in the debate about the role of the UN. "The idea would be that we could act on the early signs of genocide or mass killings, ethnic persecution or ethnic cleansing. If you accept this concept, the responsibility to protect, you put strong pressure on the UN Security Council to act and perhaps not use the veto on genocidal situations. I hope we will go in that direction for the relevance of the UN."
Another major task facing the September summit would be to review progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals on worldwide poverty and deprivation adopted by the UN five years ago.
"So it's a very ambitious agenda for that meeting and, of course, it's daunting in a way."
But Eliasson is no stranger to the UN, having previously served in a variety of posts, such as under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs; Sweden's ambassador to the UN; and as a UN mediator in the protracted war between Iran and Iraq. His debonair diplomatic image earned him the nickname of "James Bond". Back home in Sweden, he spent six years as state secretary for foreign affairs, a key position in formulating and implementing foreign policy.
He has worked with outstanding Swedish public figures such as prime minister Olof Palme and foreign minister Anna Lindh, both of them victims of assassination.
Speaking in the American College Dublin yesterday at an exhibition in memory of Dag Hammarskjold, the Swedish secretary general of the UN who died mysteriously in a plane crash in 1961, Eliasson said he heard the news of Hammarskjöld's death on his 21st birthday and this "symbolic" coincidence influenced his decision to devote so much of his life to the UN.