Should it be "vital", "major" or "central", or none of these?

In Washington, even the assumed 'dove' among the 'hawks', Secretary of State Colin Powell, seems to be ruling out a "central role" for the UN, talking instead OF a "vital role" with an emphasis on humanitarian aid and reconstruction.

Significantly, this approach contrasts even with Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, America's most vital ally in the war launched against Iraq without the endorsement of the UN Security Council.

For reasons not unconnected to his own domestic political situation, Tony Blair has been pointing more in the direction of a central or overall role for the UN in post-war Iraq, including ensuring that its vital oil and other resources remain in the control of the Iraqi people.

There is no grey area when it comes to the position of either France, Russia, Germany and China over the issue of a "central role" for the UN, one consistent with multilateralism in and opposition to the politics of unilateralism in international affairs.

Encouragingly, when the Caribbean Community issues, any time now, its first collective post-war statement on Iraq, it is expected to coincide very much with the positions not only of those major powers that favour a "central role" for the UN.

And also that of Secretary General Kofi Annan, who in lamenting the tragedies and chaos in Iraq, left no doubt about the importance of strengthening, not weakening, the UN and for the triumph of multilateralism over unilateralism.

He also explained that when the United Nations Security Council revisits the suspended issue of the search for claimed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the UN inspectors, led by Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradie, would be the ones recognised and authorised to resume such a mission, consistent with the Council's pre-war decision.

By coincidence, Blix was at the time telling the media in Madrid, Spain, that the invasion of Iraq was planned a long time ago and that the USA and Britain were not primarily concerned in finding weapons of mass destruction.

Now, as the debate about the UN's post-war role continues amid the state of lawlessness and widespread suffering with no functioning government in Baghdad, the "Special Committee of the UN Charter on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization" is scheduled to conclude its current 243rd meeting on Thursday (April 17) on enhancing the powers and functioning of the UN.

Hopefully, before then, CARICOM's statement on why the UN should have a "central role" would have been made known to the peoples of the Caribbean.
(Reprinted from yesterday's `Daily Nation' of Barbados)