Posted by News on August 25, 19100 at 22:28:09:
Global Groveling
Editorial Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2000
Diplomacy as done by the United Nations has often been that international
body's own worst enemy. The latest example is the U.N's shameless kowtow
to China in excluding the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet's
Buddhists and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, from the so-called Millennium
World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders in New York next
week.
More than 1,000 religious leaders from around the world are expected at the
three-day gathering. Although technically sponsored by private organizations,
the forum will be held under grandiose September 6-8 Millennium Summit.
There, more than 125 heads of state will adopt a Millennium Declaration,
projecting their global vision for the 21st century.
For the Dalai Lama, it's more of the usual U.N. myopia. Under similar
circumstances, he was sidelined from the 1993 U.N. World Conference on
Human Rights in Vienna, despite an official invitation from the host Austrian
government. The invitation provoked a threat from Chinese delegates that they
would walk out of the conference. That led to a last-minute sanction against
the Dalai Lama's attendance by then U.N. Secretary General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali. Such is the pedantic framework of the U.N., which, in
deference to authoritarian regimes, often constrains the very principles and
freedoms it claims to espouse as universal.
This round, the U.N. at first claimed its hands were tied because as a Security
Council member China wields veto power over invitations to U.N.
conferences. It then sought to shift the blame to the summit's organizers.
Besieged by protests, the U.N. then made an arrogant and ill-fated attempt to
look as if it had brokered a compromise. The U.N. invited the Dalai Lama to
speak on the last day of the conference - but at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
instead of the U.N General Assembly chamber.
The Dalai Lama declined this feeble proposal, but did so with the grace for
which he is so widely admired, saying he couldn't accept an invitation made out
of compulsion and that he wanted to avoid at all costs embarrassing individuals
or governments.
The exclusion of the Dalai Lama removes from the summit the most visible
sign of China's lingering problems in Tibet at a time when Beijing has become
increasingly defensive about its policies there. Two recent setbacks have
exposed its difficulties: the exodus in December to India of the Karmapa
Lama, a model monk Beijing was grooming to help legitimize its rule in Tibet;
and the World Bank's recent decision to withdraw from a controversial project
that would have moved 68,000 Chinese into lands that have been historically
Tibetan.
The U.N's pandering to China's cadres makes a mockery of next week's
millennial conclave in many ways. Religion in China is controlled by the state,
which is ruled by an atheistic Communist Party. Beijing will be sending a
delegation of party-vetted "religious leaders" to the summit, while back in China
the latest crackdown on religion rolls into its second year. In Tibet, the recent
campaign has focused anew on confiscating religious icons, including the Dalai
Lama's photograph, in house-to-house searches by police.
So far, U.S. Senator Jesse Helms and Reverend Desmond Tutu, the Nobel
laureate and former archbishop of Capetown, have spoken out loudest about
the U.N's spinelessness and China's censorships. From President Clinton's
Administration has come nothing more forceful than the squeak of State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who finally noted that the shunning
of the Dalai Lama at China's behest is "not the right decision, frankly."
With apologies and a proper invitation, even at this late date, U.N. General
Secretary Kofi Annan and his crew could conceivably salvage the dignity of
their conclave. But it would take backbone, and that, apparently, does not
figure in the U.N.'s vision of its own role for the new millennium.
==============================
Annan answers critics over exclusion of Dalai Lama
from religious summit
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 24 (AFP) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
said Thursday that the Dalai Lama had been excluded from a meeting of
spiritual leaders here next week because of the sensitivities of member states.
"Many people are understandly and deeply disappointed that the Dalai Lama
will not be here for the Religious Summit," Annan told reporters.
"But let me also say that this house is really a house for the member states and
their sensitivities matter," he said.
"This is an issue that the organisers of the meeting have known all along," he
said.
UN officials said the summit was organised, not by the United Nations itself,
but by a group of religious leaders who had asked permission to meet in the
UN General Assembly Hall.
More than 1,000 leaders representing 75 different faiths are expected to attend
the meeting, which opens on Monday and is scheduled to move to the Waldorf
Hotel in New York later in the week.
The meeting is one of several such "summits" in the week before the UN's
own Millennium gathering of heads of state and government.
One of the fiercest critics of the United Nations, US Senator Jesse Helms, said
last week that the world body had "chosen to appease the communist dictators"
in China by not inviting the Dalai Lama.
In a letter to the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke,
Helms said it was "ironic that one of the world's most brutal atheistic
dictatorships can dictate to the UN who can and who cannot participate in a
so-called world peace summit."
The letter was released by Helms' office in Washington.
Annan said "ever since I took over, I have tried to open up this house as much
as I can to all segments of civil society."
He added: "In any effort of this kind, you try to make progress, take progress
as you get it, and not hold out for the absolute best."
The fact that 1,000 religious leaders were meeting at the UN and praying for
peace was progress, he said.
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