Yogi
09-16-2005, 10:56 PM
UNITED NATIONS (CP) - Paul Martin was casting stones from a glass podium, critics said Friday after the prime minister delivered a scathing critique of United Nations' failures.
Martin, among the last of the 150-plus world leaders to speak at the UN's 60th anniversary world summit, said the international community's penchant for "empty rhetoric" must be replaced by concrete results and "effective, pragmatic multilateralism."
But he shied away from highlighting one of the summit's central failures - that of increasing global development aid - and painted an optimistic picture of looming negotiations on climate change in Montreal, despite evidence to contrary.
Critics suggested Canada will have to put up or shut up on both issues.
"Clearly the prime minister has just come up empty," said Gerry Barr, head of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation and the co-chair of the Make Poverty History Campaign.
"Canada is on the hook to deliver some goods" in Montreal, added Andrew Deutz, the lead negotiator on climate change for the IUCN, the World Conservation Union, which has observer status at the UN.
While many world leaders spoke out during the three-day summit about the lack of progress on reforms to the UN's management and mandate, Martin was among the most trenchant.
The summit, billed in advance by Secretary General Kofi Annan as a turning point for the institution, instead ran into a brick wall of competing interests.
"If the United Nations is to work, we know what we have to do, and we also know we are not doing nearly well enough . . ." Martin said.
"Make no mistake: the UN needs reform."
He pilloried the absence of Security Council reform: "Too often we have debated the finer points of language while innocent people continue to die."
He earned rare applause in the assembly chamber when he expressed Canada's "profound disappointment" that the UN's dysfunctional human rights commission was not redesigned.
He chided rich countries for selling weapons to the poor and poor countries for spending more on their military than their social safety nets.
And Martin chastised international economic development, calling the global record "far from brilliant" but then left out two paragraphs from his prepared text that stated donor countries must do more.
Barr, the poverty activist, said Martin's speech was "all attitudinal and so empty of action. It was all just pretty, nicely crafted notions."
And while the prime minister did not come in for direct criticism on the subject of climate change, others gave a far different picture of developments at the summit than the official Canadian line.
Norway's foreign minister called the outcome document "disappointingly weak on issues related to the environment and climate. We regret that it was not possible to agree on stronger wording with regard to the monitoring of commitments."
Friends of the Earth International issued a release saying world leaders failed on climate change.
"This summit was a golden opportunity for the UN to commit resources to and support some of the world's poorest countries who will face the harshest impacts of the world's changing climate," the group said.
Deutz, in an interview, said climate change was the "single most contentious issue" in environmental discussions at the UN over the past two weeks. Officials were deadlocked as late as midnight Monday, before a compromise was pitched at 1 a.m. on the eve of the summit.
"In the end it was a lowest common denominator proposal," said Deutz, adding the language actually marks a step backward from weak commitments made at a G8 summit in Scotland.
The silver lining, he added, is that UN negotiators agreed to at least have a mandate at the Montreal conference to look beyond the Kyoto Protocol's 2012 deadline for reducing greenhouse gases.
That was the point stressed by Martin in his speech.
The summit, Nov. 28 to Dec. 9, "will initiate discussions to achieve a truly global and inclusive regime to achieve deep and genuine reductions of greenhouse gas emissions," said Martin.
But first, in keeping with the speech's tenor, he took a swipe at Kyoto nay-sayers.
"Climate change is real and the world must act on it," Martin said, pausing to repeat the line in both English and French.
"Human activity is a defining cause, and the world must act on it."
At a later news conference, the prime minister bristled at his critics.
Canada will not set long-range aid targets, such as the Canadian-inspired goal of 0.7 per cent of GDP, because short-range targets are more enforceable, said Martin.
The summit's focus was not climate change, said Martin, adding that despite this, he promoted the Montreal conference with every leader he met.
He's right in many instances here, but why the tough talk now?
Never mind...... he's running for re-election next spring :hst:
Martin, among the last of the 150-plus world leaders to speak at the UN's 60th anniversary world summit, said the international community's penchant for "empty rhetoric" must be replaced by concrete results and "effective, pragmatic multilateralism."
But he shied away from highlighting one of the summit's central failures - that of increasing global development aid - and painted an optimistic picture of looming negotiations on climate change in Montreal, despite evidence to contrary.
Critics suggested Canada will have to put up or shut up on both issues.
"Clearly the prime minister has just come up empty," said Gerry Barr, head of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation and the co-chair of the Make Poverty History Campaign.
"Canada is on the hook to deliver some goods" in Montreal, added Andrew Deutz, the lead negotiator on climate change for the IUCN, the World Conservation Union, which has observer status at the UN.
While many world leaders spoke out during the three-day summit about the lack of progress on reforms to the UN's management and mandate, Martin was among the most trenchant.
The summit, billed in advance by Secretary General Kofi Annan as a turning point for the institution, instead ran into a brick wall of competing interests.
"If the United Nations is to work, we know what we have to do, and we also know we are not doing nearly well enough . . ." Martin said.
"Make no mistake: the UN needs reform."
He pilloried the absence of Security Council reform: "Too often we have debated the finer points of language while innocent people continue to die."
He earned rare applause in the assembly chamber when he expressed Canada's "profound disappointment" that the UN's dysfunctional human rights commission was not redesigned.
He chided rich countries for selling weapons to the poor and poor countries for spending more on their military than their social safety nets.
And Martin chastised international economic development, calling the global record "far from brilliant" but then left out two paragraphs from his prepared text that stated donor countries must do more.
Barr, the poverty activist, said Martin's speech was "all attitudinal and so empty of action. It was all just pretty, nicely crafted notions."
And while the prime minister did not come in for direct criticism on the subject of climate change, others gave a far different picture of developments at the summit than the official Canadian line.
Norway's foreign minister called the outcome document "disappointingly weak on issues related to the environment and climate. We regret that it was not possible to agree on stronger wording with regard to the monitoring of commitments."
Friends of the Earth International issued a release saying world leaders failed on climate change.
"This summit was a golden opportunity for the UN to commit resources to and support some of the world's poorest countries who will face the harshest impacts of the world's changing climate," the group said.
Deutz, in an interview, said climate change was the "single most contentious issue" in environmental discussions at the UN over the past two weeks. Officials were deadlocked as late as midnight Monday, before a compromise was pitched at 1 a.m. on the eve of the summit.
"In the end it was a lowest common denominator proposal," said Deutz, adding the language actually marks a step backward from weak commitments made at a G8 summit in Scotland.
The silver lining, he added, is that UN negotiators agreed to at least have a mandate at the Montreal conference to look beyond the Kyoto Protocol's 2012 deadline for reducing greenhouse gases.
That was the point stressed by Martin in his speech.
The summit, Nov. 28 to Dec. 9, "will initiate discussions to achieve a truly global and inclusive regime to achieve deep and genuine reductions of greenhouse gas emissions," said Martin.
But first, in keeping with the speech's tenor, he took a swipe at Kyoto nay-sayers.
"Climate change is real and the world must act on it," Martin said, pausing to repeat the line in both English and French.
"Human activity is a defining cause, and the world must act on it."
At a later news conference, the prime minister bristled at his critics.
Canada will not set long-range aid targets, such as the Canadian-inspired goal of 0.7 per cent of GDP, because short-range targets are more enforceable, said Martin.
The summit's focus was not climate change, said Martin, adding that despite this, he promoted the Montreal conference with every leader he met.
He's right in many instances here, but why the tough talk now?
Never mind...... he's running for re-election next spring :hst: