UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. Millennium Summit came to its historic close last Friday with the adoption of a wide-ranging wish list that promises to cut poverty, protect planet Earth and improve the ability of the United Nations to keep the peace.
The Summit Declaration, negotiated for weeks was adopted by acclamation, also commits the 150 heads of state and government who gathered for the three-day meeting to promote democracy, strengthen respect for human rights and reverse the spread of AIDS.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned that he would not be satisfied unless the leaders actually implement the pledges in the document. He told a press conference on the eve of the summit that he expected every one of them “to go back home and begin to do something about it.”
The last day of the summit opened with a speech by Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, at 35 the youngest African leader attending. The last scheduled speaker was Techeste Ahderom, who chaired a May summit of grass-roots organizations who gave their own advice on how the United Nations could remake itself to better address the challenges of the 21st century.
But the UN Declaration will nevertheless be one of the major outcomes of the summit, which featured a notable first – a chat and handshake between President Clinton and Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Another summit legacy will be the apparent failure to reach a Mideast peace deal. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Thursday rejected Clintons proposal to split control of Muslim and Jewish holy sites in east Jerusalem.
The summit was also a platform for protest, though there was no proof that anyone was listening. On Friday, yellow-shirted supporters of Falun Gong handed out leaflets to commuters outside of Grand Central Station, warning of new crackdowns against their spiritual movement in China.
Council members met against a sobering backdrop: the killing of three U.N. relief workers assisting refugees from East Timor; the rebel seizure of 500 U.N. peacekeepers in Sierra Leone; highly critical reports of the U.N. role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide and the 1995 slaughter of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.
Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid said Friday that Jakarta had sent in extra forces to restore calm in West Timor and would investigate the attack of the aid workers by pro-Indonesian militias. He blamed the rampage on “criminals” who had infiltrated the ranks of Jakartas supporters in West Timor. “Everything is under control,” he assured the leaders, who resoundingly condemned the killings and demanded Indonesia do more to disarm the militias in the heads of state Security Council meeting on Thursday.
But the three-day meeting will likely be hailed as a success merely for having occurred, drawing more leaders together than ever before to discuss the challenges confronting the globe in the third millennium.
The world body is currently engaged in 14 peacekeeping operations – most of them in the worlds poorest countries – with more than 37,000 troops and civilian police deployed from East Timor to Cyprus and Sierra Leone at an annual cost of about $2.2 billion.
Nearly 1,000 U.N. civilian staff are engaged in 14 other political and peace-building missions from Afghanistan to Burundi and Guatemala.
