SO IT'S agreed then? Member-states of the United Nations are obliged to obey resolutions of the Security Council, and flagrant violation of these should be a matter of utmost concern to everyone. Vincent Browne writes.
If a country flagrantly defies these resolutions, the Security Council "must face its responsibilities".
The proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons "represents a major threat to international peace and security". Such weapons must be eliminated, and this can be done only through international treaties. The international community's long-standing commitment to meeting the UN target of spending 0.7 per cent of GNP on overseas development assistance is confirmed.
Sure, it's agreed. Brian Cowen said it at the United Nations last Friday to an unpacked meeting of the General Assembly.
UN Security Council resolutions must be obeyed? Not if they are in relation to Israel they don't. Israel has been in flagrant breach of several council resolutions for 35 years, and the council can't get around even to admonishing Israel for it, let alone facing up to "its responsibilities".
So there is a problem with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, is there? There was no problem with chemical and biological weapons a few years ago when Saddam Hussein used them in the war against Iran and the Kurds. Brian Cowen's friends in Fianna Fáil wanted to shower Saddam in Irish beef right at the time he was gassing the Iranians and the Kurds.
So what is the complaint about now? Anyway, if it is so important to get rid of biological and chemical weapons, I wonder if Brian Cowen brought that to the attention of Colin Powell at one of their meetings and inquired why the Americans had refused to ratify a protocol that would enforce the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention?
That convention banned the production, deployment and possession of biological weapons, but there was no enforcement mechanism built into it. Last year the US refused to go along with a protocol to that convention which would have provided for verification mechanisms because it claimed it would be ineffective and, interestingly, it would place confidential business information at risk!
And by the way, it is not just Iraq which is suspected of having breached the 1972 convention. Others suspected include Russia, Israel, Egypt, Syria and Taiwan. What's to be done about them?
Brian Cowen invoked the Yeatsian cliché about "anarchy being loosed upon the world" in the context of an overheated observation: "Either we stand by and strengthen the international system and the rule of law or we invite anarchy".
He should try the Yeats line on George Bush the next time they meet and then ask what problem the US has with the International Criminal Court.
Which brings us to the sheer brass neck of Brian Cowen in even mentioning the 0.7 per cent of GNP target for international development aid.
As Paul Cullen reported in this newspaper a few weeks ago, the Government has decided to cut Ireland's international development aid budget this year by €40 million and tried to cover up the scale of the cut in the announcement it made initially concerning this.
Ireland contributes about $68 per capita in development aid. A few other European countries contribute even less (Italy, for instance, just $34) but many more contribute a multiple of what Ireland does. Sweden gives $223, Norway $276 and Denmark $348 (these figures are taken from the UNDP Human Development Report 2002 and relate to 2000). Incidentally, the US contributes a miserable $38 per capita.
THERE was a lot more in Cowen's UN speech that was dismaying. All he could advocate on the Israel-Palestine conflict was that both parties must "move forward". There was a half-hearted acknowledgment of the fatalities in Afghanistan caused by US bombing in the context of blather about "best efforts . . . to ensure that the use of force was targeted and proportionate".
A paragraph faintly praising Mary Robinson's stint as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights was stuck in towards the end.
Nothing about the unfairness of the world order which consigns billions of the world's population to destitution. The UNDP 2002 report makes the point: "The world's richest 1 per cent of people receive as much income as the poorest 57 per cent." Nothing about the 14 million facing starvation in southern Africa just now. Nothing about the unilateral abrogation by the Americans of a cornerstone of nuclear weapons containment, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
And then the selective anguish over "the terrible events" of September 11th. Was the bombardment of the poorest people of the world by the world's mightiest superpower not also a "terrible event"? And what about the other terrible events of the last decade that the world has ignored?
For instance, the Rwanda genocide on which the world did its best to turn its back and which saw the slaughter of 800,000 people? What meaning has language or compassion when the massacre of 3,000 people in New York is a terrible event and commemorated worldwide and the slaughter of nearly a million people gets no acknowledgment at all? There's no hope.