Thread: OIC wants permanent UNSC seat

OIC demands permanent UNSC seat

Secretary-general for real reform in Islamic bloc

SANAA: Foreign ministers of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference opened a meeting here on Tuesday with a call for a Muslim permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu urged a greater role for Muslim countries in world affairs and demanded a "permanent representation for the Islamic world on the UN Security Council".

"The Islamic world, which represents one-fifth of total mankind, cannot remain excluded from the activities of the Security Council which assumes a fundamental role in keeping security and peace in the world," he said.

Ihsanoglu had announced on Monday that ministers would discuss proposals for the representation of the 57-member Islamic body on the Security Council during their three-day conference in the Yemeni capital.

Ihsanoglu told the conference that his ambitious plans also provided for the introduction of "real reform" in the Islamic bloc’s internal affairs. "I want to push for real reform in the organisation, not just a superficial one ... to enhance capabilities and improve performance," he said at the opening which was held amid tight security measures and away from the press.

Ihsanoglu became head of the OIC at the start of the year after his election to the top job in June 2004, becoming the first secretary-general in the organisation’s 36-year history to be chosen through secret ballot.

The Turkish secretary-general also proposed finding a new name for the organisation that would reflect "its reality".

Ihsanoglu wanted to "revisit the OIC’s convention and rewrite it in a way that would serve the interests of the (Islamic) nation." He also wanted to reform the OIC in order to "guarantee that its political decisions do not remain wishes".

"The Islamic world is in need of a renaissance ... Development and reform are the real guarantees for the continuity of our nation, and to bridge the gap between us and the advanced world," he said.

Addressing the conference, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri proposed a six-point response to the challenges.

He said: "The OIC countries should be represented continuously and in proportion to their numbers in an expanded Security Council." Pakistan, he said, had proposed a draft resolution in this regard and added that the question of the expansion of the Security Council should be addressed as a part of the comprehensive reform of the United Nations with consensus and without any artificial deadline.

Kasuri urged the leadership of the OIC to rise to these challenges and called for the organisation to maintain its highly valued support to the Kashmiri people and their just cause and struggle. He expressed deep gratitude to the Islamic countries for their support to Kashmir cause.

"Pakistan believes that the Kashmiri people are the principal party to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. They must be associated with the Pakistan-India peace process for seeking a final and just settlement."

Kasuri said the Commission of Eminent Persons set up by the OIC Summit in Putrajaya on President Pervez Musharraf's proposal had come up with a plan of action. He said it should now be forwarded by the foreign ministers to the Extraordinary Summit of OIC in Makkah by the end of this year to revitalize the OIC. The Islamic countries should also agree to enhance the scientific and technological capabilities of the OIC countries and work for women development issues.

Kasuri said the OIC should be reformed and changes introduced in its charter and name for achieving the above objectives. He said Pakistan was contributing an additional $1 million to the OIC budget.

Kasuri also reiterated Pakistan's strong support for the final settlement of the Palestine issue culminating in a viable independent state of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. Kasuri also called for support of the Muslim world to assist Afghanistan and Iraq in their reconstruction and political development.

http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/jun20...main/main1.htm

Why would you want a UNSC seat? The UNSC is dysfunctional, and it's not because it has too few members.

The MUSLIM WORLD wants a seat on the SC?

Is that how we're doin' it now, by RELIGION?

Might be appropriate at this time to grumble 'JESUS CHRIST'!

Originally Posted by Bluesman

Is that how we're doin' it now, by RELIGION?

One for Israel then. I think we should offer then that trade. LOL

Give it to them.

But would it be an avenue where Terrorism gets the recognition as a legitimate mode of pursuing a imagined grievance against them?

It that be so, then don't give it to them.

Ok then...

Nepal (Hindu nation)...
Uganda (African)...
Israel (duh)...
Palestine (balance it out and they are Muslim)...
Ethiopia (African)...
Cuba (why the hell not)...

More members will not hurt the SC... even if all the new wanna be members are not really stand alone states...

While we are at it make Burma, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Laos and Zimbabwe permenant veto members of the human rights group....

I need one as well representing my household!

The UN is a dysfunctional wreck ... it should be disbanded ...

Its a waste of resources ...

I need one as well representing my household!

We will never let Pittsburgh, PA secced from our fine and dear Union...

The UN is a dysfunctional wreck ... it should be disbanded ... Its a waste of resources ...

The issue is what will replace it? It is quite a joke these days and does soak up a lot of money but I think it could be fixed, adding more members to the SC will not fix it...

Originally Posted by troung

We will never let Pittsburgh, PA secced from our fine and dear Union...

Originally Posted by troung

The issue is what will replace it?

This is dated but it's something to consider:

Replacing the United Nations
From the March 17, 2003 issue: Make way for the Big Three.
by David Gelernter
03/17/2003, Volume 008, Issue 26


IF IT WERE WORKING PROPERLY, a world organization like the United Nations could offer the United States official sanction for an upcoming bout, and assure the world that the heavyweight champion (no matter what kind of lowlife he is up against) will play by the rules and rein himself in; will hit clean and fight fair. Of course this is insulting. The United States has repeatedly proved that it follows the rules and fights fair. All the same, conservatives who hate the U.N. for many good reasons must acknowledge that there has never been a hyperpower heavyweight before, and that the idea of one remains frightening to many world-politics fans. The United States is wisely led today, but hasn't always been.

America's problem is not with the idea of a world organization; its problem is with the U.N. The U.N. is no good. Too often it can't do the right thing, and so it does the wrong thing in order to do something. This pattern doesn't always hold (the U.N. does good occasionally), but it is more than sufficient to damn the institution as a failure, because it is woven in, not printed on.

The great essayist E.B.White was a leading booster of the United Nations, probably its most articulate American defender ever. Nonetheless: By December 1956, 11 years after the U.N. was born, even White was fed up. He saw the pattern.

The U.N. made no sense, he concluded, if members were allowed to do whatever they felt like behind the locked doors of their own "internal domestic affairs," no matter what kind of shrieking and hollering the neighbors reported. "The United Nations should never have admitted the Communist nations on their terms," he wrote; "that is, freedom to operate behind a wall. . . . One of the preconditions of membership in the United Nations should be that the member himself will not shut his door in the face of the Club." Obviously the same holds for Iraq and other brutal dictatorships today. In 1956, Hungarian freedom-fighters had just recently rebelled against their Soviet masters. After some initial hesitation, the Red Army arrived to reinstate its puppet government and crush the rebellion beneath its tank treads. The U.N. passed resolutions; the Soviets ignored them. "By the end of November," the historian John Lukacs wrote in 1961, "the silence of a near-graveyard settled over the tragic scene of Hungary."

An equally fundamental problem: "Aggression," White noted, "is the keystone of the Charter. It is what every member is pledged to suppress." But this is nonsense, because "aggression" has no ethical meaning in itself; it can be good or bad. (Without aggression there would be no great generals, champion chess players, top scientists, effective businessmen, important artists.) D-Day was the most spectacular piece of aggression in history. "To condemn aggression," White wrote, "is to decide in advance of an event the merits of the dispute."

In December '56, the U.N. had just finished condemning Israeli aggression in the Sinai--a nice piece of work in which President Eisenhower lined up with Nasser and the Soviets. If Russian tanks felt like raping Budapest, the U.N. couldn't stop them. But it was easy to condemn Israel. (Israel's best friend at the time was France; not a hopeful sign.) Condemning Israel turned out to be such fun, it became the U.N.'s signature act, like the Whiffenpoofs singing "We are poor little lambs." An expectant hush descends, the boys smile debonairly and then break into their beloved old standby: "Israeli aggression can no longer be . . ." In November 1974, the U.N. at last welcomed Yasser Arafat to its podium. "Now Zionism will get out of this world," Arafat explained sweetly, gun at his hip, "under the blow of the people's struggle." He got a standing ovation. Six months earlier, Palestinian terrorists had murdered 22 schoolchildren at Ma'alot.

The U.N. in its present shape reflects the obsolete assumptions of 1945. We gave France (for example) a central role and a veto because France had once been a great power, and had suffered under the Nazis. But why should France keep those unearned privileges when she grows more neo-Vichy all the time? Pétain would be proud: A brave new France that is tight with the Germans, hostile to England, intensely wary of the United States, no friend of the Jews, contemptuous of Eastern Europe, thoroughly defeatist and desirous above all of avoiding trouble and keeping peace in the neighborhood. Wasn't this (perhaps) the real France all along? Wasn't Vichy just as "authentic" as the Free French?

It was all amusing for a while, but grows thin. By 1956, the U.N. was embarrassing even to its best friends. Today it is an impediment to world safety. It should be replaced. The United States should pledge to the United Nations its strong support while it prepares a substitute. It should deny vigorously the whole time that it has ever dreamt of replacing the U.N. This will drive the French crazy and make everyone understand that we are serious.

Now is the time to start thinking post-U.N., not merely because the Security Council has made such a mess of Iraq but because we have remarkable opportunities. And if the experiment fails, the U.N. simply carries on, chastened.

The core of the new organization--call it the Big Three--would be a Britain-Russia-America triumvirate. The underlying principle: No credible world organization could include only countries we like. But Russia's fluid condition gives us an unusual opening. Russia is a big country with a vivid history. No organization that includes Russia could possibly be America's cat's-paw. Yet Russia is uncertain of what she wants; she is open to persuasion. Yes, that means money; but international prestige is worth even more, especially to a humbled former champion. Including Russia (but not China or France) in the ruling committee might impart just the right soupçon of anti-Americanism to the new organization, which must be credible yet not intractable.

The new organization, unlike the U.N., would be founded with no chatter or charter. The three countries' U.N. ambassadors would simply adjourn one afternoon to a neighborhood brownstone. They would announce: We are going to have a meeting and talk things over. We may pass some resolutions. Afterwards we will issue a report and have a press conference, and meet again when we feel like it.

And they would of course add: However big it may happen to grow, our new organization will never replace the United Nations!

Why build it this way, around a Big Three? Official U.S. policy favors a united Europe. A politically united Europe (first promoted by Winston Churchill) is (allegedly) a rich, peaceful, stable, responsible Europe. But the Europeans themselves--especially France and Germany--have long seen United Europe as a "counterweight" to the United States: a way to balance our resolution against their indifference, our sympathy for Israel against their sympathy for suicide murderers, our naive ideas about planting democracy everywhere (which are so painfully American, so Woodrow Wilson!) against their thoughtful, sophisticated disgust with mankind. "Of course," we will say, "we are solidly behind United Europe!" But why should we be?

And why not offer Britain a choice?--a way to formalize her foot-in-both-camps situation? During and after the Second World War, Churchill preached his vision of "the great English-speaking democracies" retaining their separate identities but joined in one commonwealth with shared citizenship. The idea never caught on. No one liked it. Neither country wanted it. Today it is still a non-contender. But (of course!) Churchill was on to something. He understood that American-British friendship is a rare thing in world history, and that one strong, proven friendship is worth vastly more than a milling throng as a basis for international peacekeeping. This is still true, and the friendship still stands. Today much of Britain's intellectual elite seems as rudely and ignorantly anti-American as any in Europe. But we should pity a friend's misfortunes, and not mistake the disease for the man. (Admittedly this is easier said than done, both for the well man and the sick one.)

Russia would make the triumvirate global. Putin has been disappointing on Iraq, but we need to look beyond Iraq. Russia will be a great power again someday. We should be laying the groundwork for a U.S.-aligned and not Old-Europe-aligned Russia. Russia doesn't deserve a place in a new world-leading triumvirate--but that is exactly why it would be such a powerful gesture to offer her one. She might vote against us in the new Big Three as readily as she does in the U.N.; then again, she might rise to the occasion.

Once its brain has been replaced, the former-U.N.'s body (the police forces, aid organizations, bureaucracies) could easily be reconstituted within the Big Three. A B3 resolution won't pack quite the multilateral punch of the Security Council, but it will pack plenty.

And there will be plenty of time, too, to gather junior members. Membership would be limited to democracies or aspiring democracies that spend at least some agreed percentage of GDP on their militaries.

Thus, the right world organization for today--as the U.N. was (perhaps) right for 1945. We show our solidarity with Britain, help coax Russia onto the right side of history, and liberate world councils from overlordship by the evil, the nasty, and the irrelevant.

But what if the new world organization doesn't work? What if it never even gets started? What if Russia turns us down? Or Britain does? What if we never even ask?

We still win big just by talking about it.

David Gelernter is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.

http://weeklystandard.com/content/pu...cmbbi.asp?pg=2

Originally Posted by troung

The issue is what will replace it?

Magic 8 Ball...

I'll take the magic 8-ball over the "big 3"...

And least if the 8-ball fails to see the future we can hit someone in the head with it...

Originally Posted by troung

I'll take the magic 8-ball over the "big 3"...

And least if the 8-ball fails to see the future we can hit someone in the head with it...

And it only costs about $10...