PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRIME MINISTER OF MALAYSIA

The United Nations must be democratized by a modified right of veto in the Security Council that would require negative votes by two permanent members and three rotating members to block a resolution, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said this afternoon at a Headquarters press conference.

While the modified veto power still would not make the United Nations democratic, he continued when asked to elaborate, it would be a first.  The United Nations would not be effective without that reform, and enlarging the Council in itself was not enough.  “You could have a hundred Council members and it would mean nothing if one of five members could veto what all the others wanted.”

The Prime Minister pointed out that the world did not offer a democratic milieu at the moment and the United Nations reflected that inequality.  The five permanent Council members professed to be democratic and they should recognize the will of the majority, he said.

Was the current atmosphere at the United Nations the worst he had ever seen it? a correspondent asked.  He replied that there had never been an instance when the Organization had been totally ignored, adding that regaining its legitimacy would be difficult.

Asked to rate the Organization’s performance in Iraq, Mr. Mahathir said it could not do much under the present circumstances because it had been sidelined.  Noting that the United Nations was unpopular with the Iraqi people because of the sanctions it had imposed on them, he said it had not approved the use of force against their country and could not therefore be blamed now as much as before.

In response to another question, he said Malaysian troops would not be deployed in Iraq unless such an operation was fully under the United Nations.

Asked how he saw Iraq’s future, he said many thought democracy solved all problems.  However, even in a democratic society there could be anarchy; some people thought they could use freedom in any way they liked.  Some people took to the streets to demonstrate, others took up arms and used them against each other or the government.  Iraq would not become a democracy overnight.  Its mix of Shiite and Sunni Muslims and Kurds would not accept a government imposed on them and it would be an unstable democracy.  Some cases called for authoritarian rule, Mr. Mahathir said, which had prompted some people to call him an authoritarian ruler though he’d been elected and was about to retire.

Nobody had liked Saddam Hussein but under his rule there had at least been stability in Iraq, he said.  People had known that as long as they did not cross the government they could go about their daily lives.  But in the face of weak governance and an inability to enforce the law, people could be killed by other groups.  Democracy was a gradual process, he reiterated, noting that it had taken Europeans 200 years to become democratic, yet, even so, it was not so long ago that women could not vote.

Asked about the Middle East, he said the solution lay in resolving the old European Jewish question.  There had been no problem between Arabs and Jews prior to the creation of Israel.  In fact, Jews had migrated to Arab countries after each pogrom in Europe.  The problem between Jews and Muslims had not been caused by religion but by territorial loss.  The Palestinian people had lost their land and had been expelled from their country, he added.

Why were Muslims in such a weak position now? a correspondent asked.  The Prime Minister said they were divided by their beliefs and their interpretation of Islam.  They were divided into States and when they formed political parties they were further divided.  While Muslims did not have military strength, they had other strengths.  It was a matter of deciding to come together to protect their interests.  They had not yet been able to do that and lack of unity had paralyzed them.  If the Organization of the Islamic Conference could come together on even one issue, it could have a great influence on the situation in Iraq.

Asked what had happened to the vitality of the Non-Aligned Movement, which Malaysia currently chairs, he said that once the cold war power blocs dissolved, many had thought the movement’s work had ended.  However, it was now revitalizing around other international issues, particularly the wide divide between rich and poor countries and disagreement with those who defined success to mean compliance.

Regarding the collapsed World Trade Organization meeting at Cancun, he said the developing countries had shown a newfound unity and that there would now be second thoughts about what had occurred at Cancun.

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