UN used as rubber stamp

THE EDITOR: The United Nations is under scrutiny on many counts: 1) It has failed to heed the call by CARICOM to probe the circumstances under which Jean Bertrand Aristide was deposed as the Haitian President and exiled to the Central African Republic. 2) It is being used as a rubber stamp in the claim that Iraq under the deposed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. 3) The United Nations Human Rights Commission has tacitly given blessings to the atrocities in Western Sudan by allowing the election of a Sudanese representative. 4) The failure of the United Nations to prevent the crisis in Rwanda in 1994.

The trauma that resulted is still evident a decade after. The CARICOM heads of government have decided to use the Organisation of American States (OAS) as a recourse when it recognised the veto power of the USA and France on the United Nations Security Council. In a desperately vain bid to scuttle the OAS initiative the American Embassy in Port-of-Spain brought in a senior foreign affairs spin doctor named Mr Maistow. His role was to brow beat the Caribbean heads of governments into dropping the investigations into the Aristide affair. The crux of the matter is that duly elected governments are very concerned by the role of the George W Bush regime in putting those who do not tow the line out of commission.

JEFFREY M JOSEPH
Fyzabad