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Reform and/or Else

In these parts the year is nineteen ninety-eight, though in China it is 4696. At the United Nations it is fifty-two. Kofi Annan speaks of a millennial General Assembly in the year 2000.

What's new? Jiang Zemin visits Clinton. Nelson Mandela visits Quaddafi. Pope John Paul visits Fidel Castro. Camdessus visits Suharto. Ice storm visits Canada East and Canadian Army visits Quebec. Blessed be the tie! O Canada!

The United Nations General Assembly, vintage 52, opens on 16 September 1997, front to back with G.A. 51 which closed on 15 September. The retiring G.A. President Razali took "some satisfaction"-- not too much, I guess-- over the completion of the "Agenda for Development" and the successful conclusion of the G.A. Ambassadorial Working Group on strengthening the United Nations System. With coaxing and cajoling, Razali had done all he could to move this 185-vessel flotilla. In his final speech from the presidium, he said:

I had hoped for effervescence and a sense of purpose. If only we, as ambassadors, could have gone beyond our basic national passions, allowing for multilateralism to take root . . . The United Nations has not yet found a formula to become a universal house which can defuse the debilitating aspects of power politics . . .

Enthusiasm enjoins metasynthesis.

His successor, Ukraine's Ambassador Hennadiy Udovenko, another veteran of UN affairs, took over the helm on 16 September with a matter-of-fact competence unlikely to suffer disappointment. The challenge of UN "reform", he said, could make this "a watershed session". (A relief. The UN has been "at a crossroads" long enough.) He considered it fitting that he as President of the General Assembly was representing a country that was itself going through a period of profound social, economic and political reform. Anticipating the usual "general debate" which sets off each session, Secretary-General Kofi Annan gave a brief run-down of issues in his condensed Annual Report (26 pages in 1997, down from 157 pages in 1996); and said: "Let this be the Reform Assembly. This is the moment to re-imagine the role of the United Nations, giving it a new life for the new century."