The Road to Damascus

by Ian Williams

The Cuban crisis in February lent sudden legitimacy to the United Nations as members of Congress who usually vilify the organization demanded that it take stern action against Fidel Castro. It may seem a long way from Cuba to the Middle East, but there is no road as short as the "road to Damascus" so often traversed by politicians.

Even before the incident of the downed Cuban exiles' planes, there was yet another sudden "road to Damascus" conversion of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms. Until then, the senator's most obvious U-turn had followed his 1984 discovery of the electoral disadvantages of not supporting Israel. Once vilified by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the holder of the Senate's "worst" voting record on aid to Israel, since his near-defeat by an AIPAC-funded opponent Senator Helms has been the most assiduous supporter of the Israeli lobby.

However, he has never hitherto wavered in his unremitting hostility to the United Nations, in theory and in practice. In concert with Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton, the senator has been as much in cahoots with the Miami Cuban anti-Castro lobby as he now is with AIPAC, and the result is a piece of legislation that has most of the U.S.'s closest allies up in arms. The Helms-Burton Bill would allow current U.S. citizens to sue foreign governments in the U.S. courts for property seized from them, even if they were not U.S. citizens at the time.

However, before Palestinian Americans could even lick their lips at this opportunity to seek restitution from the state of Israel for all the confiscations of Palestinian land and property since 1948, the wily Republican senator from North Carolina introduced a clause that excluded claims against any state established by a resolution of the United Nations. It could be argued that this meant Namibiabut it is rather more likely that Helms had Israel in mind. It seems that this is one, and possibly the only act of the U.N. that Senator Helms approves of. As we go to print, it is unsure whether the clause will remain in the act as approved. But isn't there something in the pledge of allegiance about justice for all? Perhaps it's overridden by the congressional pledge of allegiance to major campaign contributors.

Without taking sides one way or the other on the Arab boycott of Israel or the U.S. embargo on Cuba, it is worth noticing that both the United States and Israel vociferously oppose the first, but usually cast the only two votes against the annual U.N. resolution condemning U.S. sanctions against Havana. (For obscure reasons, this year the U.S. and Israel were joined by Uzbekistan, which is not exactly a trend-setter in diplomatic circles.) The real point is that if principles push the U.S. position in one case, they would appear to be pushing in the opposite direction on the other!

Israel always seems embarrassed at having to support the U.S. position on Cuba. Its embarrassment undoubtedly is enhanced by the presence on the island of several Israeli enterprises involved in sectors like citrus production, which have helped Cuba ride out the U.S. embargo for many years.

Sanctioning and Un-Sanctioning

While the Arab boycott of Israel and the U.S. embargo on Cuba are strictly local initiatives, the U.N. itself is busily sanctioning and un-sanctioning many countries of more direct interest to the readers of this magazine like Iraq and Libya. To that list may soon be added Sudan. On Jan. 31 the Security Council called upon Sudan to extradite to Ethiopia three accused ringleaders of the assassination attempt against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Organization of African Unity summit in Addis Ababa last June.

A head of state like Mubarak is not a mere mortal to be attacked at will. He is an "internationally protected person," like diplomats, whose well-being is the subject of an international conventionand thus a fit subject for Security Council decision.

The Ethiopian ambassador pointed out that of the nine plotters in Addis Ababa, five were killed, one escaped and three were arrested. The arrested men admit that they were directed by leaders in Khartoum, where their passports were prepared and from which their weapons were smuggled by Sudan Airways.

The OAU had urged Sudan to "look for, locate and extradite" suspects. The Sudanese denied that they had refused to cooperate and referred darkly to "the current hostile campaign against the Sudan." However, the Security Council members were unconvinced and called upon Khartoum to hand over the suspects immediately. Ominously, the secretary-general of the U.N., Boutros Boutros-Ghali, has to report back within 60 days, after which it would not be too surprising if some form of sanctions were imposed.

The Bosnian Serbs show every sign of keeping indicted war criminals in the leadership.

In the meantime, sanctions were being eased on other countries. They were lifted entirely against the Bosnian Serb regime, as a reward for its alleged cooperation with the Dayton Agreement. Since the Bosnian Serbs also show every sign of keeping indicted war criminals in the leadership, this cooperation is strictly limited. Even more distressingly, the NATO force, IFOR, seems to be treading in the same light footsteps that UNPROFOR trod so daintily. One cannot help feeling that if Ratko Mladic or Radovan Karadzic, beset with a sudden attack of conscience, were to handcuff themselves and try to surrender to NATO troops, the troops would shoo them away unless there were cameras recording the event.

Iraq is having a slightly harder time having sanctions lifted, and it has to be said that the short life spans of returning sons-in-law were not exactly the best public relations gimmick Saddam Hussain's regime could have devised. However, most diplomats at the U.N. think that there is a good chance that finally there will be agreement on the "food for oil" deal that has been wrangled over for four years now. It is a long way from lifting sanctions completely, but it could go some way toward relieving the well-documented suffering of ordinary Iraqis.

There is, of course, no hint of sanctions against Morocco for the continuing standstill in the Western Sahara. There, the patience of the Security Council, although stretched thin, seems infinitely elastic when faced with the prospect of confronting King Hassan of Morocco. For the umpteenth time, the Security Council has admonished the parties and demanded that they cooperate with the process of registration for the long-delayed referendum and threatened that it will pull out MINURSO, the U.N. force in the Sahara. Somehow, one suspects that the members of the council have never read the story of the boy who cried wolf.

So this very expensive but expedient operation is unlikely to be the subject of U.N. budget cuts, although in the true spirit of Senator Helms, the U.S. delegation to the U.N. is attacking unnecessary and wasteful committees. It should not be too surprising that these Clinton administration appointees have targeted the Committee on the Rights of the Palestinian People and the Committee on Israeli Practices in the Occupied Territories. A major reason for the existence of these bodies, of course, is that since 1948 the United Nations has carried a particular responsibility for the fate of the Palestinians, whose lands and homes it awarded to the future state of Israel, almost entirely at the behest of the United States.

Ironically, the rationale for Helms' exemption of Israel from his Cuban bill is that the Palestinian problem was created by the United Nations, and as Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Nasser Al Kidwa has testified, "international law is the only weapon that Palestinians possess in negotiating a final resolution of their situation." Which is why, of course, the Israeli and U.S. delegations are so eager to disarm the Palestinians by dismantling these committees under the excuse of reducing U.N. costs.

Happily untouched by the cutters is UNRWA, where the predicted change in director has taken place. Peter Hansen, the former head of the U.N.'s Department of Humanitarian Affairs, took over early from former boss Ilter Turkmen, who had spent too much time electioneering in the Turkish elections for the liking of the secretary-general. Hansen began firmly with a timetable for moving the refugee relief organization's headquarters from Vienna to Gaza. However within weeks that was thrown into doubt by Hamas' bombs in Jerusalem and the Israeli response to them.

Sometimes, reflective journalists lament that there are no headlines in reporting peace, wars that did not break out, or covering steady progress. However, it seems there will be no shortage of headlines from the Middle East in the foreseeable future.