Byline: Matthew Russell Lee at the UN Gate
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UN Gate, Jan 3 -- Amid news of the death of Brian Urquhart, here from the archive of Inner City Press, published while it covered the UN daily from inside before being roughed up and banned on the orders of current corrupt UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, and his spokespeople Stephane Dujarric and Melissa Fleming, here below is Inner City Press' story about Urquhart's idea of a UN Emergency Peace Service. The UN's decline to Guterres, who not only allowed but helps cover up a genocide in Cameroon, could not be more stark. Another story is here. Rest in peace.
From the Inner City Press archives: To have 12,000 soldiers ready to deploy in 48 hours to zones where genocide is beginning: that is the proposal made by UN eminence gris Sir Brian Urquhart and others in a new 100-page book, "A UN Emergency Peace Service."
The cost of the force is estimated at $2 billion to start, and then $900 million a year. The personnel would be recruited one-by-one; the proponents envision them drawn from individuals who might be queasy about serving in a national army, but would embrace an international force whose interventions would be legitimized by the UN. But by whom at the UN? The response to this Inner City Press question was essentially, "the Security Council." But since it was the Security Council, and in particularly the current hegemon loudly crying for reform, which blocked the expansion of the UN force in Rwanda in the Spring of 1994, why would having these UNEPS troops on standby solve the type of sordid real politik that allowed the Rwandan genocide to accelerate?
Inner City Press asked what the proposed force would do for example about arresting the Lord's Resistance Army's Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti, or about freeing the seven UN peacekeepers, nationals of Nepal, who have been captives of Peter Karim in Ituri for 19 days now. The proponents didn't answer.
On the one hand, the report's main author called UNEPS a "law enforcement unit." [Now, it's Guterres who should be arrested.]
Inner City Press asked Sir Brian Urquhard if he wanted to comment on the John Bolton and Mark Malloch Brown dust-up. Sir Brian gracefully declined. In his conclusion he slyly touched on the debate, saying that the failure in the past to create a standby UN intervention force was a more serious reform than is currently being so loudly discussed. It's also worth noting that the current Deputy Secretary General's speech included the relatively lower cost of UN peacekeeping operations to U.S. incursions as one of the reasons the UN is needed. More nitty gritty, Sir Brian mentioned that he had not been in the UNCA Club for twenty five years; he perused what he called the "memorabilia" on the wall. Asked about the book series on the intellectual history of the United Nations, in which he is much quoted, Sir Brian said he planned on reading the books soon.
We're sure he did.
On his way out he told Inner City Press that he just can't comment on the dust-up but that one of the arguments for the UNEPS is that the UN has for too long been portrayed as impotent. "Why not have a first rate force?" Why not, indeed. Rest in peace.
