Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
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March 12-16, 2001 - Global Policy Forum - Email 'Listserv' News
GPF List-Serv
March 12-16, 2001Greetings from GPF !
This week saw the withdrawal of many foreign troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo, following the disengagement deadline of March 26th set by the Security Council. We also have an article which describes the situation in DRC in light of divergent western interests, one being US oil companies and their plans for the African continent.
In Sierra Leone, UN peacekeepers have moved into minor strategic territories under RUF control, a test before further deployment into the diamond mining areas.
On Iraq, we have posted a commentary by Institute of Policy Studies expert Phyllis Bennis on the emerging Bush administration strategy toward Iraq, including the differences between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney. Also this week, the US and UK want to set up a UN panel to monitor malfeasance in the Oil-for-Food program, an idea they will bring next week in the Security Council's Iraq sanctions committee.
John Negroponte's appointment as US ambassador to the UN has still not been confirmed by the Senate - and in the meanwhile the media continue to explore his history, particularly his role as ambassador to Honduras during a period of grave human rights abuses.
There is already talk of candidates for the 2002-03 Security Council seats. Syria has the backing of most of Middle Eastern and Western countries. Israel has said that Syria should be excluded because it is occupying another country, a not unreasonable argument, but a bit surprising when coming from another occupier.
We have six new tables and graphs on transnational corporations and mergers. One can easily see the trend of increasing merger deals as 23 of the 25 largest crossborder merger and acquisition deals in history were completed in the last four years.
As the US stock market heads into the tank, we expect to hear fewer solemn pronouncements about how the "new economy" has changed the rules and opened an era of endless prosperity. With NASDAQ index technology stocks now priced just a third the level they had reached a year ago and still heading south, many fortunes have vanished as swiftly as they appeared and the old unpleasant boom-and-bust capitalism has again reappeared in the United States. Will this economic earthquake energize the UN conference on Financing for Development and provide new momentum for rules and regulations in the global market place? Perhaps this will be an opportune moment to act on serious reform or even long-past-due systemic change of a more radical variety.
Here are this week's links:
