Whether Iraq fully implements what it has signed remains to be seen. After all it is just a piece of paper and one can always wriggle out of one’s commitment by cleverly insisting on the small print! Nevertheless they did bomb Iraq anyways, and now Saddam Hussein is facing international war crime tribunal, only God knows if he can escape.
The Ghanaian diplomat, I agree, has done an excellent job in Bangladesh, there Annan has somewhat performed to an expectations of Gap here. He has also now spent 15 months pushing various reforms at the UN which I know have produced good results even if he has not wholly earned respects from his critics. Like any big institution and government, the UN, too has its budgetary wastes, managerial problems and administrative horrors but he has done all he could since taking over the appointment in January last two year.
If Annan had not gone on his important diplomatic mission to Baghdad he would have been in Washington for a second time within a year to plead with Congress to pay the US $1.3 billion (RM 5.2 billion) which the US owes the world body. But the irony here is that the same people owing the UN also implements sanctions to effect a quick pay of dues by member states who shares no similarities like the Big Five and their cohort.
Kofi Annan
However, he visited Washington Last year to meet President Bush and members of his administration, to discuss not only Iraq but also the debilitating problem of the US $1.3 billion (RM 5.2 billion) in back dues that the US owe to the UN. The US has not paid its UN dues in full and on time for some years. In 1995 it paid less than half of its total assessment. These gaps have never been closed.
Annan in an article in the New York Times (Monday, March 9 1998) asks, and then answers himself. “Who benefits from a cash-starved United Nations? The aggressors of the world whose designs we seek to foil; the violators of human rights whose abuses we endeavor to curtail; the drug dealers and international criminals whose dealings we reveal; the arms merchants whose traffic in deadly weapons our conventions help to stop. Also impeded is our humanitarian work, against hunger, deprivation, the loss of homes and livelihood.” This were the cosmic questions and possible answers that won Mr. Annah the popularity which decided his second term, and which has been the determinant to exaggerating the cynic problems the Big Five has caused.
The Iraq crisis demonstrates how indispensable the UN can be in the areas of peace and security.
If it is not honoured, the agreement that Annan negotiated in Baghdad will allow UN weapons inspectors to expand their search for and to eliminate Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – an outcome that alternative courses of action might not have yielded. But now we are not aware that all efforts to assert valid that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction could only been seen from a theoretical analogies which altogether lacks empirical facts. Honestly there were no weapons of Mass destruction, even though they had threatened, yet there was no intention to nullify the security councils order to disarm their weaponry or any other nuclear advancement of Mass orientated destruction. Annan though could prove that there were no weapons of mass destructions, but the influence of the so-called Big Five became superlative, because they have ulterior motives to backslum Iraqi’s treasury.
He asserts that the public becomes aware of UN contributions to conflict resolution only occasionally, when a crisis erupts that thrusts the UN onto television screens and newspaper headlines. Annan’s trip to Baghdad 1998, 2000 and 2001 was such an occasion.
However, institutional reforms are more difficult to portray to the public than crisis management. Under Annan’s reform package, he has achieved an actual decrease in the UN budget down to US $2.53 billion (RM 10.12 billion) for the 1988 and 1999 biennium. Nearly 1,000 posts have been cut outright, bringing the staff size below 9,000 and other jobs are being held vacant. Administrative expenditures are being cut 20% of the budget, from 38%.
Annan says there is a saying that all politics is local. But increasingly, all local politics has global consequence. And those global consequences, in turn, affect the quality of local life everywhere. So a renewed partnership between the UN and the US is in the interest of both. But it has to be paid for. And who dares to pays for it, all that erupts is a whole bag of scam. This is the result where majority of the 185-member states pays their dues, the others like cohorts of the Big Five do not pay; but they will have a huge voice in determining who gets what, or which nations is worthy to be allocated funds. Sometimes it could be in their which is usually the case, they don’t pay, but stand to deprive others who pays. Look at the warring nations of Africa and the Middle East, when they need medical care during time of war, or perhaps Aid in terms of security, no nations of the Big five is ready to take a stand in an effort to lend a hand, except on the basis of foreseen economic benefits.
A critical look in most African economic goals like those of NIGERIA from the late 1975 till 1985 through 1993, the IMF through special interest on the oil reserve parachuted a common ideal proliferation through giving Loans based on selfish dynamic circumstances. Meanwhile in most other countries Loans were not given simply because there were no interest there. They cut most institutional spending for the sake of complete utilization of the loans in areas that needed to be used, yet the funds were squandered through the help of same advisers. This was a deliberate silence of act done to perpetuate debt prolongation, it was still the same people that agitated areas where Nigeria Economy could veto their interest. It means however that Nigeria’s economy is been controlled by alien ideas and not the ideas of which will better the constitutional course of the rule of law and the common man, because the policies developed to utilize the Loans by Successive government was baseless and caricature. A lot of agenda without National goals was lacking in government spending towards reconstructing the economy, this was the lateral motives of the protagonist of the Aid.
There was also the ulterior motives they had to squander the money, and they had back-up from forces that made the Aid possible. At the initial stage no policies or committee was set aside to check how the money was been utilized, instead considerations like what level/amount of oil that we could explore was discussed, and other monetization policies was drawn out; devaluation of the currency was the main economic weapon that was used by IMF to fuel their hold on the manipulation of the Nigerian Economy. Frankly speaking, the UN saw this, but could not checkmate the IMF inhuman deliberate alienation of the Nigeria Economy, since they knew very well the huge negativity of the Aid. I do not think there have ever been a day Nigerian government has thought twice about the side effect of the IMF loan, nor do they know the danger since each successive government fell into the hypnosis of the IMF actors like giving of minute incentives.
The only Nigerian government that was able to foresee this evils was the Abacha regime, who upon deliberation with IMF, and which IMF could not stand their action towards improving the average lives of the citizen; or whose agenda since their inception into aiding Nigerian Government actualize their policies has not better any areas of the economy. Critical examples was cited in areas of oil, road, agriculture, and other human resources; before this time everything was dilapidated, therefore they had to send IMF packing. By no means the international community saw a mountain to sit upon to sanction Nigeria, because they had ul
terior in the main drain of the Nigerian economy. But a simple question will be asked most times by each international economic philosopher, and they are thus as follows:
