Power plays at UN

Whatever happens in the end, the fight at the United Nations over what to do about Iraq has produced a moment of impassioned global debate rarely seen in world history.

It has been a case of the democratic process, with all its foibles and frustrations, writ large - of impassioned speeches cutting to the core of how the world should work, of backroom lobbying, of late-night phone calls among heads of state, of opportunistic compromise and resolute conviction.

For some, the seemingly endless debating and arm-twisting for votes smacks of cynical power politics. For others, it marks the waning of the 15-member Security Council as a relevant referee of global problems.

But others, taking a longer view, say the UN's handling of the Iraq crisis to this point represents progress for the concept of collective management of the world's security challenges. "This is what the UN was set up to do," says Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey. With this debate, "the UN is demonstrating it is more relevant than it ever has been."

Freed from the binds of the cold-war's East-West divide, the Council from this viewpoint is, for the first time since it was created nearly 60 years ago, struggling to enforce its own demands on an aggressorstate. And it is trying to do that through international consensus and with respect for the views of members both great and small.

The debate may be frustrating to some world leaders and seem time-consuming to the public. But Dean Slaughter says the fact that global powers, including the US, are sticking with it demonstrates the Council's relevance. "All you have to do is compare this with 40 years of international crises" beginning with the Cuban missile crisis, she adds. "The UN simply wasn't involved."

For other experts, the Iraq debate, no matter what the denouement, has already cemented the importance of collective international response to global security challenges.

For the "first time in the history of this kind of action you have two major powers - the US and Great Britain - pushing for [the UN] to play this role" of enforcing its own terms for peace, says John Norton Moore, director of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia. "That represents some progress. If we didn't have [the UN], we would have to invent it."

At the White House, however, officials are placing even more pressure on the 15-member Security Council by saying it risks committing the same errors it did in the 1990s, when it sat out such devastating international crises as Kosovo and Rwanda.

Faced with mounting pressure to put off a proposed deadline of March 17 for Iraq to disarm, Bush administration officials said yesterday that any extension of the deadline past a few days - perhaps to March 21 - would not fly. They also said the council will be called on to vote on a new resolution this week.

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