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U.N. Council must Act

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY'S fears of a superpower on the rampage untramelled by collective control may be coming true. If no credible initiatives are taken in the next few days to restore to the United Nations and its policy-making body, the Security Council, their primary role as the only source of legitimacy for international action, and to halt the American war of aggression against Iraq, unilateralism will have scored a dangerous victory. Both Russia and China have regretted the attack on Iraq but have failed to go beyond expressions of pious hopes for a return to the U.N. The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has stressed that the pivotal role in defusing crises in the world must belong to the U.N. Security Council and a Chinese statement has asked the U.S. to call off its war and "return to the right path of seeking a political solution". France and Germany have expressed their opposition, with Jacques Chirac warning of the serious consequences of the flouting of international norms. The embarrassment of India's muted, ambivalent response during the runup to the crisis has been mitigated to some extent by the official statement describing the American action as unjustified. The international community, whose opposition to the war is being demonstrated in the streets around the world, most visibly in the United States itself, waits to see if these words are followed up with action to get the issue back to where it belongs: the United Nations.

As a chorus of independent international opinion has accused the U.S. and its ally, the U.K., of planning an illegal invasion amounting to a war of aggression, Iraq has charged that the U.S. acted as a terrorist state by attempting to assassinate its leadership. A war waged without a clear mandate from the U.N. Council, according to the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, would constitute a flagrant violation of the prohibition of the use of force, a rule enshrined in the U.N. Charter precisely with the aim of preventing states from using force as they pleased. In a pre-emptive action to counter the charge that it is in breach of this international restraint on the use of force, the U.S. on Thursday gave its official reasons for invading Iraq, saying Baghdad had broken a ceasefire resolution adopted after the 1991 Gulf War. Here again, there is no legal backing for the use of force, the case differing fundamentally from the first Gulf War which was waged under the auspices of a global coalition sponsored by the U.N. Here is a clear case for the Security Council to act to immediately halt the horrendous tragedy from causing further damage. The geopolitical reality, however, is that none of the Security Council members plans to support a formal condemnation or even criticism of the U.S., with most of them following the lead of the U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, who has focussed attention on the enormous task of providing relief to the victims of the war.

That is the measure of the tragedy of this crisis. Because, it is more than about Iraq. It is about the value of multilateralism as symbolised by the United Nations. It is a context in which the near paralysis of action by Governments in the wake of the American aggression must be a cause of concern. It signals perhaps in the clearest possible way so far in the post-Cold War era the dangers ahead if the international community allows the erosion of the authority of the U.N. Some analysts have described Thursday's pre-emptive assault on Baghdad as a turning point. It indeed is, in more ways than one. The U.S. President may have struck a lethal blow to visions of world government by going to war leading a "coalition of the willing" and ignoring the U.N., the long established mainstay of global peace and order.

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• U.N. Council must Act
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