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Veto-holding Western countries use and abuse UN: Analyst

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has renewed the Islamic Republic’s call for reforms in the structure of the United Nations to provide for “a democratic and fair framework.”

“Effective steps must be taken toward reforming the structure of the UN in order to establish a democratic and fair framework in this organization,” Ahmadinejad said in a meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the sidelines of the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Press TV has interviewed Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center from New York to shed more light of the issue at hand.

She is joined by Eugene Dabbous, professor of the Notre Dame University from the Lebanese capital city of Beirut and Randy Short, member of the Dignity, Human Rights and Peace from Washington.

What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Sara, the thing is, the comments that we are hearing were made by various representatives from India, Brazil and the Iranian president as well, saying, suggesting that maybe the number of members of the UN Security Council should be increased.

At the same time the issue of reform is something that has been discussed by the United States itself because it has been saying that some members of the Security Council including Russia and China, it has been referring to, have, in the United States’ words, human rights issues themselves. So what kind of reform are we looking for when it comes to the structure of the Security Council?

Flounders: Well, from the very beginning the United Nations Security Council has been a completely unrepresentative body and the veto gives the US enormous leverage along with Britain and France who have used it again and again and it reflects the world as it existed under colonial domination, under enormous imperialist control at the end of World War II.

It is no longer a representative mechanism in anyway, and it never was, for resolving any problems and the very clearest example of that is the US wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan, completely illegal and yet continuing right on ahead with no way of ever bringing it up, of course, at the UN. [For instance,] the inability for years, more than 60 years, to address the problems of the Palestinian people [as the call was] blocked endlessly by the US in the Security Council.

So in every single way the UN Security Council has become a roadblock and at the same time it has sometimes become a vehicle for US sanctions and wars. We could see that in the destruction of Libya just last year and the no-fly-zone or under the years of sanctions on Iraq which led to the death of more than a million people.

So the UN Security Council itself is the biggest brake and that is what not only has to be reformed but totally and completely changed so that the people of the world really are representative.

The meeting in Tehran just less than a month ago [with] more than a hundred and twenty countries, not one of them permanent members of the UN Security Council, was a far more representative body.

Press TV: Sara Flounders, the thing is, would you go as far as saying that the United Nations has become a US body, so to speak, that is meant to pressure the United States enemies and to reward the United States allies and at the same time, for instance, when we are speaking about the Security Council, we have got a lot of condemnations by the United Nations on the use of drones as one example, but we do not see actions, do we?

Or when it comes to [Islamic Republic of] Iran’s complaints about Israel’s threats; we have got a lot of words there, but is it going to act on it? So would you go as far as saying that?

Flounders: Yes. I want to wholeheartedly agree with the previous speaker [Randy Short].

The US has never allowed and has no intention of allowing any international body to function in the interest of the world peace.

In every form, US corporate power is built on and based on the military corporations and the oil corporations. And endless war is what is in the interest of corporate power in the US.

They do not want an international body to deal with peace in any genuine way. So they use and abuse the UN and all of its many agencies, even the agencies that play an important humanitarian role. They use every single agency in the interest of their own power and they block any resolution of problems.

There is not one war that has ever been stopped by the UN Security Council. You cannot point to one example of the UN Security Council being an effective mechanism because again and again the US along with Britain and France block any effort for the resolution of a problem.

And they not only block the efforts, they even stop votes again and again. They abuse and use this international body and do everything they can, to totally wash away the General Assembly.

Once a year there are speeches, heads of states come, they make short addresses and other than that, the General Assembly, this international body has no leverage whatsoever.

All of the power exists within the Security Council of the United Nations and the US dominates that and they dominate it in the interest of corporate power.

It has nothing to do with democracy, it has nothing to do with the liberation of peoples, either here in the US or anywhere around the World.

And that is important to recognize when we say what should be the future of this body? What is its significance? Because, it is abused.

And the way it has blocked any resolution and it has been used at the same time. The US violates international law again and again and the drone attacks are the clearest example of an attack on the sovereignty of every country.

Every single day there are drone attacks in Pakistan without even a declaration of war on Pakistan.
There are drone attacks on Somalia and on Yemen, Sudan, the Philippines; countries we do not even know of, the US is carrying out drone attacks [in].

They are funding mercenaries, for example in Syria, today. All of this totally illegal and none of it is brought up in the UN Security Council because it is blocked by the US.

So this is not an effective vehicle for the people of the world. The addresses at this time are significant but mainly it has been a sounding board.

Press TV: Sara Flounders if you are asked what are the truly urgent changes that should be made now at the United Nations. What are they?

Flounders: Well, certainly the first one would be end of the veto power and this domination of the UN Security Council by the US, also by all of the countries, because it only acts as a block.

But really when you look at it, the US is today an empire in decline and decay.

They are unable to resolve any problem on a global scale and they are only attempting to do it through military means and through holding in place the status quo.

So that is why they are a brake on any reform, even totally reasonable proposals of the UN Security Council or any other international body.

They see it just as a way of trying, desperately, to hold the world in place and their dominant role which is sinking fast.

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