Kofi's Pre-emptive Reform

Kofi is taking action before "bull in a china shop" Bolton reports to his post as US Ambassador to the UN. Though many of the reforms seem to be a direct response to our pre-emptive actions in Iraq, his proactivity can be seen as a good thing.

If there is one thing on which both critics and supporters of the United Nations agree especially since the enormous row over the Iraq war it is that the world body is in need of reform. America and its allies were exasperated at the UN's failure to agree action against Saddam Hussein's regime. Opponents of the war were equally angry at the UN's failure to stop America from launching it. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, there was the revolting spectacle of Britain and France sucking up to Lansana Conté, the tinpot dictator of tiny Guinea, because the UN's rules had given him one of the Security Council's rotating seats. Earlier, there was the equally stomach-churning sight of the tyrannical Libyan regime getting a turn at chairing the UN's Commission on Human Rights. Then there was the gross embezzlement that has been uncovered in the UN's $70 billion oil-for-food programme in Iraq not to mention the UN's prolonged inaction while the mass slaughter has continued in Sudan's Darfur region.

Fearing that the UN was sliding into irrelevance, Kofi Annan, its secretary-general, set up an international panel, mainly of former heads of government and ministers, which late last year suggested sweeping reforms (see our profile of Mr Annan). On Monday March 21st, Mr Annan presented his recommendations for change, based on the panel's conclusions, to a gathering of the UN's 191-member General Assembly. He is calling for an expansion of the Security Council, so that it better reflects the global realities of today though he did not specify how the council's membership and veto rules should be changed. The Commission on Human Rights would, he proposes, be replaced by a smaller human-rights council, on which it would be harder for tyrants to get seats. To avoid repeats of past stalemates, the UN would agree a definition of terrorism, which would be incorporated in a new anti-terror treaty. It would also adopt clearer principles on when military force is justified.
[...]