Martin lashes UN for ‘ empty rhetoric’

PM reacts as leaders fail to agree on most reforms

UNITED NATIONS

• Prime Minister Paul Martin gave a scathing assessment of the United Nations yesterday, telling world leaders it was “too often” filled with “empty rhetoric,” but also saying there is no alternative to the world body.

Addressing the General Assembly at the UN’s 60th anniversary summit, Mr. Martin appealed to leaders to “rise above narrow national interests” and reinvent the organization so success is measured in terms of action and not promises.

“Canada cannot conceive of a world succeeding without the United Nations,” he said. “But make no mistake: The UN needs reform.”

But at a news conference later, he sidestepped a question about how long Canada would maintain its confidence in the UN if reform remains elusive, and if the world body fails to prevent future genocide as it did with past mass slaughters in Cambodia, Rwanda, the Balkans and Sudan’s Darfur.

“Failure to reform the United Nations is not an option,” he said.

UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan chastised world leaders at Wednesday’s opening of the summit after they rejected many of his management-reform proposals and failed to agree to a global deal on development, security and human rights.

Mr. Martin focused on the same issues, warning world leaders they had missed a historic opportunity to transform the UN from a talking shop that is slow to react to one that effectively tackles global problems.

“ The status quo and too- oftenempty rhetoric must make way here for a new and pragmatic multilateralism measured by concrete results, not simply by promises,” he said.