WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Jean Ping, the outgoing president of the U.N. General Assembly scheduled a press conference for 2 p.m. Friday to introduce the draft document for next week's World Summit in New York, but canceled it at the last minute because an essential ingredient was missing -- the draft document.
After a week-end of wrangling over the text, ambassadors from 32 member countries forming a "core group" of negotiators have failed to agree on the contents of what's called the outcome document of Millennium Development Goals originally drawn up following the Millennium summit of 2000. The outcome document contains an ambitious scenario for making the world a better place and was supposed to be the centerpiece of the largest gathering of global leaders starting Wednesday and lasting three days. Now, however, many officials doubt whether it can be finished in time for summit ratification.
At the heart of the deadlock is John Bolton, the newly appointed U.S.Representative to the United Nations who 10 days ago submitted a barrage of amendments to the document, which foreign diplomats in Washington and New York maintain will reduce an ambitious, detailed vision of reform to a skeletal outline of vague promises. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan echoed concerns Friday that no agreement might be reached. "The clock is ticking. I'm very concerned that despite some signs of progress, the work may not finish on time and the deadline will be missed," Annan said.
But in Washington U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared to be less concerned. "We are working very effectively, I think, and very cooperatively with others to try to get important changes," Rice told reporters in a press briefing. "This is a very important document. . .We also have got to have a document that really means something and so the United States is working with all our colleagues," she went on. "I think I'll probably be making a number of phone calls today."
A European diplomat familiar with the negotiations told United Press International Saturday, "There is an amount of disputed language and the work will have to go on through the week-end to try to draft something that is acceptable - or declare failure and draft a statement of principle of a couple of pages, which is what I think the Americans would prefer."
But the devil is in the detail. Rice said the draft "has to be a document that represents certain key principles." The 40-page outcome document goes much farther, listing recommended objectives to be followed on a long list of issues including development assistance by developed countries, climate change, security and terrorism, combating HIV/AIDS, reforming the United Nations, U.N. peacebuilding to help countries emerging from conflict, and a more powerful Human Rights Council elected by the General Assembly to replace the current Geneva-based Commission on Human Rights, which is widely discredited as politicized.
The reality is that Millennium Development Goals are already embedded in the process of international aid and development. Financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund tend to use progress in MDGs as a measure of a third world country's performance in key areas. But U.S. priorities have shifted since the Millennium summit due mainly to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq war, and many of Bolton's changes reflect the Bush administration's new concerns. While the combative negotiating style is typically Bolton's, observers say, it is the Bush administration's agenda, with Condoleezza Rice in the driving seat.
In international development, for example, the United States refuses to be locked into contributing 0.7 percent of its gross national product for foreign aid, as proposed in the U.N. document. Washington is naturally allergic to being told by an international organization what America should do with its money: with the huge cost of the Iraq war, and now Hurricane Katrina, that allergy becomes a determination not to comply. So Bolton has introduced language that fine tunes what countries must do to qualify for U.S. aid. These qualifications were reeled off by Rice as "the rule of law, free market reforms, and reducing corruption. It is essential that the outcome document that we are now negotiating reaffirm this comprehensive approach to financing for development."
Partly at the Bush administration's prodding, the United Nations proposes replacing the tainted U.N. Human Rights Commission based in Geneva with a Human Rights Council of between 30-50 members elected by the General Assembly, sharing the seats proportionally on a regional basis. Washington wants to exclude countries with a poor human rights record. Critics say Washington wants a council that is controlled by the West and operates with Western values. But Rice countered: "It cannot be a human rights council where again, Sudan could be elected to it at the same time that it is being accused of genocide."
Publication earlier this week of more revelations by former Federal Reserve Paul Volcker's commission of inquiry into the U.N. oil-for-food scandal buttressed the Bush administration's insistence that reforming the world body should get top priority. "It simply cannot be the case that you have something like (the) oil-for-food (scandal) -- and it's not the only case," Rice said. "There have long been concerns about the efficiency of the United Nations. If you talk to almost anyone who deals with the organizations of the United Nations there are questions about efficiency. And so, there simply have to be management and secretariat reforms, and that has been in many ways our primary concern in the way this outcome document comes out."
