Redan år 2007 deklarerade Ban Ki-Moon då han besökte NATO att de hade samma mål och båda var fast beslutna om att arbeta nära varandra. Men FN stadgar däremot att krig i framtiden skall avskaffas
Detta utgör deklarationens text. Efter det vill Transnational Foundations styrelse ställa några viktiga frågor som reflekterar deras djupa oro över det sätt som FN uppträtt vid denna tidpunkt i historien, då FN mer än någonsin som sin högsta prioritet måste hålla fast vid sina mål om en total och allmän nedrustning och förbudet mot kärnvapen .
1. According to the UN Charter, Article 100, the UN Secretary-General is the custodian of the UN’s integrity and receive no instructions from any state or authority but serve only the UN
Q: Does this agreement increase the SG¹s opportunities to do so and does it strengthen the credibility of that provision in the future?
2. NATO is a nuclear-based military alliance upholding the right to use nuclear weapons as the first response even against a conventional attack.
Q: Is the choice of NATO compatible with Article 1 of the UNCharter which states that peace shall be brought about by peaceful means? Why then have other regional organisations that do work with civilian means – like the OSCE or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – not been offered a similar cooperative status?
3. NATOs Washington Agreement of 1999 aligns itself closely with the UN Charter. However, it no longer refers to the overarching authority of the UN Security Council; rather it brings into the purview of NATO the right to intervene when faced with what NATO calls new risks such as ’environment, insufficient reforms, uncontrollable movements of large numbers of people’ and most significantly ‘interruption of vital resources’.
Thus, it can be doubted whether NATO still adheres to its own Article 1 which recognizes the supremacy of Article 51 of the UN Charter on member states’ right to self-defence. This UN-NATO Declaration’s list and formulations of areas in which UN-NATO co-operation can take place are quite sweeping and general. It should be seen in the light of the seemingly ever-expanding roles NATO deems legitimate for itself.
Q: Given the special status NATO now acquires through this Agreement, how likely is it that the UN SG and Security Council – where 3 of the 5 permanent seats are held by NATO members - will
a) Be able to uphold the necessary distinctions between NATO actions and UN actions?
b) Bring up possible future breaches of international law by NATO?
c) Be able to work credibly for UN general and complete disarmament and nuclear abolition?
4: The two UN & NATO SGs seem to sign as partners of equal standing. The wording of the agreement is such that NATO would be free to take actions as it wishes, even to adopt measures of aggressive warfare. Statements at recent Munich NATO conferences seem to confirm this.
Q: NATO must be held accountable to the UN Charter and other international law norms. Does this UNDeclaration make that clear? To whom will NATO be accountable?
5. NATO bombed Serbia/Kosovo in 1999 without a UN Security Council mandate.
Q: Independent of the views one may have of that action and given leading NATO members’ deficient respect for international law and the UN Charter, is NATO an appropriate organization to be rewarded by the UN with such special status?
6. It is mentioned that the NATO-UN Agreement is rooted in the actions taken during the wars in Bosnia-Hercegovina. If anything, however, that crisis in Bosnia showed that peace-keeping and peace-enforcement can not be mixed and that UN member states had given the UN far too few resources to succeed with their mandate.
Q: Is this Agreement signaling that the members of the UN and NATO consider the handling of Bosnia a model and will continue with the same mix of roles and unbalanced resource allocations?
7. NATO countries are, these very months, engaged in various very sensitive issues – sensitive also among the Security Council members – such as the Georgia Crisis, the Ballistic Missile Defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, further NATO expansion (Georgia & Ukraine) and intensifying problems in Afghanistan, where both organisations are involved.
Q: Is the UN SG’s signature an example of good timing and will he, in the light of the above, now submit the Declaration to the Security Council for discussion and approval?
8. The UN has 192 members NATO has 26 member states but stands for over 70% of the world’s military expenditures.
Q: Does the SG expect that the majority of the UN member states will support this agreement between the secretariats of the United Nations and a military alliance?
9. The spirit of the UN is supposed to be dialogue, worldwide consultation and the common good of humankind. Yet this Agreement has been kept secret and not posted on the UN homepage.
Q: Is the Agreement itself and the way it has been concluded between two individuals not likely to give the world the impression that this UN HQ is now a place for deals kept in the dark and, thus, even further undermine the hopes shared by citizens around the world for democracy and transparency?”
December 3, 2008 The Board of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF Lund, Swe
