World View/Paul Gillespie: A defining personal moment in the realities of international power politics came in 1961 as I followed the Katanga crisis in the newspapers and on television.
At its centre was Conor Cruise O'Brien, appointed by Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish secretary general of the United Nations, to be his personal envoy in this breakaway state of the newly-independent Republic of the Congo. The crisis there erupted when the mineral-rich province seceded and troops from Belgium, the former colonial power, were sent ostensibly to protect their civilians.
O'Brien was a college friend of my parents, lived nearby and I had been at school with his son. His assertion of the UN's primacy against Belgian, French and British criticisms was cheered on in that sitting room - a few weeks before it ended in tragedy for Hammarskjöld, who was killed in a plane crash as he flew to meet Moise Tshombe, the Katangan leader, in northern Rhodesia.
O'Brien resigned his position amid controversy over his mandate and next year published a gripping book on the crisis, To Katanga and Back, which remains a classic case study of how such power politics intersect with the UN. He returned to the subject in Sacred Drama, a book on its symbolic indispensability but practical powerlessness, and in Murderous Angels, a play about Lumumba and Hammarskjöld.
The forthcoming head of the UN General Assembly, Jan Eliasson, currently Swedish ambassador to the US, recalled this week in Dublin that Swedes remember where they were on the day they heard of Hammarskjöld's death, just as Irish people do with Kennedy's. This year is the 100th anniversary of his birth. Eliasson spoke of him as a special symbol of Swedish diplomacy and a man with an unfailing moral compass. He contributed three concepts to the UN's political armoury which continue to make the organisation indispensable and can give it practical power: preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping operations and UN presence as a symbol of world conscience.
Eliasson was in Dublin to hear from Dermot Ahern and his officials how they are getting on as envoys for Kofi Annan's ambitious programme for UN reform, entitled In Larger Freedom. This apt phrase is drawn from the UN Charter agreed in 1945. It linked fundamental human rights to the conditions under which justice and the rule of law can be maintained; and both of these to the promotion of "social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom".
Annan's plans are not aimed at rewriting the charter, which Eliasson commends for its continuing eloquent relevance, but at tying down commitments to renew and reform the UN's structure and operation in three major respects which fill out its full title: Towards security, development and human rights for all.
Ireland and Sweden are "like-minded" states which have always worked closely together, Eliasson points out. They have much to gain from the UN which allows them to punch above their weight in world politics.
Ahern's selection as one of five "envoys" around the world for the reform package is a tribute to Ireland's international standing. He is busy with the task of canvassing support from European governments. In Warsaw this week at the Council of Europe's summit he spoke of the progress being made on the proposal to create a Peacebuilding Commission which would help countries make the transition from war to peace by providing much greater political, humanitarian and financial resources.
He appealed for greater European Union coherence on the reform plans, notably in finding agreement on changes in the Security Council structures. They are divided by the fact that France and Britain remain permanent members, while Germany seeks such a place and Italy advocates a different formula, including the long-term prospect of a united EU representation.
Eliasson hopes progress will be made on a new approach to human rights through agreement on a "responsibility" to protect them. "The idea would be that we could act on the early signs of genocide or mass killings, ethnic persecution or ethnic cleansing." It is better framed than that of "humanitarian intervention", used variously by world leaders and the UN itself to justify operations in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo, but which raised profound questions of state sovereignty and suspicion that the UN was being used as a Trojan horse by Western states to justify their own post-imperial or neo-imperial interests. Such a responsibility could be grounded rather on the universalisation of human rights conventions and demands that they be applied.
There are indications that African states are willing to accept it - an interesting development four decades on from the Katanga crisis.
UN reform is a recurrent issue on the international political agenda - and it does not have especially good omens of success. The UN's strict state-centredness militates against deepening its security and rights agenda, while development goals have been prey to other priorities, including those of domestic expenditure and trade protection in richer states.
Eliasson believes the UN's member states face crucial choices over the next few years on whether to opt for continued unilateralism or a relevant UN-based multilateralism capable of commanding popular support among domestic electorates; whether and how to close development gaps of wealth, knowledge and power; and moving from fear to hope in dealing with terrorism after the 9/11 shock.
He welcomes greater EU coherence and joint activity in the UN, pointing out that the role of regional organisations is fully endorsed by chapter eight of the UN Charter. He has found his European hat more and more important in Washington over the last five years. During this time a decisive shift has occurred in the UN's attitude towards organisations such as the EU and the African Union. The EU "battle group" concept (in Swedish it is normally translated as a rapid reaction group - a more acceptable designation) has much relevance for future conflict prevention.
But if UN reform is to appeal to a mass audience as well as sympathetic governments it must be dramatised as in Katanga (or two years ago over Iraq). It could and should be joined up to more radical ideas about how to regulate, reform or transform capitalist globalisation and create more transnational democracy to make international organisations accountable to citizens. Annan's supporters need to harness such energies in the long term if they are to make UN reform work.