Global Policy Forum

By Benny Avni

The new American envoy, John Bolton, has startled diplomats here by suggesting, just as the Security Council was called on to save peacekeeping troops in East Africa threatened by actions of the Eritrean government, that the world body rethink the broader purpose of such missions. Rather than rubber-stamp the renewal of peacekeeping mandates, he said, in the future the council must evaluate each mission. He said costs associated with peacekeeping are among the most expensive items in the organization's budget.

His comments came after the United Nations grounded all its helicopters serving the peacekeeping operation on the border of Eritrea and Ethiopia. It was forced to do so after Eritrea ordered all U.N. reconnaissance missions along the border stopped. The grounding is expected to cripple the mission, which operates over a large territory. Only helicopters can maintain supply lines for the 3,000 peacekeepers in the area.

"Unlike death and taxes, peacekeeping missions should not be permanent," Mr. Bolton told his colleagues, according to several diplomats who were present at the closed-door session. The demand to stop helicopter flights, he said, should be used as "a pivot point" from which the council should contemplate ending the Eritrean-Ethiopian border dispute rather than keep an indefinite peacekeeping force there, he said.

Secretary-General Annan called an emergency Security Council session Tuesday night to address the situation in Eritrea, but Mr. Bolton spoke to the larger issue. His remarks carry a lot of weight: America, which is the largest contributor to the U.N. budget, with 22%, covers an even more substantial percentage of the $5 billion peacekeeping budget - 26.5%, or $1.2 billion a year. In some peacekeeping missions it contributes almost half of the annual budget. For example, America pays $190 million a year toward the $400 million mission in Congo.

Certain peacekeeping missions' reason for being has diminished over the years. The oldest existing U.N. peacekeeping post has been stationed in Jerusalem since 1948 to keep a ceasefire line that was defunct in 1967. A force now down to 45 troops has been patrolling the Indian-Pakistani border since 1949. Critics say that the modest force plays an insignificant role in maintaining peace between the two regional powerhouses, now equipped with nuclear weapons.

U.N. diplomats, however, are reluctant to consider scrapping such missions. "There were lots of violations along the border" with India along the years, Pakistan's ambassador, Munir Akram, told The New York Sun. Noting that a new cease-fire has been agreed to recently, and that either side might violate its terms, he added, "If there's no objective presence there to say who started it, I think there is possibility for mischief."

Others argue that the presence of U.N. peacekeepers is harmful. Two thousand troops were stationed in southern Lebanon in 1978 to ensure Israel's withdrawal from the area and the deployment of the Lebanese army there. Israel recently began to lobby to decrease the size of that force, known as UNIFIL, arguing that since the United Nations certified the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, the peacekeepers' mission creates the impression that the area does not require the presence of the Lebanese army.

A Jerusalem official told the Sun that UNIFIL posts near the Israeli border have been used to shelter Hezbollah terrorists after they shoot at Israeli towns across the border. The official, who requested anonymity, citing the delicate negotiations on UNIFIL, said that the Lebanese army uses the U.N. presence to avoid deploying its forces in the south and disarming Hezbollah, as demanded by the Security Council.

"The change in circumstances in Lebanon certainly leads to question the utility of UNIFIL," a State Department official, who also asked to remain unnamed, said. He also questioned the usefulness of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, where Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front have refused to sign an agreement brokered by a former Secretary of State, James Baker, and where 230 U.N. troops do little to keep the peace. Several other such U.N. missions have outlived their usefulness, the State Department official said, and are a "dead weight" on the U.N. budget.

The peacekeeping department received a lot of attention last year after reports of sexual abuse by troops in Congo and elsewhere surfaced. But the usefulness of certain missions has not been highlighted in the various reform plans offered at the United Nations and in Congress recently. Legislation that passed in the House of Representatives called for mandatory cuts in American contributions to the United Nations if the world body fails to reform in certain areas, including more supervision of troops. The legislation asked for review of peacekeeping missions, but not as part of the mandatory cuts in dues.

The peacekeeping department says the fate of each of its 23 operations is in the hands of the Security Council, which deliberates each mandate when it is up for renewal. "We have no fear of these discussions," an assistant secretary-general in the U.N. peacekeeping department, Jane Holl Lute, told the Sun. "We close peacekeeping missions all the time," she said, citing recent decisions to refocus the mandates of the missions in Sierra Leone and East Timor.

However, the 150 peacekeepers of the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization, stationed since 1948 in a Jerusalem mansion, are a sign that some might never be closed. UNTSO was created to maintain the truce agreement between Jordan and Israel. Along with several other Arab states, Jordan violated that truce in 1967, and as a result, Israel took control of the entire city. The peacekeepers remained.

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