SUNS4513 Wednesday 22 September 1999

United Nations, Sep 20 (IPS/Farhan Haq) -- Recent crises in Kosovo and East Timor should prompt the United Nations to takle a new look at how it intervenes in conflicts, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday in opening another session of the UN General Assembly.

In his address to the 54th plenary of the 188-nation Assembly, the secretary-general pointed to the need to avoid inaction in the face of mass murder, as happened in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Annan also urged "complete unity" in international response to crises, in contrast to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) intervention in the Kosovo crisis after the UN Security Council proved itself unable to agree on a response. "Is there not a danger of such interventions undermining the imperfect, yet resilient, security system created after World War II, and of setting dangerous precedents for future interventions without a clear criterion to decide who might invoke these precedents, and in what circumstance?" he asked.

At the same time, Annan argued, the failure by nations to act in Rwanda prompted a different set of questions on whether some nations could have acted to prevent the genocide. "The choice...must not be between Council unity and action in the face of genocide, as in the case of Rwanda, on the one hand; and Council division, with regional action, as in the case of Kosovo, on the other," Annan said.

The General Assembly - expanded this year by new members Nauru, Kirabati and Tonga - convened under the shadow of the NATO attacks on Kosovo and the slow UN response to the campaign of killings in East Timor, following a UN-organised ballot last month.

Even as more than 60 world leaders and scores of diplomats began the annual Assembly proceedings, Australian troops led the landing of more than 2,500 soldiers in East Timor early Monday, securing the capital, Dili, the first step in what was expected to be the deployment of a more than 7,000-strong UN force in East Timor.

Annan praised the Security Council's approval last week of the East Timor international force, called Interfet, for showing "precisely the unity of purpose that I have called for today." But he added that "already too many lives have been lost and far too much destruction has taken place" in East Timor.

Many of the officials who addressed the General Assembly Monday contrasted the slow response to the unfolding crisis in East Timor - and in other hot spots like Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - with the prompt NATO offensive to protect the Kosovars.

"Why does human suffering in some parts of the globe fuel greater indignation than when it takes place elsewhere?" said Luiz Felipe Lampreia, Brazil's foreign minister. "The plight of Angola and East Timor offer two glaring examples of what amounts to a clear pattern of one-sided and unequal attention."

Lampreia urged immediate action in Angola's renewed war, arguing that "the Security Council can no longer suffer to have its resolutions blatantly ignored."

South African President Thabo Mbeki, asserted that too often, "our response to conflicts has been to wait for them to develop into violence, and even wars, and subsequently to intervene through costly peacekeeping operations." Instead, Mbeki argued, the United Nations should attempt more work at conflict prevention and "be seen by governments and peoples as a truly even-handed interlocutor and peacemaker."

At the same time that some speakers at the Assembly drew attention to the differing responses to international crises, others pointed to disparities in development as a major problem.

"The uneven manner in which nations develop does not make the establishment of a universally accepted new world order any easier," Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said. "Worrying cracks are beginning to appear, especially in Africa."

While conceding the importance of globalisation, Bouteflika warned that relations between nations must not be reduced to "mere financial transactions" but take into account human rights and human empowerment.

"The process of globalisation has also been accompanied by growing inequality within and among countries," Mbeki added. "We have also seen how movements of short-term capital have produced disastrous economic consequences in some countries."

Bouteflika also came out in opposition to Annan over international "humanitarian intervention" without the consent of the state - making a distinction between international focus on human rights problems and foreign, even UN authorized military interventions on purported humanitarian law grounds.