UN Security Council role grossly misunderstood: David Malone

Kolkata, Nov 8 (UNI) Despite a paradigm shift in its approach towards solving major world crisis, the role of the United Nations Security Council ''is yet to attain the level of total satisfaction'' of the world community, feels High Commissioner of Canada to India David M Malone.

Delivering a thought provoking speech on the ''Role of the Security Council after the end of the Cold War era,'' here last night, the Canadian High Commissioner Mr Malone, a career diplomat who also served as the deputy permanent Representative of Canada at the UN in late 1990s, suggested that lack of enough political will coupled with inherent suspicion on other member countries, had led to most of the recommendations made by the Security Council to become a failure and unsuccessful.

The interactive session with the Canadian High Commissioner, who was on a two day visit to the city, was organised under the aegis of the West Bengal Federation of United Nations Association(WEBFUNA).

Among others former Foreign Secretary N Subramaniun attended the programme along with several members of the city's diplomatic core.

Citing the example of the alleged 'improper and inept handling'' of the Iraq crisis after the second Gulf war, Mr Malone said it had led to the present crisis which already might have sparked a bloody civil war like situation in the country.

He said though earlier the same five permanent Security Council members in a near similar situation had decided to send its Peace Keeping Force to Bosnia to bring an end to a long war like ethnic conflicts in the region, in case of Iraq a different methodology was adopted which had simply boomeranged.

As a result what was hailed as one of the major success stories of UN Security Council in Bosnia and Kasovo, had been termed as a total failure in Iraq.

Referring to the nature of the paradigm shift of the Security Council's operations in the post Cold War era, the Canadian High Commissioner, a highly respected scholar and very good orator in defining the role of the world body, said it first reflected its able handling in solving the Kurdish problem in Northern Iraq besides ending the civil wars in Congo and Rwanda to a great a extent.

But in case of Security Council's efforts to end the humanitarian crisis in Darfur in West Africa, the members by and large remained non-commital except in doling out humanitarian aid to the suffering millions, Mr Malone said and blamed the sudden change in the activities of the world Body's in the post Cold War era regime as responsible for the continuation of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and in some other countries like Salvador in Latin America.

During the Cold War period, Mr Malone observed the importance of state sovereignty used to receive the top most priority among the member countries but the disintegration of the erstwhile USSR into Russia and several other CIS countries had completely changed the situation and brought into focus the importance of ''quick solutions'' of the problems related to major Human Rights violations, ethnic crisis, humanitarian issues and most importantly terrorism.

In fact, the issue on how to deal with terrorism and the counter terrorist measures taken by different Security Council members had brought about huge differences among the council members, Mr Malone felt and cited it as one of the prime reasons for India not being able to garner enough support from the member countries for its claim for the sixth permanent member of the Council besides the USA, UK, France, Russia and China and having veto power.

Among others WEBFUNA Secretary General Sitaram Sharma spoke and questioned the rationale behind rejecting India's claim for a permanent membership of the UN Security Council by most of the other members.

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