UNITED NATIONS

The United Nation's 50th
anniversary celebrations
in New York (October 2224) were a time of reckoning. Member nations
faced the stark reality of
a financially straitened UN - a total of
US $3.3 billion is owed by all countries
but one, America being the biggest defaulter. Washington's arrears amount to
US $11.4bllllon, or nearly a third of the UN's
combined budget of US $4.5 billion. In an
oblique but hard hitting attack on the US's
failure to cough up its dues, British prime
Minister John Major suggested that there
should be no "representation without
taxation."

Another point of concern was the
unrepresentative nature of the Security
Council. Heads ofthe smaller nations
demanded a stronger voice in UN deliberations and a reduction in the veto rights of
the five permanent members of the
Security Council. Though US, Britain and
France have given a call for the inclusion of
Germany and Japan in the Council, poorer
nations are far from happy. But this still
excludes the South from what Zambia's
President Frederick ChIluba termed the
"sanctuary of the holy of holies."