Posted on 03/03/2005 8:46:32 AM PST by srm913
LONDON — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said today that the United Nations should scrap the Security Council and give its powers to the General Assembly if it ever hopes to become a truly democratic organization.
In a full-page advertisement in the Guardian newspaper, Gadhafi called the UN Security Council "an ugly, forceful, and horrible instrument of dictatorship — an executioner's whip with no appeal against its judgment, even if its judgment is unfair, biased and harmful."
The Security Council's five permanent members — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — each have the power to veto resolutions by voting no.
The council is also comprised of 10 non-permanent member countries elected to two-year terms. They have a vote but not veto power.
Gadhafi said the world is better represented by the 191-member UN General Assembly, but "it has no powers, no responsibilities and no respect."
He compared it to a "Hyde Park Speaker's Corner, a fantasy," and was quoted as saying that it is a waste of money for countries to send delegates to New York "to take part in its ridiculous funny act."
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is currently promoting major management and administrative reforms of the United Nations.
Countries such as Germany, Japan, India and Brazil also are trying to become permanent members of an expanded Security Council.
Gadhafi recently has won international acclaim for his steps to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction program and to open the country up to international inspections by U.S., British and UN arms monitors.
But since Gadhafi seized power in Libya in 1969, there have been no free-and-fair elections or significant political reforms there.
Stranger things have happened, I guess.
I say give it to them, too....AFTER we pull out!
What the heck difference will it do. Nothing will be done anyway. We should pull out of the UN.
He may be right. But would the United Kingdom's problems be best served by taking power away from the Crown and Parliament and giving it to the mob at Hyde Park's Speaker's Corner?
The fantasy is that all nations should have an equal voice in the affairs of the world, and that the U.N. should be a democracy.
With this statement: "Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said today that the United Nations should scrap the Security Council and give its powers to the General Assembly if it ever hopes to become a truly democratic organization." ?
First, how would anyone but India having an equal vote to China be remotely democratic?
Second, how can China having a vote be democratic?
Third, why would you want those under an autocratic regime which controls media to have democratic voice without having democratic access to information with which to make educated decisions?
This is base sophistry: It SOUNDS like thinking and principles.
Democracy. 4 wolves and a sheep, deciding what's for dinner.
No thanks, Muammar. . .
and call it the League of Nations...
There you go.
I guess he's right; after all, who would be a greater expert on the subject?
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