[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 3024-3026]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  MEETING WITH U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, this morning I had the opportunity to 
confer with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is in Washington, 
D.C. holding extensive meetings. He will be meeting with the Speaker 
and other members of the Congressional leadership before returning to 
New York.
  This morning, we had a very broad range of discussions about the many 
threats that face the world today, primarily weapons of mass 
destruction. I expressed my concern about the situation in Iraq and the 
continued failure of Saddam Hussein to abide by the many U.N. Security 
Council Resolutions which require the continuing destruction of Iraq's 
weapons of mass destruction, as well as the capability to manufacture 
such weapons and their delivery systems. I stressed to the Secretary 
General the urgency of the situation and the need for the Security 
Council to act to ensure compliance with its resolutions. In my view, 
the future credibility of the Security Council is on the line.
  Mr. President, yesterday the Secretary General spoke at Georgetown 
University on, ``The Future of United Nations Peacekeeping.'' I found 
the Secretary General's remarks to be very timely and thought-
provoking. I ask unanimous consent that the text of his speech be 
printed in the Record. I urge my colleagues to review this speech.
  There being no objection, the speech was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

   Address by the Secretary-General--``The Future of United Nations 
                             Peacekeeping''

       Thank you, Don, and Father O'Donovan, for those very kind 
     words.
       I am greatly flattered by what you have said, and greatly 
     honoured to become the 18th recipient of the Jit Trainor 
     award
       Ladies and Gentlemen, I am more than happy to speak to you 
     this evening about United Nations peacekeeping.
       As Don has mentioned, I was head of the UN's Department of 
     Peacekeeping Operations for four years before I became 
     Secretary-General. It was a very evicting time, and on the 
     whole a very inspiring one. So the subject has remained close 
     to my heart.
       The United Nations can, I think, fairly claim to have 
     invented both the word and the concept of peacekeeping, but 
     it did to by improvising in response to specific situations 
     and events. Not surprisingly, therefore, peacekeeping has 
     evolved over time, and has taken different forms as it 
     adapted to different circumstances.
       Since the end of the cold war our operations have become 
     more ambitious and more complex. Almost without exception, 
     the new conflicts which have erupted since 1991 have been 
     civil ones. Although often there is outside interference, the 
     main battle is between people who are, or were, citizens of 
     the same State. This has obliged the United Nations to re-
     define the tasks that peacekeeping involves.
       Instead of maintaining a cease-fire while waiting for a 
     political solution to be negotiated, we are now more often 
     deployed as part of an agreed process, to help implement a 
     fledgling political settlement. This involves us in such 
     activities as collecting weapons, disarming and demobilising 
     militias, supervising elections, and monitoring--sometimes 
     even training--police forces.
       Putting a war-torn society back together is never easy, and 
     one can seldom say with real confidence that the point of no 
     return has been achieved. But we can claim some success 
     stories. Not all the wounds of conflict have yet healed, but 
     Namibia, Mozambique, El Salvador, even Cambodia are countries 
     which have now lived several years without war, and which 
     have at least a fair chance of lasting peace, thanks to the 
     hard work of United Nations peacekeepers in the late 1980s 
     and early 90s.
       To some extent we have been victims of our own success. In 
     the early 90s expectations ran very high, and some of the 
     assignments we were given were ones which could only have 
     been carried out successfully by much larger forces, armed 
     with heavier equipment and above all with clearer mandates.
       The international community has drawn lessons from these 
     sad experiences, but perhaps not always the right ones.
       In Africa, the effect was to make external powers more 
     reluctant to expose their forces. Indeed, the tragedy of 
     Rwanda was caused, in part, by fear of repeating the 
     experience of Somalia, which haunted some members of the 
     Security Council.
       In Europe, thankfully, a different lesson was drawn. 
     External powers especially the United States, became more 
     involved, not less. We saw diplomatic skill and military 
     muscle combined--late in the day, but with great effect--to 
     produce the Dayton agreement.
       The Implementation Force in Bosnia, and the Stabilisation 
     Force which has succeeded it, have to my mind been model 
     peacekeeping forces. Heavily armed, and authorised to use 
     their arms if challenged,

[[Page 3025]]

     they have in practice hardly used them at all because their 
     authority has not been challenged.
       But, although authorised by the Security Council, they are 
     not United Nations peacekeeping forces, in the sense that 
     they do not wear blue helmets. As you know, they are under 
     NATO leadership.
       But another success was the parallel operation in Eastern 
     Slavonia.
       There too a force was deployed strong enough to intimidate 
     the local parties, so that the Transitional Authority was 
     able to see off early challenges and fulfill its mandate 
     without being dragged into combat. But this was a United 
     Nations operation in the full sense of the term. It brought 
     together a broad range of international responses--military, 
     political, and humanitarian--under the authority of a Special 
     Representative of the Secretary-General, who happened to be a 
     very distinguished American, Jacques Paul Klein.
       The result was an integrated strategy, and the force was 
     able to withdraw on time, without leaving renewed bloodshed 
     behind it.
       But peacekeeping is not, and must not become, an arena of 
     rivalry between the UN and NATO.
       There is plenty of work for us both to do. We work best 
     when we respect each other's competence and avoid getting in 
     each other's way. In fact the UN Charter explicitly 
     encourages regional arrangements and agencies, like NATO, to 
     deal with regional problems, provided they do so in a manner 
     consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the United 
     Nations. So I welcome NATO's role, as I welcome that of other 
     regional organizations in other parts of the world.
       But few others have, or would claim to have, the same 
     operational capacity that NATO has. It is therefore 
     unfortunate that in recent years the Security Council has 
     been reluctant to authorise new United Nations peacekeeping 
     operations, and has often left regional or sub-regional 
     organizations to struggle with local conflicts on their own.
       That puts an unfair burden on the organizations in 
     question. It is also a waste of the expertise in peacekeeping 
     which the United Nations has developed over the years.
       As a result, the number of United Nations peacekeepers fell 
     precipitately between 1994 and 1998. If only that meant there 
     had been a drop in the need for peacekeeping, we could all 
     rejoice. But that is far from the case. If fact the overall 
     number of peacekeepers deployed around the world remains 
     roughly constant. It is only the proportion of them wearing 
     blue berets that has declined.
       Ironically this happened just when the United Nations, with 
     the support of its Member States, was developing a sound 
     infrastructure for directing and supporting peacekeeping 
     operations.
       It is a paradox that, in technical terms, we are better 
     equipped now that we have only fourteen thousand soldiers in 
     the field than we were five years ago when we had nearly 
     eighty thousand. And if our capacity continues to be under-
     utilised there is an obvious risk that Member States will not 
     longer give us the resources we need to sustain it.
       This would not matter if the peace around the world were 
     being successfully kept. But the truth is that the role 
     played by NATO in Bosnia has proved very hard for regional 
     arrangements or defence alliances to reproduce elsewhere.
       In Africa especially, I find that local powers, and indeed 
     regional organizations, are turning more and more to the 
     United Nations for help. We must not dismantle the capacity 
     that can provide that help.
       Of course we must be careful to avoid the mistakes of the 
     past. We must never again send a UN force, just for the sake 
     of it, to keep a non-existent peace, or one to which the 
     parties themselves show no sense of commitment.
       That, perhaps, is the lesson of Angola, where as you know 
     civil war is now raging once again, and I have had to 
     recommend the withdrawal of the United Nations force.
       But let us not forget the positive lesson of Mozambique, 
     which ten years ago seemed quite as tragic and hopeless a 
     case as Angola.
       There, the presence of 7,000 United Nations troops had a 
     calming effect, helping to reassure vulnerable parties and 
     people, and to deter disruptions of the peace.
       Conflict was successfully channelled into legitimate 
     political institutions, so that interests no longer had to be 
     pursued at the point of a gun.
       This required working with the parties to strengthen 
     national institutions and broaden their base. And to ensure 
     that the parties could make use of the new institutions, we 
     had to help them--especially the guerrilla opposition--to 
     transform themselves from an army into a political party.
       Had we not done that, the opposition leaders would quickly 
     have become disillusioned with the political process and 
     would have been tempted to return to the battlefield.
       We also provided incentives for individual combatants, many 
     of whom had been pressed into service as children, had come 
     of age as fighters, and knew no other way of life.
       And so, with a little help from the United Nations, the 
     parties in Mozambique were able to make peace. What was once 
     a violent and ruthless rebel movement has become a 
     constructive and peaceful opposition party.
       No doubt we got some things right in Mozambique which we 
     got wrong in Angola, but surely the main difference lies in 
     the behavior of the political leaders, on both sides, in the 
     two countries.
       So yes, we have to be cautious about taking on new mandates 
     in countries where many different interests and ethnic 
     animosities are involved.
       But let us not nurture any illusions that regional or sub-
     regional bodies will be able to handle these problems on 
     their own, without help from the United Nations.
       You only have to list the countries which might make up a 
     ``regional force'' in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for 
     instance, to realize that many of them are already involved 
     in the hostilities on one side or the other.
       Indeed, the experience of decades has shown that 
     peacekeeping is often best done by people from outside the 
     region, who are more easily accepted as truly detached and 
     impartial.
       So I think we must be prepared for a conclusion which many 
     African leaders have already reached: that if a peacekeeping 
     force is required in the Congo, the United Nations would 
     probably have to be involved.
       But equally we must be prepared to insist that no such 
     force can be deployed unless it is given sufficient strength 
     and firepower to carry out its assignment, and assured of the 
     full backing of the Security Council when it has to use that 
     power.
       I see no need for it to include American troops. But I 
     think in other aspects the Bosnian model is just as relevant 
     to Africa as it is to Europe.
       Ladies and Gentlemen, increasingly, we find that 
     peacekeeping cannot be treated as a distinct task, complete 
     in itself. It has to be seen as part of a continuum, 
     stretching from prevention to conflict resolution and 
     ``peace-building.''
       And these things cannot be done in a neat sequence. You 
     have to start building peace while the conflict is still 
     going on.
       It is essentially a political task, but one which is part 
     and parcel of a peacekeeping role. More than ever, the 
     distinctions between political and military aspects of our 
     work are becoming blurred.
       I have no doubt that in future we will need to be even more 
     adaptable.
       The future of peacekeeping, I suspect, will depend in large 
     part on whether we succeed in mobilizing new forms of 
     leverage to bring parties towards a settlement.
       In the past, when a peacekeeping operation ran into 
     trouble, the most effective response was to report this to 
     the Security Council, whose Permanent Members would then put 
     pressure on their respective proxies, mainly by extending or 
     reducing economic and military aid.
       In today's conflicts that kind of government-to-government 
     aid is less important. Conflicting parties now finance their 
     armies with hard currency earned by exporting the commodities 
     they control.
       How do we obtain leverage over those sources of income? It 
     may involve a new kind of relationship with the private 
     sector, where the foreign customers and backers of the 
     parties are to be found.
       Also, given the civil nature of today's conflicts, which 
     are always in some degree a battle for hearts and minds, we 
     may need to engage on a broader front with the civilian 
     population. At the very least, we must ensure that they have 
     access to reliable and objective information, so that they 
     are not an easy prey for artificially fanned fear and hatred.
       Ladies and Gentlemen, it is sadly clear that the need for 
     United Nations peacekeeping will continue, and indeed will 
     probably grow. And it is very much in America's national 
     interest to support an international response to conflicts--
     even those which seem remote--because, in today's 
     interconnected world, they seldom remain confined in one 
     country or even one region.
       Take Rwanda, for example. The failure of the international 
     community to respond effectively led not only to genocide in 
     Rwanda itself, but also to the exodus of refugees and 
     combatants across the borders.
       Because we failed to act in time, seven countries are now 
     fighting each other in a mineral-rich region which should 
     have been a prime area for investment and development. Is 
     this something the U.S. can afford to ignore?
       Personally, I shall always be haunted by our failure to 
     prevent or halt the genocide in Rwanda until nearly a million 
     people had been killed. The peacekeeping force was withdrawn 
     at the very moment that it should have been reinforced.
       But whether we express remorse or outrage, or both, our 
     words are of little value--unless we are sure that next time 
     we will act differently.
       Which means that next time we will not hide behind the 
     complexities and dangers of the situation. Next time we must 
     not wait for hindsight to tell us the wisest course.
       Nor must we set impossible conditions, thereby ensuring 
     that the Security Council takes no decision until too late.
       We must be prepared to act while things are still unclear 
     and uncertain, but in time to make a difference.
       We must do so with sufficient resources--including credible 
     military strength when a

[[Page 3026]]

     deterrent is necessary--to ensure the mission's success and 
     the peacekeepers' safety.
       And once the Council has authorised an operation, 
     everyone--but especially those Council members who voted for 
     it--must pay their share of the cost, promptly and in full.
       Only if we approach our work in that spirit, Ladies and 
     Gentlemen, can we dare hope that peacekeeping in the twenty-
     first century will build on the achievements of the 
     twentieth.
       Thank you very much.

                          ____________________