Rabin Will Permit U.N. Participation in Middle East Regional Peace Talks

By Ian Williams

United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali finally has been invited to participate in the multilateral (but not bilateral) Middle East peace talks. As we reported in the last issue, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had extended the invitation, but the secretary-general prudently waited for a go-ahead from Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Peres' mortal rival within Israel's Labor Party, before making an official announcement. Symbolically at least, the secretary-general's participation serves to remind parties of crucial U.N. resolutions like 194 on the return of refugees, and 242 and 338 on the return of occupied territory. These far more than "Zionism is Racism," were the source for Likud's pathological hatred of the organization.

Rabin's new forward strategy in the U.N. is showing some results. According to Israeli sources, the secretary-general has invited the Israeli government to provide electoral experts for use in the rapidly expanding U.N. election-monitoring role. One hopes that they are not picked on the basis of their scanty experience of conducting elections in the West Bank and Gaza.

However, despite the confident talk of a few months ago, Israeli membership in the West European group within the United Nations—and hence direct access to the Security Council—is as far away as ever. It also seems that the annual series of resolutions against Israel will still be on the agenda at the General Assembly, despite some hard bargaining from the U.S., which would like many of them shelved.

However, the Arab group is considering modifications in the wording in order to ensure that they would pass easily. Arab delegates were particularly worried by a committee vote on Israeli nuclear weapons. Although it was passed by a 54-to-3 vote, there were 70 abstentions and around 40 absentees. The lack of support resulted from Western pressure, a feeling that the timing and contents of resolutions should not derail the peace talks, and, perhaps most perniciously, sheer apathy.

Apathy allows powerful, or highly motivated nations to get away with murder—literally, in many cases. The U. N. is composed of states, equal in voting power. In reality, however, some nations are much more equal than others. Western reluctance to become embroiled in Bosnia and Somalia, for example, is reflected in U.N. ineffectuality on the ground there.

Naturally it is easier to blame the U.N. for bureaucratic inefficiency. The organization is in no position to reply, partly because there is indeed bureaucratic inefficiency, but mostly because it cannot counter-accuse member states—especially powerful ones.

Somalia: Graveyard for U.N. Representatives

In Somalia, that indecision is reflected in granting robber chieftains the respect and authority of legitimate authorities, and a lack of willingness to challenge gun law. Even so, it came as a surprise when Boutros-Ghali in effect dismissed Algerian diplomat Mohammed Sahnoun, the U.N. special representative in Somalia, for suggesting that U.N. handling of the situation was in some ways the wrong side of perfection. His replacement, Iraqi diplomat Esmat Kittani, went straight to Somalia and effectively repeated the criticisms. The supply of competent diplomats being finite, he still occupies his position.

Bosnian Serbs Ignore U.N.

In Bosnia, Serbs who do not respect the lives of innocent civilians seem equally unimpressed by lightly armed soldiers wearing blue helmets. The "evenhanded" approach adopted by the Security Council showed its awesome limitations.

Present U.N. arms embargoes apply equally to the Serbs, with access to the Yugoslav army's massive arsenal, and the lightly armed Bosnians being massacred. The Serbs know that they do not have much to fear from the U.N. The major powers, without whom the U.N. cannot operate, all have publicly announced their reluctance to commit serious forces.

Iraq-Kuwait Boundaries

In contrast, the resignation of Mochtor Kusuma-Atmadja, the chairman of the Iraq-Kuwait boundary commission, came as no surprise. He had been handed King Canute's task.

Canute's courtiers tried to persuade the king that he could command the waves to turn back. He rebuked them by getting his feet wet as the sea rebelliously ignored him.

Kusuma-Atmajda was astute enough to see that drawing lines in the sand was easy compared with marking them on the water. Having supervised the drawing of the land boundary, the commission was told that it had to work out the maritime boundary between the two countries. If it was done on the "thalweg'' or deepest channel principle—as had improbably been applied to the wadi to the west—then there was the problem that the channels shift over the years. If the "median principle" were applied, then there are mud-banks on the Kuwait side which occasionally surface above the tide and may, or may not, be counted as part of Kuwait, pushing the boundary farther over to the Iraqi side.

Indeed, some of the experts think the only solution is to take the boundary lines of Iraq and Kuwait out to the tripoint between them and Iran. Faced with three equally unpalatable alternatives, the chairman did not bother to get his feet wet to demonstrate to the Security Council that he had been given an impossible task. Instead he resigned. This problem could run on and on—until the next Gulf war.

Cyprus: Unresolved After 25 Years

New problems get put on the agenda, but the old ones never seem to be taken off. The consequences of the partition of Palestine are, of course, the major original sin of the U.N.

But Cyprus, after 25 years, remains unresolved. Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, like Israel's former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, knows that any serious negotiations involve concessions. So he is determined to avoid negotiations as long as possible and, when negotiations are absolutely inevitable, to procrastinate. He does it masterfully, to the intense frustration of all concerned. Until Ankara and Washington deem it expedient to put serious pressure on him, he will continue to do so. So the latest session of talks has now ground to a halt in November, and will resume in March—if Denktash can find no excuse to avoid them.

Polisario Defector's Press Conference

Similarly, former Foreign Minister Ibrahim Hakim of Polisario, the Western Sahara independence movement, gave a somewhat confused press conference at the U.N. He now has defected to Morocco and is an ambassador-at-large for King Hassan II. Hakim will need to reconsider his presentation if he is to be successful in his new career path. He spent much of the press conference answering questions that he asked himself, leaving others little time to interrogate him.

Even so, he hinted that his defection had less to do with any change of heart about the justice of the Western Sahara case, and more to do with the changes in the balance of power which have left Morocco stronger and Algeria weaker. That, of course, was what former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. (now New York Senator) Patrick Moynihan claims was his aim when he thwarted U.N. action over the Moroccan takeover almost 20 years ago.

Changing U.S. Faces

The U.S. always has had a major say in what happens, or doesn't, in the U.N., and the new administration in Washington is no exception. Several senior U.N. offcials like Dick Thornburgh, Joseph Reed and William Draper were Bush nominees. It seems unlikely that the Clinton White House will want to reappoint them.

Although U.S. Ambassador Edward Perkins is a career diplomat, as was his predecessor, Thomas Pickering, the decision to appoint career diplomats is in itself intensely political, representing a downgrading of the position from the cabinet rank it used to have. Some of the pressure for that came from pro-Israel former occupants of the position like Jeane Kirkpatrick.

During the campaign, President-elect Clinton made several promises. He called for restoring leadership from Washington on issues like Bosnia, and a greater willingness for the U.S. to pay its share of the costs. "Despite repeated promises our nation has failed to meet these fundamental treaty obligations," he told the United Nations Association of the U.S.A. However, he also called for the U.S. proportion of peacekeeping costs to be reduced from 30 percent to 25 percent.

Expressing himself in support of a standing U.N. rapid deployment force, he also pledged support for bolstering the U.N.'s "capabilities for monitoring curbs on the spread of nuclear and chemical weapons, and the missiles used to deliver them." It remains to be seen whether this is seen to apply to the only nuclear power in the Middle East, however, since that power is Israel, intensely favored by many of the campaign advisers and funders still surrounding the president-elect. Holding one's breath until curbs are placed on Israeli nuclear and chemical weapons programs doubtless would be non-survival strategy.

However, any enhancement of the political position of the U.N. by the incoming administration—except perhaps the rumor that defeated New York Democratic Congressman Solarz's layoff package would include the U.S. ambassadorship—enhances the role of United Nations decisions in the Middle East.

Ian Williams is a British journalist based at the United Nations.