ARMENIA SUPPORTS UN REFORM PROGRAM

Pan Armenian Network, Armenia
March 23 2005

Yerevan chooses between two variants of the program of reforms
proposed by the UN Secretary General.

Kofi Anan~Rs project for UN structural reforms was passed to the
member states of the United Nations Organization. Like the other 190
acknowledged countries of the world, Armenia has to decide whether
the initiative of the Secretary General meets current demands.
Armenian representation at UN has already submitted its proposals to
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The essence of Anan~Rs proposal is the expansion of
Security Council structure which currently consists of 10
non-permanent and five permanent members ~V USA, Russia, France, Great
Britain and China, all of them having the veto. After the Second
World War serious geopolitical changes marked the appearance of other
powers on a global and regional scale. Anan proposes to take into
account the mentioned fact and submits two variants for
consideration. The first variant envisages increased number of
permanent members by involving Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Egypt
and an African country with black population. According to the second
variant the Security Council becomes a three-level organ. The first
level are the current five permanent members, the second level ~V 7-8
~Ssemi-permanent~T members elected once in 5 years with a right to be
reelected. The third level is the non-permanent members that are
changed once in two years by the principle of regional
representation.

For Armenia the first variant is more preferable first of all because
thanks to the first variant friendly countries will enter the
Security Council. We have quite a lot of resources to cooperate with
Brazil where there is an influential Armenian community. India
opposes to Pakistan ~V the strategic partner of Azerbaijan. This
circumstance of course brings together Deli and Yerevan. As for
Egypt, it was perhaps the only Islamic country that supported Armenia
during consideration of the issue concerning ~Ssecurity zones~T around
Karabakh. Besides, quite a number of Armenians live in Egypt. German
parliament that is going to accept Armenian genocide can also partner
Armenia in concrete situations. Specifically, it is known that
official Berlin in every way intends to prevent military actions
against Iran by United States.

The second variant proposed by Anan has no bright prospects and may
bring to an unpredictable situation. This variant makes it easy for
Turkey and Pakistan to enter the Security Council as the two largest
Islamic non-Arabian countries. It should be mentioned that in the
first variant the Islamic world is represented in the Security
Council not by the ~SIslamic conference~T organization with which we
have tense relations but with the League of Arab countries with which
Yerevan productively cooperates.

The vote of Armenia is only one of 128 votes necessary to approve the
program of reforms. For the present there are serious doubts about
the approval of the first variant. The thing is that many influential
countries have pretensions against countries which Anan sees among
members of the Security Council: for instance USA and Italy against
Germany, China against Japan, Pakistan against India, Mexico and
Argentina against Brazil. Africans cannot decide who is going to
represent the ~Sblack continent~T ~V UAR, Nigeria or Kenya?

Another important point in the project submitted by Anan is the
decrease of the Commission on Human Rights. This initiative is again
out of our interests. As it is known, Armenia has been elected to the
53-state commission for two terms. This enabled us to gain certain
influence on large countries. Particularly, China had to pay
attention on us when the Commission considered their question. This
created a base for Armenian diplomacy for efficient cooperation with
countries with which we have few things in common. Their votes
however mean a lot. Taking into account the circumstance we can
suppose that Armenia should not welcome the idea of reduction of the
UN Commission on Human Rights. ~SPolishing~T of the program of reforms
on the level of representations of member-states will last till the
end of summer. The final text of the program should be ready before
the September summit for the approval of heads of states. From 2006
UN will start a new life. Will the world become more secure after
that? We never know…

22.03.2005, “PanARMENIAN Network” analytical department