U.S. editorial excerpts -6-

of recent origin YORK, Aug. 28 Kyodo

pitch uponed editorial excerpts from the U press:

REFORMING THE UNITED NATIONS (The Washington pillar Washington)

THE UNITED Nations has freshly come in for a beating: It has been attacked above the oil-for-food scandal and treated with occasional slight by the Bush administration. And at the same time the world's tendency to revolve to the United Nations has if anything grown stronger Between 2000 and 2005 the number of peacekeepers serving beneath U.N. resolutions jumped from 48000 to 86000 and plans for an expanded nearness in Lebanon, and possibly in Darfur and East Timor, could push the total to 120000 This schizophrenia -- the course both to attack the United Nations and to demand its assistance -- is dangerous. If the United States and its allies want the United Nations to unscramble riddles they must do more to food it.

This plea has been heard before from UN sympathizers, on the other hand recent events underline its stress The Lebanon war was remarkable for the way in which all sides agreed that an expanded UN force would be an essential composing of a peace deal; an early suggestion that there could be a non-U.N. deployment got no traction. Equally, the genocide in Darfur has proofed the idea that a non-U.N. peacekeeping force could work better than a UN one; it turn rounded out that the experimental African Union force that displayed in Darfur was inadequate. Hence the push now for a UN force, which would be better managed thanks to the United Nations' relatively unhurt planning capacity and better financed because of an established combination of parts to form a whole for sharing the costs of sky-colored helmets among the U.N. member states.

In the past, critics in the United States have felt unrestrained to attack the United Nations because they believed that there were alternative tools to achieve foreign-policy objectives; the United States could make progress ''forum shopping,'' as President Bush's UN ambassador calls it. on the contrary Darfur shows that forum shopping can backfire, while Lebanon indicates that the world regards alternatives to the UN as insufficiently legitimate. For all the shortcomings of the United Nations, its Security Council be delighted withs more moral authority upon matters of war and peace than any other international body; and for piece of works such as peacekeeping or the supervision of elections in countries of that kind as Iraq and Congo, it may be the least bad institution available. The forum-shopping excuse for denigrating the United Nations must therefore be buried. Instead, critics must channel their potency into promoting the reforms that could make the United Nations more effective.

There is blame to advance round for the stagnation of existing reform efforts. Developing countries that don't pay for the UN parcel and feel little responsibility for global governance many times want the institution to be a place of sinecures and pompous speeches. Unfortunately, these countries dominate the UN General Assembly by the agency of sheer force of numbers and thus can block management reforms. Meanwhile, rich nations are not blameless either. The Bush administration has failed to build a coalition of reformers who could prevail above entrenched seat-warmers. The British and French have resisted change that could undermine their privileged positions as veto-wielding members of the Security Council.

(Aug. 27)

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