UN gears for June economic crisis session

Special Report:Global Financial Crisis

by William M. Reilly

UNITED NATIONS, April 14 (Xinhua) -- President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday said preparations for the June summit to assess the impact of the global economic crisis on developing countries was going ahead despite attempts by certain unnamed nations to lower the scope and profile of the sessions.

The financial crisis, "worse than the Great Depression" of 1929"is affecting the entire world and was brought about mainly as a result of social irresponsibility, greed -- insatiable greed ¨C on the part of a few countries" while "the vast majority that had nothing to do with that were paying the heaviest price," said the former Nicaraguan foreign minister.

While not naming the countries in both cases, d'Escoto said they were the usual countries attempting to "control" the United Nations.

The General Assembly agreed last week to convene a high-level conference on the impact of the crisis on development, scheduled to be held from June 1 to 3.

D'Escoto told reporters at UN World Headquarters in New York that the conclave "will be most important in the history of the United Nations."

Only on Tuesday the UN Secretariat had finished translating modalities on the three days of meetings and sent them to member states, so the GA president begged off on naming the number or names of heads of state who will be participating in the conclave.

The enabling GA resolution calls on member states to agree on a concise outcome document based on a draft to be prepared by d'Escoto through an open, transparent and inclusive process led by UN member states.

D'Escoto called the summit "the G192," to reflect the total number of UN member states, as opposed to the recent G20 meeting of 20 governments in London.

The GA president said, "It should be clear this is not one meeting. This is the beginning of a process that will take longer, take many more meetings, but unlike other meetings that say we will follow up in six years, and so on, we can not afford that luxury. This is an emergency situation. The world will be looking at us."

The first meeting will deal with topics requiring immediate action while other discussions will involve "laying foundations for the economic and financial architecture" of the future, he said.

The future architecture is expected to include consideration of a move away from the U.S. dollar as the currency of choice for international reserves.

"Many many countries trusted the dollar because they (the United States and allies) preached economic restructuring and fiscal responsibility but now we find out they had the least of that, our dear host country (the United States)," d'Escoto said, adding that "it allowed the United States to go ahead and print" money.

"We have to make sure we have a more stable world economy," he said. "That was one of the fundamental purposes when the United Nations was founded."

The GA president pointed out that while the UN charter seeks the end of the scourge of war it also seeks guaranteed peace and security by strengthening the economy of the world.

"We must, all of us, I believe, collectively assume responsibility," he said. "I don't want to waste time finger pointing. We are all, in one degree or another, responsible and we must all work together in good faith to try to restructure."

Ambassador Jorge Valero of Venezuela, who spoke after the General Assembly adopted the resolution enabling the upcoming meeting, said the meeting was first proposed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and later supported by the Group of 77 and China, a caucus of about 130 developing countries. Valero made the proposal at the Doha Conference on Financing for Development in November 2008.

It suggested the international community develop regional monetary reserves based on a system of regional special drawing rights. Another suggestion was that it eliminate the dollar reserve, which he said would prevent the United States "Empire" from "financing its deficits through the issuance of new dollar bills."

D'Escoto said the facilitators for the June meeting, ambassadors Camillo Gonsalves of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Frank Majoor of the Netherlands, were allowing member states to lead the sessions to a mutually agreed outcome.

D'Escoto, a Roman Catholic priest, said he was about to begin a series of visits to Latin America, Asia and Europe to further promote the meeting.

"I am very happy and praying very hard for the success of this meeting," he said. "The fundamental purpose of my trip will be to explain how it is going and how important it is to participate because there is no exclusion" of countries from the sessions.