Thinking Aloud.

Guido de Marco of Malta

Should the General Assembly President Be Included in Security Council Deliberations on Issues of Peace and Security?

In the course of a meeting with the Joint Coordinating Committee of the Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement, Mr. Didier Opertti, President of the fifty-third (1998-1999) session of the General Assembly, suggested that the General Assembly President should be included, ex officio, as an observer in all deliberations of the Security Council on issues affecting international peace and security. Three former Presidents of the Assembly responded to the UN Chronicle's invitation to share their views on this idea.

To counter the oft-raised criticism at the Organization, one must always ask the question as to what the world would be like without a United Nations. The answer, I suspect. would be that the world would be quite different: international relations would not function with the same degree of cooperation as it does today; international relations would not reflect the universality so unique to the United Nations.

I was honoured to serve as President of the General Assembly during its forty-fifth session. This was not only a unique time in the history of world politics, but also in that of the United Nations. It was a session which was characterized by deep changes after the end of the cold war, the first post-cold-war conflict with the invasion of Kuwait and the call for a United Nations which would meet more forcefully the aspirations of the peoples it represented. The Agenda for Peace and indeed the Agenda for Development were attempts to meet such challenges which were ushered in with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The pictures of the dismantling of the bricks dividing the Brandenburg gate were not half as forceful as the cries for freedom, democracy and dignity which preceded the event. The call for development and freedom from want today are reminiscent of the force which brought down the Wall; let us hope that amidst such cries we do not allow the bricks of deprivation to build a curtain--the poverty curtain--which threatens to be even more cruel and threatening than its predecessor.

At the core of all this is the centrality of the United Nations. Through its General Assembly, there is the inherent capability for the world community to address and meet challenges. For it is through this body and its global representation that we have an instrument able to trace patterns for future cooperation...