World poverty
Small talk at the UN
Malcolm Rutherford
New York As the Chinese Minister for Foreign Trade, Mr Li Chiang, remarked the other day: "The current international situation is characterised by great disorder under heaven, and the situation is excellent." Mr Li was addressing the seventh special session of the United Nations General Assembly called by the 'third world' to consider the question of "development and international economic co-operation." He was right about the current disorder, and may even have been right about the better prospects, though not necessarily from a Chinese point of view.
For the past two weeks, the UN has been trying to agree on an agenda for international economic reform or, more pretentiously, a and sometimes even more pretentiously the new international economic order. In very simple terms that means a transfer of resources from the rich countries to the poor, preferably in the context of an expanding world economy. In fact, however, the special session has been about several other things as well. These include the future of the UN itself, the struggle for the leadership of the third world and the credibility of United States foreign policy, the current world recession and the price of oil.
To take the UN first: The theory runs that the subjects which occupied the organisation for the first thirty years of its existence are now more or less dead. These were colonialism and East-West relations. Colonialism is a dead issue because almost all the countries who wanted it, as well as some of those who did not, have been granted independence. East-West relations still leave something to be desired, but it is an era of detente and negotiations are being pursued through other fora: for example, the mutual and balanced force reduction talks (MBFR) which resume nect week in Vienna and the strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) between the Americans and the Russians. Yet, the theory goes on, over the years the world has changed in other ways too. The most important international subjects have become the gap between rich and poor, or economic relations between north and south. If the UN, as the most favoured forum of the third world, can become the launching ground for reform here, it will have a brilliant new future. If not, it will be condemned to become ever more the ineffective talking shop which many people already think it is.
One of the problems, however, is that there is not the slightest chance of world economic reform without the active participation of the US, and the US does not like the UN. Or at least it did not until two weeks ago when, in the absence of Dr Henry Kissinger in the Middle East, the UN Ambassador to the UN, Mr Daniel Patrick Moynihan, delivered the American speech on the opening day of the special session. It was an amazing performance. No one had been told in advance, but here quite suddenly was an official American statement which appeared to offer many of the things for which the third world has long been clamouring. There was an American promise to participate in commodity agreements, to seek. the creation of new consumer-producer forums for every important commodity, to help in the transfer of resources from the rich to the poor countries and to support schemes for the stabilisation of third world foreign exchange earnings.
If the third world was surprised, so were the Europeans who had no idea that US thinking had moved so far in this direction. As one Common Market diplomat remarked: "The Americans have restaked their claim to world leadership, but don't know how to follow it up." Of the truth of the first part of that statement there could be no doubt. The Chinese and the Russians and their friends (collectively known as the centrally planned economies) account for only about five per cent of third world trade between them. They have spent the special session publicly quarrelling. To a debate on world economic reform they are almost irrelevant and most of the third world has come to recognise this. One Soviet delegate was actually heard to say that the reason the third world was poor was because its people didn't work — "they should be like us and make a revolution with blood, sweat and tears." Thus the Americans had the leadership for the taking. But there was a lacuna in the American speech which justified the doubts about the follow up. This was that although the text contained radical proposals, it made no mention of UN institutions such as UNCTAD (The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) where the detailed negotiations on reform would have to be pursued. It also studiously avoided the use of third world language and it was quite impossible, because of the difference in presentation, to sit down and discuss the American proposals side by side with the detailed working papers by the Group of Seventy-Seven developing countries and the European Community.
One week later, however, the Americans appeared to pull off another coup by subniitting a document of their own entitled 'An informal, workingpaper for negotiating purposes.' It was another surprise. Not only did it name the relevant UN institutions, it gave them full support and, in content, it was even more radical than the original speech. For instance, it seemed to accept the principle of indexation or tying the price of third world commodity exports to the price of their manufactured imports, which has long been one of the Group of Seventy-Seven's basic demands, but was anathema to most developed countries. It meant, or should have done, that the special session could study the three documents (the seventy-seven paper:, the European and the American) together with the aim of producing a single text.
The trouble was that the American paper was also a surprise to the US Treasury, which had read the draft in a hurry without understanding the implications. It turned out not to represent the official US position, but was intended as a synthesis of the views of the conference. This led to some confusion and the Americans have spent much of the past few days retreating from positions in their own working paper, presumably as the Treasury seeks to re-assert its belief in the free market economy. The deadline for the closing of the special session passed last Friday with small groups still deep in discussion. So it has continued day and night throughout the weekend and never since the time of Hungary and Suez has the UN known a weekend like it.
Lest this seem farcical, it should be remembered that for the developed countries the special session has another serious purpose, even if it is rarely mentioned in public. On September 24 the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meets at ministerial level in Vienna to consider the next increase in oil prices. One of the aims of the developed countries at the special session is to reach an international consensus on the agenda for world economic reform which would be sufficiently pleasing to the oil producing countries to persuade them to keep the oil price increase relatively modest and certainly not to adopt full-scale indexation. On the other hand, if die agenda appears too generous to the third world, the oil producers may feel they can get away with a relatively high increase in oil prices because the non-oil developing countries, who are the principal victims of rising oil prices, will be cushioned by the prospect of economic reform and greater aid.
If there is no agreement in New York and the oil prices go up sharply, the chances for the resumption of the consumer-producer dialogue in Paris next month, which should have built on the special session decisions, are dim. Not only the third world but also the US will have missed an opportunity. •
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