Fuente : World Bank
http://www.worldbank.org

US Bid To Give Development Back Seat At World Summit Gets Cool UN Reception

/noticias.info/ A US bid to scrap references to ambitious goals to reduce world poverty in a draft text being readied for next month's world summit at the United Nations got a cool reception from diplomats, with several warning against shortchanging development, reports Agence France Presse.

Less than three weeks before world leaders are due to meet in New York to endorse a sweeping reform of the United Nations, Washington has submitted proposals to drastically amend a so-called draft "outcome document" that will be presented at the gathering. The summit, which will bring together a record 173 heads of state or government, is to be held September 14-16, ahead of the annual session of the UN General Assembly which will coincide with the 60th anniversary of the creation of the world body. John Bolton, the US envoy to the UN recently appointed by President George W. Bush to push through Washington's UN reform agenda, has just sent to some of his counterparts a confidential 36-page document listing 750 amendments to the draft document by the General Assembly's current president, Jean Ping.

The Wall Street Journal Europe explains the UN originally scheduled the Sept. 14 summit as a follow-up to the 2000 Millennium Summit, which produced commitments by UN members to meet deadlines over the next 15 years aimed at reducing poverty, preventable diseases and other scourges of the world's poor. But the Bush administration is seeking to focus attention on the need to streamline UN bureaucracy, establish a democracy fund, strengthen the UN human-rights office and support a US initiative to halt the trade in weapons of mass destruction. The US amendments call for striking any mention of the Millennium Development Goals, and the administration has publicly complained that the document's section on poverty is too long. Instead, the US has sought to underscore the importance of the Monterrey Consensus, a 2002 summit in Mexico that focused on free-market reforms and required governments to improve accountability in exchange for aid and debt relief. In meetings with foreign delegates, Bolton has also expressed concern about a provision of the agreement that urges wealthy countries, including the US, to contribute 0.7 percent of their gross national product in assistance to poor countries.

The Associated Press meanwhile reports Bolton said Thursday the United States wants a strong document on UN reform that all member states can adopt, but many developing countries oppose Washington's proposed changes. The priority of developing countries is action to tackle poverty and meet the UN development goals -- not management reforms that would take power away from UN member states to oversee the world body, as the US advocates. Egypt's UN Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said many difference remain with the United States and others -- from the development agenda to defining terrorism, deciding whether the United Nations should have the right to intervene in a country in cases of genocide, disarmament, and changing the human rights machinery. Many developing countries, for example, object "to the use of human rights for political considerations" and want the United Nations to do more address the root causes of terrorism "that would have somebody blow himself up in a bus," he said.

The Guardian (UK) further notes Bolton has threatened that the US would be ready to scrap the agreement altogether if no consensus was achieved, leaving only a short statement for the summit to agree on, or to break the agreement into sections to give member states a choice of which parts to support. But a UN official said yesterday he remained confident that a final agreement could be achieved in time for the summit. notas_de_prensa_archivo