Annan Seeks Sweeping UN Reforms

BBC News reports On Monday the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will lay out his ideas in front of the General Assembly in what could be seen as the start of the negotiations leading to a summit of UN heads of state and governments in September..... Mr Annan is expected to call for radical reform, including expansion of the Security Council this year, new rules on when military action can be used, reform of the UN's human rights body and a convention against terrorism next year....

1. Mr Annan will recommend an expansion of the Security Council to make it more representative, but will not choose between the two models offered by the High Level report. These models both envisage an expansion to 24 members, but the first model would have six new permanent seats (though no new vetoes) and the second eight new middle-ranking seats with four-year, renewable terms.
2. He is expected to accept that the UN Human Rights Commission needs reform and will propose that member states that violate human rights should not serve on the Commission. It should also be a much smaller group.
3. He will propose that an anti-terrorism convention already under discussion be drawn up by September 2006. This would be based on a definition of terrorism that has yet to be agreed. Since the convention would seek to outlaw suicide bombings, the wording is crucial since some states do not want resistance to occupation to be a crime.
4. Mr Annan will also lay out a series of measures to address internal corruption and lack of oversight of UN contracts in an effort to placate critics in the United States, some of whom have called for his resignation. One idea is to buy out older UN personnel to make way for younger officials.

The Telegraph said The security of America and other wealthy countries will for the first time be declared a key priority for the United Nations under reforms designed to restore confidence in the crisis-ridden international body..... Chidyan Siku, Zimbabwe's ambassador to the UN, gave the proposals a cool reception. "My feeling, and the feeling of colleagues from developing countries, is that the Secretariat is trying to please America by slanting towards the strategic agenda of the North. That will not find favour with us," he said. An official at the French mission said: "They may be going too far in trying to please Washington. The UN is not only about the US."

Spoon blogs Through its extensive network of spies, The Spoons Experience has obtained a preliminary draft of the report's suggestions:

• U.N. officials will now be required to report all bribes, kickbacks, and gratuities that they receive from genocidal dictators to a newly formed subcommittee. That committee will insure that an equitable share of such funds is distributed to U.N. busboys, bartenders, and kitchen staff, who after all really do a lot of the hard work but never get the credit they deserve;
• The U.N. will now acknowledge that repeated, unenforced resolutions have not been entirely successful in dissuading rogue states from seeking to aquire nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons for use against their neighbors. Accordingly, henceforth, such rogue states will instead be sent tersely worded e-mails written in ALL CAPS, which dictators will interpret as shouting (dictators hate that);
• The second verse of the U.N. anthem, which begins, "America, America, we hate you uncultured imperialist dogs," will no longer be sung except on official special occasions. In all other instances, the lyric, "We hate you, we hate you, and you know who you are!" will be substituted;

There were seven other items, almost as funny as those, but I will leave it to the reader to read them from his blog

CQ blogs John Bolton's appointment underscores this new seriousness. Bush intended on sending a message to Annan: you have one last chance to make the UN relevant to Western needs. We will no longer underwrite the anti-Americanism and the kowtowing to the petty tyrannies that comprise Annan's mandate. Either Annan needs to get on the side of the democracies and start working on making the Western nations more secure, allowing them to help spread freedom, or the UN can consider itself a permanent footnote to history.

Not surprisingly, some of the anti-American hysterics in the global community decry this strategic shift. Too bad. If they want American resources and American cash to flow into Turtle Bay, then the UN needs to quit making itself as hostile as possible to American interests. After discovering their treachery with Saddam, they're lucky we don't toss them aside altogether.

CBC News reports In a speech to the UN Economic and Social Council, Sachs [UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's top poverty adviser, Jeffrey Sachs] was especially critical of the countries that have not set timetables to reach the 0.7 per cent goal, and of the IMF and World Bank for not pressing donors to give more. The United States now spends about 0.15 per cent of its GDP on development aid while Japan next year will spend 0.21 per cent and Germany 0.32 per cent. "For 35 years we've been fighting whether the rich world will give 70 cents out of $100 of its income and keep $99.30. That's what we've been debating. And I don't know how many resources, political and otherwise, the rich world has spent saying we're not even giving 70 cents out of $100," an obviously exasperated Sachs said.

I don't trust the UN, and I suspect that their improvements are just a matter of show, and the real plan is to get us to triple the money we provide for the UN to waste.