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Subject: Re: America forced me and lots of others out, Robinson should say.
Thought I'd posted this at the time. From Foreign Policy in Focus
www.fpif.org
The U.S. Hit List at the United Nations
by Ian Williams
April 30, 2002
Quietly, and without the fanfare that accompanies the campaign in the
mountains of Afghanistan, the administration has begun a long march through
multilateral institutions. At the UN and elsewhere, the U.S. has mounted a
campaign to purge international civil servants judged to be out of step with
Washington in the war on terrorism and its insistence that the U.S. have the
last word in all global governance issues.
The first and most prominent to go was Mary Robinson, the former Irish
president whose work as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has been
acclaimed by human rights groups across the world. Officially, she retired
after a one-year renewal of her contract. In fact, the U.S. ferociously
lobbied against here reappointment. UN officials and Western diplomats also
said she was "difficult to work with"-the usual euphemism for not taking
dictation. Most human rights activists see this as precisely her strength in
an organization where not rocking the boat seems to be genetically
engineered into many officials. The U.S. could not forgive her for her
stands on the Middle East issues or for her endorsement last year of the
results of the UN's Durban Conference on Racism, which both the U.S. and
Israel walked out of. The rest of the world stayed and adopted a toned-down
document, and subsequently Washington began its campaign to force Robinson
out.
Another recent victim of the U.S. campaign was Robert Watson, the
much-respected chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. On
April 19, the U.S. administration succeeded in replacing him with Rajendra
Pachauri, an Indian economist. The panel is (or perhaps was is the correct
tense) an independent scientific body established to assess the degree of
climate change and the contribution made by human activities such as burning
fossil fuels. The panel's work had come to a consensus, not shared by the
Bush administration, that human activity is a factor in climate change. A
leaked memo from ExxonMobil had previously asked the White House, "Can
Watson be replaced now at the request of the U.S.?" The memo goes on to
recommend that the administration "restructure the U.S. attendance at
upcoming IPCC meetings to assure none of the Clinton/Gore proponents are
involved in any decisional activities." Apparently, the administration
heeded ExxonMobil's recommendation. Pachauri himself attributes his
selection to being the developing world candidate, but environmental NGOs
ascribe it to U.S. lobbying.
A few days later, on April 22, the U.S. right achieved a new level of
success with the deposition of Jose Mauricio Bustani, the head of the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a mere year
after he had been unanimously elected for a second five-year term. The
voting was 48 votes to 7 with 43 abstentions. The OPCW was created by the
Chemical Weapons Convention, which outlaws the production of chemical
weapons. It arranges regular inspections of member countries' facilities to
ensure that no one is cheating. Bustani, a Brazilian, has headed it from its
creation five years ago, and his inspectors have overseen the destruction of
two million chemical weapons and two-thirds of the world's chemical weapon
facilities in the past several years. They have carried out 1,100
inspections in more than 50 nations.
From the beginning of 2002, however, the U.S. has treated Bustani
almost as if he were some form of bureaucratic Bin Laden. Bush
administration officials accused him of "ongoing financial mismanagement,
demoralization of the Technical Secretariat staff, and ill-considered
initiatives." Only last year he had been reelected unanimously, with
plaudits from all, including Colin Powell. Moreover, his staff pointed out
that the organization's finances and management were controlled not by
Bustani but by a U.S. government appointee.
So what had changed? Not Bustani, but Washington. His main persecutor
was John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International
Security. Bolton earned his right-wing credentials when he served as the
house UN-basher for the Heritage Foundation. But his anti-UN convictions
have never stopped him taking money from the organization himself. Most
recently he served as assistant to James Baker on the failed Western Sahara
mission. For years, Bolton had argued that the U.S. should get out of the
United Nations. At the same time, however, Bolton served as a consultant to
Taiwan advising the government how it could get into the UN, according to
The Nation. Although Bolton may have flexible principles, like many of
Bush's hard right entourage he has a rigid line in grudges and he soon
developed a major one against Bustani.
Having Bolton in charge of disarmament is like letting a pyromaniac
have the run of a fireworks factory--as his recent hardnose attitude to
nuclear limitation talks with Russia, and staunch advocacy of the "Star
Wars," Strategic Defense Initiative suggests. Bustani first started running
into problems when he resisted American efforts to dictate the nationality
of the OPCW inspectors assigned to investigate American facilities. What's
more, he had opposed a U.S. law allowing the president to block unannounced
inspections in the United States and banning OPCW inspectors from removing
samples of its chemicals. Diplomats suggest that Bustani's biggest "crime"
was trying to persuade Iraq to sign the convention, which could mean that
OPCW inspectors would inspect Iraqi facilities. The hawks in the
administration resented these "ill-considered initiatives." If Iraq would
sign the convention and allow UN inspectors, it would deprive Washington of
a quasi-legal justification for military action against Baghdad.
Earlier this year the U.S. asked Brazil to recall him, but the
Brazilian government pointed out that Bustani was not a Brazilian appointee
but rather was elected unanimously by the entire OPCW. Then Bolton,
personally, asked Bustani to resign. After he refused, the U.S. then
attempted to have the OPCW Executive Council sack him. Failing that,
Washington called for a special session of member states to fire him,
threatening that the U.S. would not pay its dues if he were reappointed.
Faced with losing an effective and popular disarmament agency, a majority of
states succumbed to this blackmail. This acquiescence to Washington was is
in stark contrast to the willingness of so many countries to defy the U.S.
by ratifying the Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court
only two weeks before.
In the end, it seems most members of the OPCW, with varying degrees of
pragmatism and reluctance, decided that the survival of one of the most
successful disarmament organizations was more important than the fate of its
director. However, they set an ominous example--and possibly gave the hawks
in Washington a strong scent of blood to follow. As Bustani presciently told
the kangaroo court, "By dismissing me . an international precedent will have
been established whereby any duly elected head of any international
organization would at any point during his or her tenure remain vulnerable
to the whims of one or a few major contributors. They would be in a position
to remove any Director-General, or Secretary-General, from office at any
point in time."
To Play, U.S. Must Get Its Way
The right wing has long had a reflex hostility to international and
multilateral organizations. But during the Reagan administration, which was
the first time that the right wing exercised such control over U.S. policy,
there was the fear that the U.S. could not pull out of the UN and leave it
in the hands of its cold war enemy. Today, however, the U.S. has no
counterweight at the UN, and the Bush administration officials are
unabashedly insisting on exercising the influence that comes from being the
world's only superpower. Playing upon its indispensability in this unipolar
world, the Bush team is playing hard ball at the UN-in effect, threatening
to render the multilateral organization impotent unless it gets its way.
It bodes ill for global affairs the way the administration has managed
to achieve these recent coups with little or no public awareness, let alone
discussion. In the case of Mary Robinson, the U.S. did fear that any open
campaign to unseat her would upset Irish American voters. Instead of tapping
its public diplomacy, the administration used stealth tactics against
Robinson. Human rights organizations complained, but this administration has
successfully sidelined these organizations from foreign policy
decisionmaking and now routinely dismisses the concerns of these
organizations.
Who is the next target? It may be Hans Blix, who heads UNMOVIC, which
is the UN organization established at the end of the Persian Gulf War to
inspect Iraqi arms facilities. It's been reported that Paul Wolfowitz, Under
Secretary of Defense, ordered a CIA investigation of Blix. One reason that
the administration is concerned is that under the framework supported by
Powell, if Blix's team goes into Iraq and gives the regime a clean bill of
health, then the sanctions regime against Iraq will be largely terminated.
For Wolfowitz and other hardliners, this eventuality would remove another
main causus belli against Baghdad. Deposing the highly respected Blix, who
formerly headed the International Atomic Energy Authority, would facilitate
the administration's case for launching a war on Baghdad.
It's also likely that included on the administration's hit list are
the individuals on the proposed fact-finding mission to Jenin that have
found disfavor with the Sharon government. One was Mary Robinson, who has
already been ousted. The others were Terje Roed Larsen, one of the main
agents in establishing the Oslo channel that led to what was once the peace
process, and currently the UN's special coordinator for the peace process.
Although half-heartedly defended by Shimon Peres, it will be difficult to
keep him in position when he has "lost the trust" of Sharon, and presumably
his allies in the U.S. administration. The third person the Israelis
regarded as biased is Peter Hansen, the recently reappointed Commissioner
General of UNRWA, the U.S.-funded agency that helps Palestinian refugees.
Hansen was appointed by the Secretary General Kofi Annan, who angrily sprang
to the defense of all three individuals criticized by Israel. But Annan may
find it hard to stand behind monitors criticized by the U.S. and Israel,
especially if the U.S. would threaten to cut off its funding of UNRWA, which
would likely result in starvation in the Palestinian refugee camps.
Kofi Annan, himself, may also be targeted soon. Even though he has
only just started his second term, and even though he is immensely popular,
Kofi Annan has recently become stronger in his public exasperation with
Sharon's behavior. Given the recent pattern of arrogant American diplomacy,
one cannot help but suspect that, but for Colin Powell and Shimon Peres--who
have a strong rapport with the secretary-general--the anti-Iraq and
pro-Sharon hardliners in the Bush administration will soon begin a campaign
to invite Annan to retire. It's likely that they will first suggest that he
could retire with honor and that this decision would be for his own good. If
that strategy doesn't work, they will likely accuse him of managerial
incompetence and inability to work well with member states combined with yet
another threat to withhold dues.
If the U.S. purges continue and rise to higher levels, other UN member
nations may regret their pandering to Washington as they see the entire
post-World War II framework of multilateralism start to disintegrate.
(Ian Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes for Foreign Policy In Focus
and is the author of The UN for Beginners.)
Ian Williams
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