<html><body>What Are We to Think about the UN? February 19, 2004 Unedited transcript prepared from a tape recording <TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0> <TBODY> <TR> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText>10:15 a.m.</DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText>Registration</DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText> </DIV></TD></TR> <TR> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText>10:30</DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText>Speakers:</DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText>Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, former U.S. ambassador to the UN; AEI</DIV></TD></TR> <TR> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText> </DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText> </DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText>Thomas R. Pickering, former U.S. ambassador to the UN; senior vice president for International Relations, Boeing Company</DIV></TD></TR> <TR> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText> </DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText> </DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText>Timothy E. Wirth, former U.S. senator and under secretary of state for global affairs; president, United Nations Foundation</DIV></TD></TR> <TR> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText> </DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText>Moderator:</DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText>Joshua Muravchik, AEI</DIV></TD></TR> <TR> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText>Noon</DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText>Adjournment</DIV></TD> <TD> <DIV class=BodyText> </DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE> Proceedings: MR. MURAVCHIK:  [In progress]-- organizations better in the abstract than in the reality, or the realization.  We persuaded a skeptical world to create the League of Nations and then refused to join it.  Like the League, the U.N. was largely an American invention, and this time we didn't hesitate to join, so that was considerable improvement.  And yet, still the U.N. has not turned out to be exactly what we had hoped it would be.  Perhaps we've not turned out to be exactly what the U.N., some in the U.N. hoped we would be.  But with the passing of the Cold War and the emergence of a single superpower world, this question has grown all the more intense and important, both to us and to others. I am myself at work on a book on this subject.  And to help me and to help you think about this question, we are organizing a series of panel discussions over the course of 2004 to examine different aspects of the U.N.'s work.  You will find in these kits you have, which have the biographical information about our speakers this morning, you will also find a sheet that lists the topics for the forthcoming panels. The session this morning is our launch.  It's our first panel to inaugurate the series.  And it is not about any particular aspect of the U.N.'s functioning, but we're aiming for a broad overview of the U.N. and the U.S. relation to it--what should we think about the U.N.  And we are both excited and honored that we succeeded in getting three of the most distinguished and thoughtful and experienced public servants who have dealt with this issue in their professional careers to share their wisdom with us. I could introduce each of them with many encomia at great length, but you've got that information in your kit.  So rather than take time away from them, I'm not going to add to the information you have.  We're going to hear from Senator Wirth first, and then from Ambassador Pickering, and then from Ambassador Kirkpatrick.  Each of you speakers, please either speak right here from the table into this mike or, if you're more comfortable speaking standing, use the mike at the lectern over there, as you wish. Senator Wirth, would you start us off, please? SENATOR WIRTH:  Thank you, Josh, and I'll stay right here.  Thank you all very much for coming.  And Josh, thank you for asking me.  It's always a pleasure to be at AEI.  I remember the last time I was in this room, it was a spirited debate between John Dingel and me on the issue of climate change and the role of Detroit.  This will be a spirited discussion as you get through this, I'm sure. We have been working at the U.N. Foundation with AEI over the last year, and particularly on a program called "The People Speak," which some of you may have been involved with.  Many organizations, there were about two dozen of us, from the League of Women Voters to AEI, pulled together by the U.N. Foundation.  We had over 2,000 debates in the month of October across the country on American foreign policy.  And we're going to repeat that again in September with an even broader coalition building on that, so I would look forward to any of you who might want to be interested in that, please let me know and we'll be--AEI is one of our key participants and sponsors of what has been a truly remarkable citizen engagement in U.S. foreign policy.  It's totally nonpartisan and very important as America is thinking about this.  And obviously, the U.N. is a key part of that. A quick word on the U.N. Foundation, who we are.  We're a function of Mr. Ted Turner's philanthropy.  Ted Turner has long been an admirer of the United Nations.  He was very unhappy that the United Nations was--the Congress had not paid off a billion dollars worth of debt to the U.N.  Mr. Turner, with his unusual way of thinking about this, initially resolved to pay off the debt to the U.N. himself and then to sue the Congress for a billion dollars.  It became clear that an individual can't pay off the sovereign responsibilities of a state, and so Ted said, well, I've committed the billion dollars in my mind, and he set up the U.N. Foundation, whose purpose was to strengthen the U.N. In doing so, he asked me if I would come over.  I was with the State Department at that time as a protege of Pickering.  And at that time, he asked me to do it.  We were very mindful of the fact that, while peacekeeping and Security Council concerns are the most visible political and controversial part of the U.N., they represent only 20 percent of the U.N.'s activities and budget.  Our international board asked us, with this in mind, asked us if we would focus on three particular issues:  Children's health--and we've been deeply involved with polio and measles, working with Rotary, the Red cross, in particular; we've been working on issues of environmental risk, especially climate change, focused there on financial instruments in this area and biological diversity; and third, we've focused on adolescent girls and reproductive health, with a special focus on the very dangerous and troubling shortfall of commodities, condoms, around the world.  So we've picked issues that are not normally on the screen but are really fundamental to the U.N. At the same time, we've worked to get the U.S. debt to the U.N. paid off.  We put together a pretty significant political plan and the U.S. debt did get paid off with the help of Ambassador Holbrooke in particular and the Helms-Biden legislation.  We've gotten U.S. peacekeeping arrears paid off.  We've worked very hard to get the U.S. back into UNESCO. So we've been across the board on parts of the U.N. that probably are not quite, Josh, in particular what you're thinking about in terms of the seminar, but I wanted to point out what we did and that that is in fact reflective of a very broad U.N. At the same time, we've been responsive to requests for help in areas that we would call a basket of peace, security, and human rights.  We've put funding into helping the U.N. high commissioner on refugees, Mary Robinson, and we'll look forward to the new appointment soon to be made, we hope.  We've funded the rewriting of the Afghan constitution.  We've put a lot of money into support for women journalists in Afghanistan.  We've got funding going into codifying various legal areas in Iraq today.  Bringing human rights groups together in Morocco.  Coming up this spring with NDI, National Democratic Institute, and UNDP, we're pulling together a meeting of representatives of all the democratic Muslim governments, who are going to come together in Turkey in April.  We're training a lot of Arab journalists, bringing them to the U.N.  So we've got our hand into a variety of things around sort of the central U.N. topic today, which is Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. These areas are largely the responsibility of governments, but we have tried to respond as we could to requests from the secretary general.  And the most interesting request that has been made to us in our six years of existence is a request from the secretary general to help him on the high-level panel on global security threats and reforms in the international system.  And there a one-pager that's been handed out to you here sort of outlining this panel, which I think is, if properly executed, central to helping the U.N. and the international system adapt, adopt, and strengthen itself to the challenges of the 21st century. The panel, to quote, is tasked with examining the major threats and challenges that the world faces in the broad field of peace and security, including economic and social issues insofar as they relate to peace and security, and making recommendations for the elements of a collective response.  It's a 15-member panel chaired by a former Thai prime minister.  Brent Scowcroft is the U.S. member of the commission.  I hope that that will report toward the end of the year. This is a great way, it seems to me, Josh, for helping to organization your question, What are we to think of the U.N.?  But before we do that, let me just put one other piece on the table, and that is asking the question what does the U.S. think of the U.N.?  Particularly what does the U.S. public think of the U.N.?  We have for the last six years done very careful and extensive polling, using Bill McInturff, who is one of the two or three most prominent Republican pollsters, very close to the White House but also very interested in the U.N.  We've gone back, or Bill has gone back into the data for the last 50 years.  And let me just summarize that quickly for you, because I think it's helpful to have the frame of, sort of, public attitudes toward the institution. Since the 1950s, the U.N. has had a consistently high rating, well above 70 percent.  And the most important sort of thing is the fav-unfav, favorable-unfavorable.  It has just been consistent until last March in the 70-20 range, with a 50-point fav-unfav gap, which is very good for--any politician would love to have that kind of approval-disapproval rating. It took a big drop in March from, at that point, 71-19 down to 49-44.  So there was a big drop in its job performance.  It's now back up to about 57-34, something in that range, and we expect that that will, all other things being equal, probably return to pretty close to its historic norms. The issues that remain with the American public are the U.N.'s effectiveness--but that, of course, exists for almost all public institutions.  There's a real gender gap in perceptions of the U.N.  That's not unusual.  We aren't really surprised at that in the U.S. today.  And it's now evening out by party, with almost the same support for the U.N. from Republicans as Democrats.  People feel that they hear about the U.N., they feel that they're informed about the U.N., they've thought about the U.N.  So it's pretty rich data. In particular, I think, interesting today is that nearly 60 percent of the public believes that the U.N. should take a leading role in helping Iraq to set up a new government.  There is very, very broad support.  And let me just read you a couple of things on that, which I think, Josh, are helpful. When asked the statement, We should continue to actively support the United Nations, it will billions of dollars, food, medical supplies, relief workers, and peacekeeping to help rebuild Iraq, it would be better to have the United Nations play this role than the U.S. going it alone in rebuilding Iraq--81 percent totally agreed, 61 percent strongly agreed. When asked about U.S. support of the U.N. in general, there is strong support for U.S. backing in supporting the U.N.  When asked, It's in America's best interest to continue to actively support the U.N.--totally agree, 78 percent; strongly agree, 55 percent.  That's a, you know, pretty resounding set of public support for the U.N. A final note that I would make and turn it over and move us into the political conversation more, this perception changes depending on which U.N. we're talking about.  When we talk about the U.N. related to disease--SARS, AIDS, polio, measles, malaria, and so on and the World Health Organization--you have a--right up at the top of the scale.  The same thing when you talk about children and UNICEF, another large part of the U.N., right up at the top of the scale.  The World Food Program, you know, $4 billion a year feeding people around the world, right up at the top of the scale. When you get to the technical agencies--you know, why do all airplanes fly and land going in the same direction?--well, there are civil aviation authorities coordinated by U.N., maritime authorities, international patent authorities--all of these elements of a globalized economy, you know, are interwoven with the U.N. system. So I don't think that we have any kind of a debate.  What do we think about the U.N.?  I think everybody will say, hey, those are great, that's a wonderful part of the U.N.  And that's 80 percent of the U.N. The questions that we deal with are, of course, the tough kind of political questions, the Security Council.  What do we think about the Security Council, how should that respond in international crises?  And that's the nub of the debate and probably the nub of the series that you're going to have here, Josh. I've handed out this.  I want to come back to that if we have a chance.  Let me stop at that.  I thought it would be useful to kind of frame for us all sort of what are we talking about, what is this thing call the U.N.  There's a huge amount of the U.N.--probably in terms of any debate in the country, most of it is off the table in the debate because everybody agrees with that.  It's the 20 percent, it's the security side, it's in that area that we have a lot of very, very interesting questions and, I believe, a very important future for the U.S. and the U.N. if we in the U.S. can help sort out these questions in the coming months. MR. MURAVCHIK:  Thank you so much, Senator.  You actually went under your time, so if at some point it comes up along the way that you want to get your minutes back, you've got them in reserve. Ambassador Pickering. AMBASSADOR PICKERING:  Thank you, Josh, very much.  It's a pleasure to be here this morning with Jeane and with Tim to talk about the subject you put before us, What are we to think about the United Nations?  And I thank Tim for the introduction, because I think that sets the stage for what I think is the kind of address that I'd like to focus on, which is a little more on the political subject.  It's truly an interesting and challenging subject and it's a great one to address.  Josh, it would be easier to write the book if you'd just let Tim and Jeane and I write it for you.  You're doing it the hard way. This morning it's made more interesting if you were looking at the headlines in the paper about the administration's approach on Iraq.  I'm delighted to talk to you about some of my own ideas, first on the general question of the United Nations and then perhaps slide in or slip into some of the specifics.  And if necessary, Tim, I'll make use of the time that you've allowed me; otherwise, I'll pass it on to Jeane. I begin with the simple thought that the U.N. is neither a panacea nor a nemesis.  It's interestingly, from the point of view of the United States, much more ours to lead and run today than it ever has been before.  And if you really don't think much of the U.N., you should begin by noting the old headline about a similar situation, We have met the enemy and he is us.  In a way, of course, if it weren't there, we probably, like the folks in '45 or the folks in 1919 and 1920, would probably have to invent something more or less like the United Nations. But there are several points that I'd like to move to that are clear to begin with.  We are these days the unparalleled leader of the world community.  The U.N. is a facility that can do good work for us.  We're therefore in the strongest possible position to lead the United Nations.  We are, I believe, here in the world to stay.  There's no way that anybody has yet invented to stop the planet and climb off.  The international community in this integrated situation will either work with us or against us, or some part of the time for and some part of the time against.  The critical factor is our role and our willingness to lead.  If we don't, I think others will try, often very much against our interests.  If we do, we can get our way in many key situations and otherwise reduce or limit the damage to us that others might put in place. The U.N., and especially the Security Council on which I want to focus, have as a result very little, if any, separate existence in an institutional or corporate sense.  There is, of course, in the Security Council a major focus on peace and security that has been expanded a little bit to write it larger.  But I agree with those who, for example, followed with interest Dick Holbrooke's leadership in moving HIV/AIDS at one point into the United Nations, that this is not an unwise course. The Security Council, interestingly enough, is not in a position to do anything fundamentally contrary to our interests.  We have the veto and we've assured our protection with that device.  In the post-Cold War world, if we are well prepared and we handle the questions well, we will do, if not everything which we want in the Security Council, I believe we can do a great deal of what we want to achieve.  I believe this also applies to Iraq and the situation in the spring of last year, which I think was ours to win or lose at the U.N. according to the strategy which we adopted. So the U.N. and the Security Council can be, in effect, an essentially important and valuable tool of American diplomacy, depending upon how we want to use it.  It can also be, as we have seen, a tool that is mobilized and used against us if we are not careful and alert about the situation.  And I am not so naive as to think that others are not pursuing these same strategies in their own national interests at the Security Council and in the United Nations, that we are not always on the same page, particularly with the critical question that I think we all look at when we look at the Security Council and we look at its work and its performance, the critical question of the use of force.  This is certainly where questions get interesting in the international peace and security envelope, particularly the question that we faced recently, a number of times over the last decade and a half, on the use of force. Here, in many cases, the international community is concerned about where it would like to go on this issue.  With some states, including many states, there is a longstanding aversion to the use of force.  It's a broad area where people need to be, usually, convinced of the positive portion of the approach rather than somehow allowed to be able to continue to assert what I would call the inertia in favor of the negative.  Our role in Iraq, indeed, in my view, had several strong positives about it.  We got rid of Saddam, we did so following Afghanistan and 9/11, where the international community was much more inclined to take us much more seriously as we proceeded inside and outside of the U.N. The U.N. also gave us some significant problems with respect to Iraq, or at least the lack of performance in the Security Council, where I believe we had the ultimate leadership role, gave us some problems in this particular area.  We went in, I think, with a smaller coalition than we should have had.  And we lacked the United Nations security imprimatur--some would call it legality or legitimacy.  It meant that we came out with less international support than I think we should have had and deserved on this particular question. And regarding the United Nations, I've formulated a new principle, a principle that probably will hold true for some time to come, that how you go into a use-of-force and combat situation in the United Nations very much determines how you will come out of it with that same group of people.  And I think in fact we see some of that today.  Now that we want the support, in accordance with the headlines of the last week, for three important objectives--to share the burden, to give us an exit strategy, and to lend international support to the Iraqization of the conflict--it is, unfortunately, now harder for us to achieve it, not easier to achieve it. So what about this question of opposition in the Security Council to the use of force?  And how should we be thinking about this in the future?  And I think, Tim, this relates a little bit to the kinds of questions that the secretary general will be asking his panel and a little bit, I hope, Josh, to the kinds of things that you will want to focus on in concrete times in the book. Well, it can be reduced to a couple of factors that I think are very significant.  It's rather easy for us to imagine, given past experience, and particularly if you exclude the Second World War and take the lessons from that to heart, that in dealing with overt aggression, particularly like Iraqi aggression against Kuwait, there is an easier run in some place like the Security Council to go ahead and promote a coalition of the willing and other kinds of activities to deal with force.  It is also true that embedded in the charter--this "embedded" word has been a nuisance these days--is Article 51, which allows you individually and collectively to use self-defense in those kinds of cases if you are attacked.  And indeed, it is clear that Article 51, following the question and the attack against us at 9/11, is probably now available but still much too narrowly defined by the international lawyers.  Over the years, we drew the lesson of World War II, that it wasn't a good idea to promote the notion that anybody anytime could assert self-defense and use military force.  And indeed, the lawyers interpreted this that almost exclusively, in a legal sense, to use Article 51 in self-defense, you had to have suffered an attack. Well, no president of the United States, very clearly, is going to stand up and say that it is my duty to permit the United States to suffer an attack before I can exercise the right of self-defense under the United Nations charter.  And I think the U.S. national security strategy was confected with that in mind, and it seemed to be a swing in the other direction--in my view, however, probably a swing too far--that while no president can leave the country unprotected in a situation of serious danger, no president should set a precedent for any state using force anytime it wants on its own say-so without at least some tests. And so I think with respect to Article 51 and the charter, we are moving in the direction that I hope will sooner or later imply some test or standard.  To give the president and the National Security Council credit, they implied this in the careful reading of the national security doctrine of the United States, but failed to produce the test.  I'm not a jurist and I'm not an international lawyer, but it would seem to me that something close to a clear and present danger standard ought to be applied, with some thoughtful people giving some serious thought to the issue of what specific tests are required to do that.  There have to be tests internally, there have to be tests that stand external scrutiny; otherwise, we create an anarchical situation in the international community. There are two other questions where the use of force has come up recently, or may come up in the near future, in which the U.N., the Security Council, and the international structure is deeply concerned.  One of those is humanitarian intervention and the other is nuclear nonproliferation, and both of them are serious security challenges for the organization as well as for this country.  I think back to what was so clearly stated by the security general over Kosovo, that on the one hand the charter contains a prohibition against the intervention in the internal affairs of states.  On the other hand, it is perhaps a superhuman travesty to believe that the charter could be invoked as a device to protect genocide taking place right before our eyes and that this is a failure in, perhaps, the organization and the fundamental law of the organization that has to be dealt with. Increasingly, we have a similar and evolving situation with respect to the development of weapons of mass destruction in various places around the world.  Should the charter, to borrow Secretary General Annan's words, be used as a device to protect the development of weapons of mass destruction contrary to the nonproliferation treaty, especially, I add, if terrorists' potential use is involved or likely, or even possible, as a result of that kind of step? Interestingly enough, recent developments in Pakistan, and connected with Abdul Qadeer Khan, raise this issue for us in the starkest possible terms.  For example, if the government of Pakistan freely sold to Libya and Iran, which seems to be the case, the essential information about how and in what way to enrich uranium and construct nuclear weapons, what about the Taliban and al Qaeda, which also had financial resources available and which are also in the region and not unknown to have been at one time or another under the close protection of Pakistan? The NPT treaty, interestingly enough, while it doesn't cover all states, has, I believe, reached a point where it has almost become--if not this day, in the near future--a universal standard of behavior, and we need increasingly to look at that.  It also contains within its own document a referral of problematic cases to the United Nations Security Council.  So how should we deal with this, particularly in light of the operation of the veto and lack, totally, of P5 unanimity and occasional P5 opposition to the question of use of force? Well, first and foremost, and the easiest one, of course, is to go out and convince all the parties that this makes sense.  I had the pleasure, if not the difficult duty, of doing this in 1990 and 1991, ably, I should say, aided and abetted by President George Bush and by Secretary of State James Baker.  That's the easy way to proceed.  It doesn't always work, but it can work, particularly with the right strategy. Others have suggested a different course of action that, over a period of time, we might think about changing the construct in the Security Council, and I don't particularly mean enlargement.  If you were to ask me about enlargement, I would say enlargement may have a place at some future time, but I think it creates more problems than it solves.  It doesn't appear to me how 20 to 25 people can represent 190-plus member states more adequately than 15 did 150 or 160.  But I do think that a larger body, more people, makes a body in which it is already difficult to work much more difficult to achieve results. But some have suggested that there might be an opportunity in the near future of taking a look--in the specific cases of humanitarian interventions or humanitarian engagement and nonproliferation, and maybe even in the face of palpable aggression--at a qualified veto; a qualified veto in the sense that two or three permanent members would have to agree.  They would never, of course, accept this very easily.  They certainly wouldn't accept it if it applied to their own territory and even to their own vital interests, but there are very few, if any, cases that have arisen in that context over the last couple of years.  Indeed, every one that I have looked at where American interests are preeminent, both the humanitarian intervention and the nonproliferation, have been things that we have supported one party or the other day in or day out. It would seem to me that while you would say this is impossible, you have to change the charter, I would think it could be done with a lot of careful work, probably no less challenging than Dick Holbrooke's effort to provide the funding you spoke about, Tim, as creating a voting convention, a voting convention in which the permanent members would agree in these cases, with the caveats that I've given, that they wouldn't use the veto in an actual vote under these sets of circumstances unless two or three were agreed that they were part and parcel of the opposition.  It's a different idea.  I don't expect it to happen soon.  I do think, however, it's much more intelligent to work on this than it is to work on expansion. The third issue, of course, is we can continue to ignore the Security Council.  And that's been done, too.  It was done in Kosovo.  It was done in effect, if not with the approbation of the secretary general and the organization, with its understanding.  And maybe the fact that it was done will make it less likely that it will be done that way in the future.  I hope so.  I think the Russians, who opposed it then, have understood the error, if I could put it this way, of their opposition in that particular case.  But the Kosovo model comes with some costs.  It does raise the question of legality, if not legitimacy, and it does raise the question of our not being able fully to mobilize the international community behind a particular set of objectives--something we felt in Iraq. Now, just a few minutes on Iraq.  The secretary general has been asked by the United States and others to look at a role for the organization in the future.  And he sent a mission out under a very wise U.N. diplomat, Lokhdar Brahimi.  Brahimi is back yesterday and will report.  All of the grapevines tell us he'll report that immediate elections are not feasible, something that happens to coincide, I think, with the majority view that most hold about the current situation in Iraq.  But the report will also, I hope, indicate how the U.N. can help us all deal with the questions that still exist outstanding in Iraq--the dispute's intentions over our role, but even more importantly, the questions particularly of the political future of that country.  The U.N. shares with us a concern about the issue of security, but it would seem to me that their future in playing a role in that country is so important that we ought to be able to find a mutual answer to the question of security protection. The U.N. has the possibility of helping us deal with the political and economic circumstances with the future, with a new government in its formation, and with the continued reconstruction of Iraq.  I would hasten to add that the U.N. is not a choice, in my view, for either war-fighting or for tough security on its own.  They don't do that well, they're not well trained for that.  That's the mission and role of states, and states do that better.  And the U.S., given its preponderance in the area, must continue to lead.  That's an important imperative. The U.N., however, can and will help--if it comes in, and I believe it should--win Iraqis around to playing a larger role in their own future--a very significant key, in my view, to the future of Iraq and to the future of our ability to exit the country. We're in a phase where our successful exit strategy now depends, therefore, on three important variables:  A strong U.N. political and economic construction role; successful Iraqization, in part helped by that role; and continuing U.S. lead, especially in security and in promoting cooperation and coordination among these three coordinated if absolutely necessary efforts to move ahead. So I favor being in rather than out of the U.N.  I've explained some of the reasons.  I think the Security Council is an important diplomatic device, facility, and even tool for us.  The U.N. has a rare role acting on its own.  The secretary general does within bounds, as he responded to the U.S. request for help on Iraq.  Tim has said more than amply what I was going to say at some length about the specialized agencies and the U.N.'s indispensable function in that 80 percent that you described, Tim, in a sense, in making things happen on a coordinated basis around the world in everything from aviation to telecommunications to health to trade to development assistance to the environment and then some.  I believe U.N. reforms are still an ongoing and good idea. I don't accept the view that the U.N. has achieved anything like the kind of perfection that we would expect from a well-run corporation or even, with some humility, about some areas of the American government.  Nevertheless, I think that staffing problems and congenital over-staffing in some areas has an important and significant role to play in reform.  And I remember, Jeane, Dick pointed out to us that there are 800 U.N. media people in New York--I don't know whether that's still true--and only working on peacekeeping, when the U.N. has this enormous, multibillion-dollar function to perform in peacekeeping. I dislike the idea of country and regional quotas, particularly at senior levels, and have suggested a number of times that the secretary general ought to find a way at senior levels to get out of the problem of It's Asia's turn, or Iraq's turn, or Australia's turn for a particular job, and have a panel at a very high level which can provide to him recommendations for those jobs on a merit basis, maybe two or three choices. I would also, frankly, like to see the next secretary general choice opened up, that it's no longer, I think, true that what was true coming out of 1945, that it's Asia's turn, it's Africa's turn, it's Europe's turn, guarantees that we will get the best and most well-qualified individual, man or woman, as secretary general of the United Nations.  We've been damn lucky with Kofi, but we haven't been so lucky with other past choices.  And invidious comparisons are not my role today; I'll allow you think about who those are. So I would propose that the Security Council, without any change in its procedure, ought to, when it comes time to select a secretary general, bring together five or seven, maybe former heads of state, maybe Nelson Mandela and his ilk, to sit down and provide three or four or five good candidates to put into the hopper.  That's not to the exclusion of anybody else.  But it would help us get away from this is a geographic region's turn, and it would help us, I think, to reach down into places where governments are shy about putting forward an individual or might actually feel reluctant to put forward somebody who was really good. I also think that it is time for us to go to smart budgeting rather than zero growth budgeting in the U.N.  And by smart budgeting I mean that increases and changes need to be rewarded where they make policy sense, rather than merely keep the U.N. strapped in a barrel without any possibility of growth, particularly as inflation and as its role goes ahead, and where budgets cannot only be policy oriented, but reward performance. I think, finally, just to wind up--one or two more minutes.  I'm going to finish in 30 seconds.  I'll just say Iraq is a critical case for the future.  Five weeks ago I would have been an awful lot more pessimistic and bleaker than I am now.  The secretary general also sees that it is important.  And the secretary general and the president had an excellent meeting two weeks ago to move this ahead.  And our willingness and our ability to work this problem is very something, I believe, for the future of the organization and its importance and its role in terms of U.S. interests and objectives. So thank you, Josh. MR. MURAVCHIK:  Thank you very much.  That was extremely interesting. And now, Ambassador Kirkpatrick, the floor is yours. AMBASSADOR KIRKPATRICK:  I'd like to say how much I appreciated the ambassador Tom Pickering's presentation, which I think was especially good.  I think it was especially good. AMBASSADOR PICKERING:  Jeane, let me thank you.  That's high praise coming -- someone who sat at your knee before I got to the U.N. AMBASSADOR KIRKPATRICK:  I think it was a marvelous presentation, and it was interesting and cogent and focused and useful, I think.  Very useful.  Very positive.  More positive than my remarks are going to be, I might say.  My remarks are going to be less positive. But that's because I've been focused since the Iraq problem, and more than I ever have been before, on the question of the maybe limits of Security Council power.  I was reading in this field last week, and I read a piece by a previous secretary general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was also, of course, a professor of international law and a student of these matters.  And he had said, he said in the piece that I was reading, that for the United States--I'm quoting Boutros Boutros-Ghali--for the United States to take an action outside the United Nations would provoke real damage to the international system and to U.N. credibility. He went on to say, In short, a U.S. action outside the U.N. system would provoke real damage to the international system as such and to the United Nations system specifically.  He also said it would gravely damage the credibility of the United Nations and damage the laws governing international conflicts, making the world much more dangerous. The reason I take that seriously enough to quote it is that our current secretary general, Kofi Annan, said something very much like it.  Kofi Annan has said in recent months, after the Iraq crisis developed, he's repeatedly suggested that, first of all, it's a U.S. action because it lacks Security Council authorization then and there, was illegitimate.  The U.S. action lacked legitimacy.  That's a very harsh thing to say.  It's too harsh a thing to say, in my opinion, particularly because the U.N. charter is not at all clear on this matter.  I don't think the U.N. charter provides grounds for making that kind of charge against the U.S. government, as a matter of fact.  Others would disagree with me; I'm aware of that. But the secretary general has said, again repeatedly, that a military operation was legitimate only if authorized specifically and exclusively by the Security Council.  I was at the international conference a week ago and heard the Russian minister of defense say very much the same thing.  Mr. Ivanov said, and I think I quote--I will quote it precisely:  We all understand that one of the core issues in modern international affairs is that of admissibility of a unilateral use of force undertaken by a state or a group of states without relevant United Nations Security Council mandate first of all to fight international terrorism. Now, that's a very interesting phrase at the end because it modifies everything he said before that.  It's not clear that he was really applying that principle just in stating "to fight international terrorism."  That became even less clear when he said what he said after that, which concerned, really, the need to jointly work in such a way as to avoid another Iraq crisis.  That is why we are interested, he said, in the success of the United States and their allies and are poised to closely cooperate in order to settle down a situation in the region politically. This is interesting.  I think it's interesting that we see the secretary general to some extent and Minister Ivanov to another extent back off a bit from a stronger position on the illegitimacy of the U.S. action than they initially endorsed. I want to give you several other examples of the comments of the secretary general which I personally found objectionable, really.  He said, and I quote, What is clear is that enforcement actions without Security Council authorization threatens the very core of the international security system founded on the charter of the United Nations.  Only the charter provides a universally legal basis for the use of force--I could agree with that, but that doesn't say anything about any particular Security Council action, I might say.  And I quote again:  Disagreements about sovereignty are not the only impediments to a Security Council action in the face of complex humanitarian emergencies.  Confronted by gross violations of human rights in Rwanda and elsewhere, the failure to intervene was driven--said the secretary general--more by the reluctance of member states to pay the human and other costs of intervention and by doubts that the use of force will be successful than by concerns about sovereignty. I think that's true.  But he went on to say that if Security Council primacy for the maintenance of international peace and security is rejected and is not honored, the very foundations of international law, as represented by the U.N. charter, would be brought into question. He's made a number of such statements in the period since the United States and the U.K. and the other states in our coalition undertook military action in Iraq.  And I think this is a position that I have never heard a prior secretary general take, I might say, except Boutros Boutros-Ghali.  Boutros Boutros-Ghali did take that position.  I think personally that it's a questionable position, highly questionable. He said it again in a very clear way:  Article 51 of the charter prescribes that all states, if attacked, retain the inherent right of self-defense.  But until now, it has been understood that when states go beyond that and decide to use force to deal with broader threats to international peace and security, they need the unique legitimacy provided by the United Nations. I would just like to say that I do not believe that the United Nations is the source, the unique source, of legitimacy for action in the international domain.  Constitutional, democratic governments who accept and practice a rule of law are perfectly acceptable, if you will, or strong source of legitimacy, or equal to that of the United Nations, I might say.  I don't think all governments are, but governments of law, who observe and respect the rule of law and who are constitutional democracies, I think have a serious claim to be a source of legitimate action independently of the Security Council. Now, I think it's better, it's desirable, and it's in the long run, certainly, better if there is an institution such as the Security Council which can mediate and serve as a center for the discussion and decisions on very important issues, including the use of force, in the world.  I think that that's better for international law and better for orderly procedure.  But I don't think that it's acceptable to consider that the unique source of legitimacy. The secretary general goes on to say:  According to this argument, states are not obliged to wait until there is agreement in the Security Council.  Instead, they reserve the right to act unilaterally or in ad hoc coalitions.  This logic represents, he says, a fundamental challenge to the principles on which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability have rested in the past 58 years. You know, I think that's simply mistaken.  I don't think those are the principles on which world peace has rested.  I think those are useful principles and useful practices, and I support them and would encourage them, but I think it's an exaggeration to say that they are the only source of legitimacy. And the secretary general quite specifically goes on to complain that the Council needs to consider how it will deal with the possibility that individual states may use force preemptively against perceived threats:  Its members may need to begin a discussion on the criteria for an early authorization of coercive measures to address certain types of threats, for instance, terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction. I think it's a good idea to discuss such issues, as a matter of fact, since we live in a world where we may be confronted with terrorist groups with weapons of mass destruction, and it's better for the Security Council to have considered  it in advance than not to have considered it in advance, but I think that it's, again, a gross exaggeration to suggest that the Security Council is the only source of legitimate action to deal with such a crisis, for example, terrorist groups with weapons of mass destruction.  It would be, I think, a violation of an American president's oath of office to act only if he had Security Council authorization that was currently provided to deal with that specific case. And I think that way because, of course, there were repeated authorizations by the Security Council to deal with the violations of Security Council rules by Iraq.  The Security Council had acted repeatedly, passed multiple resolutions.  The president [inaudible] cited a number of resolutions and I've forgotten the number, but we know that it was a multiple number of resolutions.  And, of course, the Security Council not only passed those resolutions, but sent the [inaudible] and other U.N. agents to try to enforce them and to inspect the response of Iraq to those resolutions, and the response of Iraq had always been negative. Yet, you know, I think that one has to always, in dealing with serious issues, has to consider the problems realistically.  And I think we have to consider quite specifically the situation that was created by the special relationships--and I do not hesitate in the use of that term--of France and Russia with Iraq.  That special relationships have lasted for quite a long time, and they've been very profitable to both of those countries.  Everybody knew it.  I mean, everybody who knows about such things knew it.  Certainly the U.S. government knew it and the U.K. government knew it, and I'm certain that many other governments in the world knew it. Where you have two permanent members with a veto, who also have a special relationship with a really bad government whom they are prepared to use the veto to protect in a crisis situation, I think you have a special situation, which raises some questions that are not normally confronted but are confronted in our times from time to time.  And I would remind people Kosovo, of course, was an example of a use of force by the United States and a good many other countries to try to cope with a dreadful, unbelievably bad humanitarian problem in Kosovo.  There were hundreds of thousands of Kosovars who were being killed [inaudible] and killed in horrible ways, moreover, that Ambassador -- one of our colleagues who served as a permanent representative at the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, said at the time that the United States was strongly and harshly criticized for acting without specific Security Council authorization, specific, timely [inaudible] because it mattered.  The authorization was there.  As the president kept saying, there was lots of authorization on the books for just what we were supposing.  And there was even--you know, it was on the books and a reasonable reading of Resolution 1441, which I think has to be taken seriously by people who charged the United States with acting unilaterally, because the president didn't act unilaterally confronted with this crisis.  He followed his father's example and took it to the United Nations Security Council, took the issue to the Security Council as Herbert Walker Bush had taken the issue of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to the Security Council and got, of course, unanimous agreement.  It was not an explicit specific authorization of force, although I think that a reasonable reading of 1441 allowed for reading it to provide an authorization for the use of force. Richard Holbrooke said in relationship to some of the criticisms of the U.S. government at that time, and I quote:  Three times Clinton did what many of the Democrats are now saying Bush can't do--Richard Holbrooke, who served as U.N. ambassador during Clinton's second term, reminded me recently.  He--I'm quoting now--he did it in Bosnia in '95, in Iraq with Desert Fox in December of '98, and in Kosovo in '99.  In the two Balkan cases, he had no Security Council authority at all.  In the case of Iraq, December '98, the U.N. was starting its meetings when they got word that the bombing had begun.  And Clinton simply said, well, I'm bombing under U.N. authority because Iraq is in material breach. Iraq had been in material breach most of the time, of course.  American and British war planes had been bombing military targets in and around no-fly zones in Iraq, and although these actions have no U.N. mandate, they have been tolerated by the Security Council--as a matter of fact, without, really, any overt complaint.  This is interesting, too, that certainly they did not elicit the kind of comment that the secretary general made about President Bush in the Iraq case. I feel, myself, that the U.N. is a very important institution and I'm not surprised that you find that most--there are high percentages of American support for the United Nations.  We did, after all, as Josh says, establish it.  We wanted it, and we've been active in it.  There's been no country that has been more active, consistently supportive of the United Nations than the United States.  I'm not sure there's been any country that's been as consistently supportive.  I'm sure no country has provided as much financial support, which is always worth mentioning since there's been so much talk about our being behind from time to time in the payment of our dues. I'd like to say that I believe we should pay our dues.  I have always said this.  When I was at the U.N., we paid our dues.  The president I was working for, Ronald Reagan, had no intention of doing otherwise, I might say. But I believe also, because the U.N. is a valuable institution, countries need to deal with each other with a certain restraint in the U.N. Security Council.  They need to be a bit restrained in what they say about each other.  And I believe especially that security generals need to behave with restraint in what they say about member states, and perhaps particularly permanent members, but not really only [inaudible] permanent members--all members.  I think we all need to treat one another with not only courtesy, but with the restraint that is due to a relationship which everyone desires to preserve.  And I think we should bear that in mind at all times, and doing so, be more reluctant to raise questions about the legitimacy of the actions of fellow members. Thank you. MR. MURAVCHIK:  Indeed.  Jeane, thank you.  We've had three very interesting presentations.  Before I turn it to the audience, two of our panelists took their full time; Tim Wirth did not.  So if you would like a couple of those minutes now, they're yours. SENATOR WIRTH:  I just want to say how great it is to hear two people who know about this issue in great detail here, and I think we should listen very carefully to both of them, with whom I almost completely agree. There's one final thought I would put on the table for how we think about this issue.  If in fact, as we say, you know, how do we think about the U.N., and we agree that most of the discussion is not on the table and that the issues are these issues surrounding the Security Council and how nations and when nations act, this is a discrete set of very, very important issues. I think it's helpful--another way to think about this is to remember that the U.N. was founded on the notion of absolute respect for national sovereignty.  I mean, that was core to when the U.N. got put together.  I would recommend to anybody interested Steve Schlesinger's new book on the founding of the U.N.  It's a wonderful read, very, very important, and a very easy read. The idea was that national sovereignty and national lines are to be protected.  That was the basic assumption.  Now that has all changed--not all changed, but it has changed significantly.  And the debate now is how do we adapt to changing conditions of the world?  For example, as has been mentioned here, what do you do about failed states that are just crumbling and falling apart?  We're getting one right off of our border again.  When and how do you act?  Do we respect sovereignty?  Is that in our interest or anybody else's interest?  What happens in a genocide situation?  Rwanda was brought up very accurately.  What do we do in that kind of--what does the global community do?  What do you do with non-state actors like al Qaeda?  And, you know, what do you do with these new cross-border threats that exist, whether they're weapons or, in fact, think about environmental and fuzzier, probably leave it better to think about the weapons of mass destruction. These are the key issues.  This issue of sovereignty and how the U.N. and the Family of Nations deals with the question of sovereignty it seems to me is the core of the debate. Now, to the Secretary General's panel.  In thinking about this, you have to remember that if the global community, the world community, is going to come to some resolution as to how to deal with this central question, there has to be a kind of a deal that gets made.  In the North, the central concerns that I think probably most people in this room would share are concerns about weapons of mass destruction, they are concerns about nuclear weaponry.  We're concerned about that part of the sovereignty equation and how do we go after that. If you're in the South, it's probably a very different set of concerns.  I mean, you're more likely to get killed by a small weapon.  You're more likely to die of AIDS.  I mean, there's a whole set of other global issues that are more likely to impact upon you, and the opportunity that is given to all of us thinking about the new world, that redefine some of these sovereignty issues, comes in trying to develop a pact between the North and its set of issues and the South and its set of issues.  We're not going to come to agreement if we don't reach some kind of a pact of understanding that there are two very different perspectives on what are the central issues of sovereignty. And, finally, obviously the Security Council issue, which both Jeane and Tom have spoken about, is that's the mechanism for trying to deal with these other issues.  I bring that up, Josh, just now because I think that there is a way of trying to understand the very, very complicated sovereignty issues and try to look at it through the lens of who is the interested party, how is their interest, and how do we begin to work through the very legitimate interests that the U.S. had in Iraq, that we've had in various cases, but also remember that there's a very large world out there that is also going to have a very different view of those key sovereignty issues. MR. MURAVCHIK:  Thanks to the three of you.  I think that's been extremely interesting, the entire discussion. We have 15 or 20 minutes for questions.  I also don't mind if you want to make a comment, but you must be concise because we don't have very much time. Sir, and wait for the mike.  It is good if you say who you are, in preference to your point or question. MR.          :  My name is [?] from Al-Kut's newspaper. I, too, am grateful for the human work at the U.N.  It's kept the Palestinian refugees barely alive through [?].  On the other hand, it has really failed them miserably politically because they've failed to enforce its own resolutions. My question to Mr. Pickering, sir, comes from the point that Ambassador Kirkpatrick raised, that this special relationship, she cited France and Russia, with Iraq, and this special relationship let's say between the United States and Israel, the U.S. has used its veto most of the time to really sort of get Israel off the hook as far as enforcing obligatory U.N. Security Council resolutions. Don't you think that really the time has come perhaps to do away with this veto and have more or actually less hegemony by the major powers and the Security Council? Thank you, sir. AMBASSADOR PICKERING:  [Speaking Arabic.] [Laughter.] AMBASSADOR PICKERING:  In Arabic, never.  It won't happen because, of course, the permanent members have absolute control over the loss or the nonloss of their own veto power, and it was part of the essential deal. Let me just take that one step further because your statements about not following resolutions are very interesting and extremely important.  The five permanent members have the veto power, in part, because it was necessary to ensure that they participate in the organization to make it at all useful and meaningful.  And the compromise, and there are always compromises, was that they would not be forced to take steps that were contrary to their own interests, and so they were given the veto power. It was interesting because that would allow the Security Council, under certain formulas, to act in a mandatory fashion; that is, actually to prescribe for the world community what it ought to do, and having the five permanent members on board was seen at least to be, if not militarily, politically an important asset in making those kinds of prescriptions. The resolutions that I think you're talking about happen to be General Assembly resolutions which are not enforceable.  There may be some Security Council resolutions, but they have no mandatory quality or no basis for enforcement other than, say, in 242, "the parties shall negotiate," and that took a long while to get them there, and they are probably not fully there yet, but at least there is some process going on in respect of that. And I think of course the point that you make is a very serious point and a very realistic one.  The United States vetoed resolutions in the Security Council that it didn't like because it was not prepared to take the view that they should be enforced against one party or the other--often, as you said, Israel. MR. MORRIS:  Steven Morris, Johns Hopkins University. I'd like to ask a question for the panel about humanitarian intervention and to raise a problem for you about it, even though I personally don't find it a problem in terms of Iraq, but it has been posed as a problem for Iraq.  Namely, if you are going to use the criteria or the criterion of genocide or extreme human rights violations taking place at the time, then Iraq might not qualify because the really horrific scale of killing in Iraq took place in 1998 and in 1991; that is, exceptional scales of mass murder.  In other periods of time, of course, this Bastille regime of Saddam Hussein did repress human rights and behave in a terrible way, but perhaps not by the standards which would activate humanitarian intervention. Now, therefore, how would you formulate a criteria--no, I mean, if you take that position, by the way, which has been presented by critics of the intervention, on humanitarian grounds, therefore, say, for example, Adolph Hitler had managed to kill all of the Jews of Europe and then stopped, and we hadn't overthrown him, therefore, we would not be justified in humanitarian intervention because the genocide had taken place already.  It's not going on now.  How would you formulate a criteria for humanitarian intervention which would take account of the past horrendous scale of mass murder, and could such a criterion be developed? MR. MURAVCHIK:  Maybe each of the panelists will have something to say in reply to that, so I ask you each to do it in a minute. AMBASSADOR KIRKPATRICK:  I'll try to be brief. I'd simply like to say that I think the passage of Resolution 688, which, for the first time, authorized the use of force and treated massive human rights violations as a threat to international peace and security, which therefore furthers the possibility of the use of force, I think it was an important step.  I believe that every reasonable effort should be made to enforce it, but I really think that it is beyond the scope of that resolution, and therefore the authorization that exists, to try to act on the basis of past massive human rights violations. Clearly, what the resolution was intended for I think is for current massive human rights violations. MR.          :  November 29, 1990. AMBASSADOR KIRKPATRICK:  It dealt with the crisis with the Kuwaitis and again imposed by Iraq after the first Gulf War.  That's when Saddam was driving the Kurds and the Shi'a into the mountains, and freezing them to death and killing them there. MR. MURAVCHIK:  Does anybody else want to say something? AMBASSADOR PICKERING:  Yes.  I would say that we live in an imperfect world, and so the righting of all past wrongs for the Security Council at a later date is a very hard concept I think to justify and certainly you'd have trouble getting most of the permanent members, and maybe the other members to do it. If there is an ongoing satrha [ph], whose record in the past is worse than it is at the present time, and human rights violations are involved in it, I think it's an important consideration in considering what the Security Council is going to do. I don't think it was the major reason why we should have gone to war against Saddam, but it was a contributing cause.  I do think, as Jeanne has pointed out, that we had a legal basis to go to war, and I'll end now, otherwise we'll get into an endless argument, in the fact that he continued to be in material breach of the U.N. resolutions.  In fact, since I played a role in writing the cease-fire resolution, that was a premise of the cease-fire.  If he broke the cease-fire, in all of its aspects, he would be subject to the use of force at any time in the future, and I believe that made a lot of sense. But I don't believe we can kind of invade Turkey because of the Armenian--as horrendous as that was.  I'm not minimizing it--or Germany again because of the Holocaust.  So I think it's a hard question, but I think that the U.N. exists to deal with ongoing emergent and real problems, to the greatest extent possible, and the human rights standard is a new standard, as Jeanne has pointed out, but a very important one.  It needs to be in the mix. SENATOR WIRTH:  A quick note.  A reach back in any legislative program or any legislative process is exceedingly difficult and also a very dangerous thing to do.  So this has to be I think progressive.  The Secretary General has opened the door to this I think and has really put his leadership on the line saying that we now have to begin to think about what these interventions are.  That, by itself, will be difficult enough to do, to define the criteria under which the United Nations intervenes, and to complicate it with any kind of a reach-back capability it seems to me would make it probably impossible to do. MR. MURAVCHIK:  This lady here.  Can we get a mike over here. MS. GADDI:  Thank you, Toby Gaddi [ph], [?]. I'd like to make a comment and then ask a question.  I think for many countries, when they look at the U.S. through the prism of--look at the U.N. through the prism of what the U.S. can do, that's the proper way.  So I think we have the right panel here. But when they look at, for example, Iraq, they look at two actions, really.  Before war, you go to the U.N. grudgingly, and you go to explain why either the U.N. is useless or you can't use it, and after war you go to ask the U.N. for money, and you go to pull its chestnuts out of the fire.  Now, this unfair, but it is the perception of a lot of people. So the question really is, is Iraq going to be the exception or the rule for the way we look at the U.N.?  I think in a lot of ways it distorts what's happening. Ambassador Kirkpatrick, you quoted two Secretary Generals, and I think they were half right.  The international system was damaged, but it wasn't U.N. credibility that was damaged, it was U.S. credibility, and that is a problem for us, not for the U.N. So, if we look ahead, it seems to be that we agree with the U.N., that you can go into a country to take out bad governments because that's now the rationale for the war in Iraq, but where we split with the U.N. is that the U.S. seems to be saying we can only do it after the U.S. military has gone in and bombed the country, and then it's okay to nation build and do things like that. So I think if we want to look ahead, perhaps we have to get Iraq behind us, and we have to support what I would call I guess preemptive or preventive peacekeeping or nation-building.  And I think Tim is right, that it's going to be Haiti that is going to be the test in the next couple of months.  Because if we don't do something there, people are going to say you only go in when your Defense Department has agreed that a country has to be invaded.  Then, you'll nation build. So is there a way that we can get beyond that kind of Iraq debate, which I think is never going to be resolved one way or another and say, what is it the U.N. can do preemptively? MR. MURAVCHIK:  Does anyone want to respond? AMBASSADOR PICKERING:  I agree with most of what Toby has said and the premise of her question.  The important point is that I don't think Iraq is the perfect example, nor do I think it's necessarily the way in which things should proceed in the future.  We have plenty of examples in the past, and I suspect we will in the future, where we felt the exhaustion of diplomacy, the use of nonforcible means, and then in some cases the use of the U.N. getting together--Sierra Leone is one example, Liberia now--to provide the appropriate military force on the ground to deal with these failing state problems and the difficulties that they raise. I think that's much more likely to be the kind of normal case than the Iraq case which, as we all know, had all kinds of peculiarities associated with it, which we could spend the whole day sitting here discussing. MR. PETERSON:  Dave Peterson, the National Endowment for Democracy. Josh, I'd just like to see you add a chapter in your book about Africa.  I think it might touch on some of the issues that were raised here, particularly some of the dilemmas of peacekeeping.  As you know, there's been dramatic expansion in the U.N.'s peacekeeping role.  This issue of failed states, you know, I think the Liberians would love for the United Nations just to take over there.  In Sierra Leone, they are worried about the United Nations leaving. I think there are a lot of other issues in terms of humanitarian assistance in Africa.  The role there I just think, getting at this North-South divide, in Africa it's perceived so much differently than we do here in the United States. MR. MURAVCHIK:  While writing this book, I'm grateful for all of the advice I can get. Maury? MR. AMATAY:  Thanks.  Maury Amatay [ph], Jewish Institute for Financial Security Affairs. Tom, I was interested in your statement, which I think was rather optimistic, that we can really become a leader in the U.N.  But is it really realistic, given the fact that there are so many nations there that either envy our success or, if they're dictatorships, hate us for our values?   If you look at the line-up of most of the countries there, they are not democracies, and how, in this instance, how can we possibly lead them? AMBASSADOR PICKERING:  I think, Maury, it's again another extremely good question. If all states at the United Nations were entirely unmalleable, and unwilling to help, and unapproachable, I would agree with the premise of your question, and that is the premise you have tried to create in asking the question the way you did. I don't agree.  Now, I may have been there at an unusual time, but in the period when I was there I found there were ways to approach people on particularly difficult questions.  The most difficult one was Zionism as racism, and it was a terrible resolution.  It should never have gotten through, but it was a resolution in which there were a lot of entrenched views, and for years nobody wanted to change it. With a national effort, led by the President, but with a tremendous effort and with a lot of work in New York, we got it undone, and we did it against all of these folks who had different ideas.  You and I know, if you went around the world now or then and polled the Muslim states, would they be in favor of undoing it?  No.  Did they have a lot of influence?  Yes.  Was that influence pretty pervasive?  Yes.  So it took a tremendous amount of work.  So my feeling is that things can be done. Can you get an agreement, as Dick Holbrooke did, on reducing assessments, arguments against the interests of big and small states in return for the United States increasing its ability to pay on time and covering the arrearages?  It was done. So I'm not saying everything can be done.  I would be a fool to tell you that, but I think a lot of things can be done with the right approach and the right strategy, and more now than in 1990, and more in 1990 than in 1940.  We are a tremendous influence in the world, an unrivaled power.  Some of that is producing backlash, and some of that is producing what I would call "frontlash."  The strategy obviously is to harness the frontlash and reduce the backlash.  I think it can be done, and I don't say everywhere, every time, on every issue.  For the things that are really important to us, I believe it can be done. SENATOR WIRTH:  Tom and Jeanne have much more experience in this than I have.  So let me just get to your question about can the U.S. lead. The thrill of the U.S. going into a room in a tough, difficult, complicated negotiation, and having almost everybody come to a halt and try to figure out what does the U.S. want to do, where does the U.S. want to go, is an extraordinary opportunity.  And we face that opportunity, I believe, at the U.N. as well. If we decide, as Tom has done and as Jeanne did, if we decide to put the U.S. resources behind driving a particular issue, we can almost always get that issue to come out the way that we want to. Now, there's a danger that Toby points out, that our credibility has been dramatically wounded.  We're going to have to, I think, you know, among a lot of people, that, however, can probably be redone pretty quickly, and I think it probably can be.  But, Maury, I think there is a kin of negativism about what the U.S. role can be, and should be, in your question, and I didn't want to have it go unattended. This is a remarkable opportunity that we have, with the U.N. and elsewhere, to be leading the world, as we should. MR. MURAVCHIK:  This is going to have to be our last question.  I apologize to people who I didn't get to. Sir? MR. TREBLANKS:  Edgar Treblanks [ph]. Many of us Americans who attended the U.N. Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, were frankly appalled at the treatment accorded to Colin Powell.  He tried to talk about freedom, democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law, and he was roundly booed and jeered. That same group turned right around and cheered, gave the loudest ovation, to Robert Mugabe.  The U.N. elevated Syria, a terrorist state, to a seat on the Security Council.  They elevated one of the world's worst human rights abuses, Qadhafi's Libya, to chair the Human Rights Commission.  Two billion people worldwide suffering human rights abuses, and the U.N. does that.  Robert Mugabe has a vice-chair seat on the Economic and Social Council. Can we really place faith in that institution? AMBASSADOR PICKERING:  Let me say, if the press wants to drive and get the representation right on the Human Rights Commission, it can do so.  And what happened on the Human Rights Commission and its chairmanship is that we went to sleep at the switch, and it happened.  We didn't work the issue.  On every one of these issues, if we worked the issue, the chances are it's going to come out the way we want it to.  Is everything going to be the perfect, the way we want it?  Absolutely not, but you've got to work the issue and see what's going on. In Johannesburg, I was there at that conference, and probably most of the people that I knew, you know, weren't listening to Colin Powell.  There were a lot of other people from elsewhere in the world.  It wasn't the U.N. that was booing Colin Powell or cheering Mugabe.  It happened to be a collection of people who happened to choose to go there and made a lot of noise, and then there was a lot of press people out there probably picking out seven people who were booing Colin Powell and putting it in the press. We are a little more sophisticated than that.  We can understand that sort of thing would happen. MR. MURAVCHIK:  I'm glad this subject came up.  It's a good one to close on. The 2004 session of the U.N. Human Rights Commission will begin in late March, and our next panel will be in time to coincide with that, and we'll address what's going to be coming up at the Commission meeting. I want to thank again each of our three panelists for a superb performance, and thank you all for coming. [Applause.] [Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded.]</body></html>