Mbeki slams UN

2004-09-22 22:38

New York - President Thabo Mbeki called the United Nations an unrepresentative body dominated by the powerful and the threat of terrorism, at the expense of the dispossessed and the scourge of poverty.

Addressing the UN general assembly on Wednesday, Mbeki argued that a slanted world order paid lip service to the devastation wrought by hunger and deprivation, while acting almost exclusively on the challenges facing the rich and influential.

"The wealthy and powerful feel mortally threatened by the fanatical rage of terrorists, correctly," said Mbeki.

"What they will decide will translate into a set of obligatory injunctions, issued by this organisation, which all member states will have to accept and implement."

Impoverished countries, however, do not have the means to respond to the "present and immediate dangers" of famine and disaster, and lack the power to have their concerns translated into similarly binding UN resolutions, he said.

"We comforted or perhaps deluded ourselves with the thought that this organisation is 'the most universal and most representative in the world', afraid to ask the question - is it?" he said.

Mocked UN decision-making

"Have we achieved the goals we set ourselves? I have found it impossible not to answer that we have failed," he said.

He cited the pledges of the Millennium Declaration to uphold principles of dignity and equality for all and to combat extreme poverty.

"We have, as yet, not seriously confronted the difficult issues that relate to the abuses and, perhaps, the abuses of power," he added.

Mocking the machinations of UN decision making, Mbeki drew a critical comparison between resolutions that "oblige" members to thwart the plans of terrorists, and those that call on members to "voluntarily" respond to the scourge of hunger and disease.

"It is perhaps time that we, the poor and powerless, abandon our wheelchairs and begin to walk unaided," he said.

"Perhaps this will help to build the social order... in which right would make right, and not might, right.

- AFP