Inability to Get Veto-Breaking UNGA Resolution on Kosovo Tracks Back to U.S. Policy on Israel

By Ian Williams

The many people who think that “American diplomacy” is an oxymoron will have found much to vindicate them recently. From one point of view the failure to get a Security Council resolution authorizing military action against Slobodan Milosevic is a peccadillo—like a police officer who does not wait for a search warrant after seeing a murder being committed on private property.

Some opponents of the air attacks on Serbia have invoked the U.N. to defend Belgrade and attack the legality of NATO’s actions. This is, to say the least, stretching it a bit. Slobodan Milosevic’s regime has over 50 Security Council resolutions against it, not to mention 3 recent ones condemning his behavior in Kosovo. To justify him now by means of a threatened Russian veto is not dissimilar to saying that Israel must be in the right be- cause it has an American veto behind it.

But from another point of view, the U.S. and NATO could have had their resolution, or at least some form of authorization for action from the United Nations, if it were not for Washington’s diplomatic ineptitude. The Islamic bloc, for example, seems pleasantly surprised to discover that U.S. weapons actually work against non-Muslims and, together with the Western Europeans and the majority of like-minded countries, they have thwarted attempts by countries like Cuba and Iraq to get resolutions condemning the NATO air strikes against Serbia.

Right at the beginning of the bombing, the Russians and the West were equally surprised at the result of Moscow’s bid to get a Security Council resolution condemning the NATO action shortly after it had begun. Only Russia, China and Namibia voted for, while staunchly anti-Western votes like Malaysia came in with the British, Americans and French to defeat Moscow by 12-3.

An even more significant indication was the U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva, which voted 44 votes to one to condemn Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Russia was the sole dissenter, and could only count on the support of six abstentions by China, Congo, Cuba, India, Nepal, and South Africa. Later, a Russian attempt to condemn the NATO action was defeated in the same committee—although with an unhealthy number of abstentions.

The abstentions and the ambivalence of some delegates reflect the U.S. record in the U.N. Being a persistent $1.6 billion in arrears of dues does not help, of course, but U.S. Middle East policy is a major factor. It is, after all, the automatic American veto on behalf of Israel that established the precedent for Moscow to threaten a veto in the Security Council on behalf of its own client state—Serbia. (Incidentally, the Russians are not as isolated on Serbia as the U.S. is on the Middle East issues. At the end of April only the U.S. voted in the U.N. Human Rights Commission against a resolution reaffirming Palestinian rights to self-determination.)

U.S. Israeli Policy Boomerangs

There is yet more irony. In the 1950s American diplomats pioneered a way of bypassing a (Soviet as it happens) veto. They instituted the “Uniting for Peace” procedure under which the General Assembly could pass resolutions with all the force of a Security Council. In the Assembly, there is no veto, so a majority is all that is required.

Seeing the current of support for resolute action on behalf of the Kosovars the obvious thing for the West to do is take the issue of legitimizing action to the General Assembly.

But, alas, no. The Palestinian U.N. delegation was there before them, and ever since then the U.S. has been lobbying to delegitimize the procedure which, it seems, was useful when the U.S. used it to thwart Soviet vetoes but now is obsolete when it might be used to thwart U.S. obstruction.

As we have reported in these pages before, the Arab delegates resurrected the procedure to circumvent the American veto on a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli plans to build at Jabal Abu Ghneim. They reconvened an emergency General Assembly meeting, which still is technically in session since it has only been adjourned. The General Assembly called for sanctions against the Israeli settlements and for the convening of a meeting of signatories of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the occupied territories.

Unfortunately, therefore, the U.S. cannot lend its support to the procedure now to get support for NATO action against Serbia because to do so would commit the U.S. to action against Israel. No matter how minor the sanctions may be, there is no way this administration, or for that matter this Congress, will upset AIPAC & Co.

So the U.S. has, diplomatically speaking, stingered itself in the foot because of Israel. One would like to report gratitude, but Israel is in fact very ambivalent about supporting its “ally’s” action in the Balkans. Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, in between paranoid ravings about an Islamic beachhead in Europe, also has opposed NATO and the U.S. action on very logical grounds. Citing the similarity between the Palestinians and Kosovars, he says that action on behalf of the Kosovars also implies the legitimacy of action on behalf of the Palestinians.

He is, of course, quite right about the logic. The conquerors of Deir Yassin, Sabra and Shatila and Srebrenica do indeed have much in common. He is, alas, seriously dotty in expecting logic out of American foreign policy.

A Step Forward on Libya

However, there was one step forward at the U.N. Libya finally availed itself of the compromise secured by its Arab and African allies and handed over Lamen Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali al Megrahi, accused of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, to the United Nations for trial in a Scottish court at The Hague.

There were those who thought the U.N. plane with the two suspects in the Lockerbie case would never leave Tripoli. And there were those like the U.N. TV cameraman who refused the assignment on the plane, because he thought that it would never arrive in The Hague.

Libya has thus become the first Arab country to evade the U.S. veto and come out from under United Nations sanctions. Technically, the sanctions were only suspended as soon as the secretary-general notified the Council that the two accused had landed in the Netherlands, but as U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh pointed out, that was a technicality. It would take a positive vote of the Security Council to reinstate them and with the present balance of forces there, there is no way that is going to happen.

Interestingly, the British, who have been pushing a hard military line against Serbia on an unenthusiastic White House, played a big part in persuading Washington to accept the compromise. Robin Cook, the British foreign secretary, publicly endorsed Washington’s hard-line stance, but worked hard behind the scenes to win grudging American acceptance for a trial in The Hague. As one UK foreign office official put it, the British had “stretched the limits of elasticity” with the Americans, who were being harassed by an uncompromising group of victims’ families, and the traditional groups who always think that it’s a good time to have sanctions on an Arab state.

No Breakthrough on Iraq

It would be good to think that the British were able or willing to pull off a similar feat over Iraqi sanctions, but it seems highly unlikely. At the end of March, Brazilian Ambassador Celso Amorim reported back to the Security Council on the three panels that had been set up to break the logjam on Iraq. However, early hopes of a breakthrough were soon dashed as even the British and Americans bickered on their reactions.

A Russian draft resolution and a joint Anglo-Dutch one drew almost opposite conclusions from the panels. The Russian draft called for lifting sanctions as soon as a “reinforced” method of ongoing monitoring and verification is up and running, while the Western one took a more rigorous view.

The only concession the Dutch and British offered Baghdad was the (implied) head of UNSCOM Chair Richard Butler on a platter and the end of UNSCOM—at least as presently named. The Anglo-Dutch draft resolution called for the appointment of a new head of the U.N. Commission on Investigation, Inspection and Monitoring (UNCIIM) by the beginning of July. UNSCOM staff and assets would be taken over by UNCIIM and its new director would report back in 45 days with a new organizational plan.

This hints, without stating explicitly, that the reorganization will take account of fears about the high spy count in UNSCOM. In the highly likely event of non-cooperation by Baghdad, the new body would station monitors on the Iraqi borders to do its work.

Far from relaxing sanctions, the Dutch-British draft calls for the current informal oil product trade with Turkey to be brought under the oil-for-peace remit, so that the proceeds can be used—in Turkey—for humanitarian purchases. It also precludes allowing foreign direct investment in the oil industry, as envisaged in the panel recommendations, since the drafters think that it would be too difficult to police the capital flows effectively—and also perhaps because the U.S. had already ruled out that possibility.

However, the draft does envisage the lifting of the current ceiling on oil exports and the establishment of an expert group on how to boost production.

To meet immediate needs for food, medicine, etc., the Anglo-Dutch draft suggests that the roughly one-third of Iraq’s oil receipts currently going to the compensation committee should be “lent” to the humanitarian account until the end of this year. It also suggests using funds, wherever possible, for local purchases.

It would also authorize hajj flights from Iraq, as long as they do not carry cargo, and considers “reasonable expenses” for them to be a legitimate charge on the humanitarian affairs oil-for-food account. It finished by calling on Iraqis to return Kuwaiti property and to resume cooperation with the tripartite commission on tracing the persons missing from Kuwait after the Iraqi occupation.

American Ambassador Peter Burleigh broke the customary closeness between U.S. and UK delegates over Iraqi issues, saying that Washington has serious reservations over the British draft, especially over its sections on replacing UNSCOM with UNCIIM. Burleigh dismissed the Russian draft outright.

Russian Ambassador Sergei Lavrov was equally dismissive of the British draft, pointing out that it had little if anything in the way of inducements for Iraqi compliance. Only Baghdad has been relatively quiet, perhaps since Saddam Hussain is suffering from limelight deprivation with events in Kosovo.

Of course, it does little for his Islamic pretensions to be one of the few supporters Milosevic has in the world. On the other hand, it is instructive that the civilian facilities in Iraq, where no one had the opportunity to vote for or against the regime, were targeted immediately, while after six weeks of air strikes, the water, power and sewerage systems in Serbia still are unhit, except by accident, even though they voted in their present rulers. The election was indeed stage-managed, but they can count their lucky stars that they aren’t Arabs.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations and the author of The U.N. for Beginners, available from the AET Book Club.