A UN Reform  proposal - Remove the Veto
   
That the  General Assembly confer upon itself the powers, both to
remove the veto from any of the permanent veto-holding SC members, and
to remove any of the 'permanent' members from the Security Council. This
would require a normal two-thirds majority vote

                                   Argument:
1.   UN Charter Article 18 (2) says the General Assembly can decide upon
'election of the non-permanent members of the Security Council.' This
might have been intended to imply, that it shall not have the ability to
elect or deselect permanent members, however it does not actually say
this.
2.   Article 6 states that a Member of the UN 'which has persistently
violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled
from the Organisation of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of
the Security Concil.'  Clearly the converse must also apply in order for
a system of world government to be workable: that a member can be
expelled from the Security council upon a recommendation of the General
Assembly. Lacking this, the UN is merely a despotic system of control of
weaker nations by the Big Five.
3. There does exist a permanent SC Member, presently dedicated to
Empire, Eternal War and the subjugating of small and helpless nations to
its merciless Will, so that it grows ever richer as they grow poorer - a
predator-nation in short, whose foreign policy stands and has done for
decades  in fundamental opposition to the principles of the UN Charter.
If member-states are not willing to use the UN to take collective action
in order to remedy this situation, then I suggest the UN folds itself up
and stops wasting our time. The present proposal is, I suggest, a
necessary first step enabling such action.
  4. The present proposal may violate the spirit and possibly the letter
of Article 25, in which UN Members 'agree to accept and carry out'
decisions of the Security Council' - as if Member States were mere
children and SC members the parents, who instructed them in what to do.
This, however, is precisely what is unacceptable in the present UN
setup. For world government to function, there must be a two-way
interaction, whereby maverick SC members, whose rulers have fallen into
the thrall of the arms industry, can be deselected by a General Assembly
vote.

Proposed by: Nicholas Kollerstrom     15 July 03

Dear Nick

Perhaps what we all want is for the UN to function according to its principles: maintaining international peace and security; achieving international co-operation;solving international disputes by peaceful means.

I think you are focussing on the key problems of the United Nations - the pernicious role of the US and the excessive power of the permanent members of the SC.

Danger

The attitude of the US is such that it may not take much for it to threaten to withdraw altogether, thus precipitating a crisis. So I think this needs to be anticipated: how could the UN carry on without it? According to UN rules it should have been expelled long ago (Article 6 - except that the SC veto could prevent it).

Veto

Expulsion from the SC

Permanent membership of the SC

Denis Halliday recommends that in order to get fairer representation of earth's people on the SC there should be permanent elected representatives of so far under-represented regions. He mentions Central and South America, Southern and SE Asia, Middle East, Sub-Sahara Africa. But why not go further? Scrap the present permanent five and have elected representatives for Western Europe, Eastern Europe, divide Asia in some way, and change Halliday's category slightly to join Central and North America - and so on taking account of populations to some extent.

Public awareness

I'll present a summary of Halliday's ideas soon, in the meantime we must use one of his ideas and bring a public awareness campaign to bear on the malfunctioning of the UN to try to bring it back on course

Best wishes

David Roberts, Legal action Against War dave@warpoetry.co.uk  16 July 2003