THE UN: Ireland's Ambassador to the UN has outlined the approach we have taken to various recent world crises, writes Conor O'Clery, North America Editor.
At 1.52 p.m. on Sunday, October 7th, 2001, UN Secretary General Mr Kofi Annan rang Ireland's UN Ambassador, Mr Richard Ryan, at his upper east side apartment and told him that, in two hours, the US and the UK would begin a military strike against Afghanistan.
"Over to you, Richard," Mr Annan said. Thus began one of Ireland's closest involvements in UN Security Council activities in the turbulent post-9/11 period. Ireland, which held the rotating presidency of the Council, successfully urged an initially reluctant United States, and its coalition partners aiming to remove the Taliban from power, to come in to the Council the following day, Mr Ryan disclosed yesterday.
That day, Ireland persuaded the coalition partners "to centralise the UN system and the Security Council on the ramifications of this action", rather than take the easier option of merely informing the Council in writing of their action.
Over the subsequent months, Ireland argued strongly that humanitarian and human rights concerns should shape the engagement in Afghanistan. "I think we have had a measurable impact here," said Mr Ryan, in an address at the University of St Thomas, in St Paul, Minnesota on the theme of "Ireland on the World Stage".
He said that the November 8th, 2002 adoption of Resolution 1441 renewing weapons inspections in Iraq followed two months of intense negotiation. During it, the US wanted a resolution that did not tie its hands. Other countries wanted a resolution that did not undermine the system of collective security in the UN Charter and in international law.
Ireland hoped that, in this way, conflict could be avoided "and we saw this as a resolution for peace, not war", Mr Ryan said. Ireland considered "it was absolutely compatible with the UN Charter for the Security Council to pursue an active disarmament policy, backed up by the threat of force, to secure the implementation of Iraq's obligations under its resolution."
Crucially, the resolution "made it perfectly clear that the consequences would be serious". The Iraqi regime prevaricated, and its co-operation with weapons inspectors "fell far short of that demanded by Resolution 1441, particularly in the failure to provide a full and verifiable account of its weapons of mass destruction programmes", Mr Ryan said.
"Meanwhile, the military build-up around Iraq, which was of course crucial to making Saddam and his regime take Resolution 1441 sufficiently seriously, was locked into a time frame, which became a real problem for coalition military planners."
Serious differences among Council members arose over evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme and the level of threat to international peace and stability, he said. This opened "deep fissures" that had not yet closed. Mr Ryan said he believed there was no division now regarding objectives in the area of the proliferation of WMD around the world. The differences lay in the means to achieve those objectives.
"Ireland would not like to see the Security Council, or any individual UN member-states, taking an à la carte approach on which of its decisions should be implemented in full and which should not be," he said.
"The Middle East is a glaring example of where many Security Council resolutions have been pretty much ignored."
Mr Ryan also detailed the case of Angola as an example of one world crisis where Ireland had made a difference during its 2000 to 2002 spell on the Council.
In 1998, the Security Council had introduced severe sanctions against UNITA - once backed by the US but defeated in elections - which had taken control of rich Kimberlyte diamond mines in Angola and was trading them internationally for weapons and material.
The Council's sanction committee did little, however, until Canada took over the chair in 1999. Ireland succeeded Canada in 2001, when the sanctions were starting to bite. Mr Ryan said he decided to maintain unrelenting pressure on UNITA. He travelled to 11 countries, including the Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania.
"On behalf of the Security Council, I delivered a hard message at government level in each case that any renewal of trafficking - or 'blind-eye' tolerance of trafficking - in weapons, dealing in conflict diamonds, or providing other elements of support for UNITA would meet assured, very public condemnation from the Council."
From January 2001 to February 2002, UNITA saw the Council's net close in. Its forces were debilitated and encircled, and UNITA's leader, Mr Jonas Savimbi, was killed by Angolan armed forces. UNITA subsequently frankly admitted its collapse had been due to the rigorous implementation of Security Council sanctions, Mr Ryan said.
In one of his last votes on the Security Council, on December 9th, 2002, Mr Ryan "had the real pleasure" of voting with other members to terminate the sanctions.
Mr Ryan said Ireland favoured reform of the Security Council "whose current composition is a clear cold reflection of world power in the immediate aftermath of the second World War".
This meant enlarging the Council's membership and reviewing the role of permanent members and veto powers. Ireland was a "convinced supporter of multilateralism", he said, not just because the alternative contained "the seeds of chaos", but because only through multilateralism could the UN ensure "that common threats and challenges receive a common response".