Security Council

NEW YORK -- The refusal of the U.N. Security Council to endorse President Bush's invasion of Iraq has focused once again on the council itself, long criticized as unreflective of the world power equation and of the emergence of the Third World of underdeveloped states. The award in 1945 of permanent council seats to the United States, Britain, France, Russia (as the Soviet Union) and China took note of the realities at the end of World War II, with a gesture toward liberated France and its towering leader, Gen. Charles de Gaulle.

After months of lobbying by the U.S. for additional sanctions against Iran, the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday finally passed, by a vote of 12 to 2 (with one abstention), a package of measures aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear program. But don't hold your breath waiting for Iran to start dismantling its reactors and centrifuges under international pressure. As loath as we are to agree with anything Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says, his description of the U.N. sanctions meaning as much to that country as "used napkins that need to be thrown in the garbage can" sounds about right.

WASHINGTON -- After a weeklong power struggle between the United States and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved last night a resolution condemning Israel and endorsing a U.N. mission on the safety of Palestinians in the occupied territories, diplomats said.The document condemns "especially" acts of violence by Israeli security forces that led to 19 Palestinian deaths on Jerusalem's Temple Mount Monday after a rock-throwing barrage on Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall.

Pakistan took its first concrete step toward making good on its promise to cooperate fully in prosecuting those responsible for last month's terrorist attack in Mumbai. Yesterday, Pakistani troops raided a training camp run by the Islamist extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and arrested Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, whom India accuses of having masterminded the attacks. With the suspected militant in custody, however, Pakistan now faces the problem of what to do with him. India wants to put him on trial, though the countries have no extradition treaty and handing him over could provoke a backlash at home against Pakistan's fragile democratic government.

WASHINGTON -- The United Nations Security Council unanimously criticized Israel last night, saying it "deplores" Israeli refusal to receive a mission from the secretary-general to investigate the Oct. 8 Temple Mount killings and the safety of Palestinians in the occupied territories.The new action, coming 12 days after the council condemned Israeli authorities in connection with the killings, deepened the Jewish state's rift with the world body and highlighted its increasingly difficult relations with the Bush administration.

WASHINGTON -- New evidence of an Iraqi military buildup has helped the United States beat back an effort to lift United Nations sanctions against Baghdad, senior administration officials said yesterday.They said the Clinton administration had shared intelligence data, including satellite photos, with other Security Council members to show that President Saddam Hussein has been rebuilding factories that could produce chemical weapons or missiles as well as integrating stolen Kuwaiti missiles and armored vehicles into the Iraqi army.

TOKYO -- Japan's Foreign Minister Yohei Kono goes before the U.N. General Assembly today to state Japan's wish to become part of the Security Council, the United Nations' most powerful body, whose members hold veto power over all significant action.The appearance will provide many here with a deeply desired revision of Japan's place in the world. Yet it will also place new demands on Japan and, some Japanese fear, rekindle old problems.Surveys by newspapers and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicate that more Japanese favor admittance than oppose it. Japan's financial contribution to the United Nations will soon exceed the combined total of four of the five permanent members on the Security Council.

WASHINGTON -- The United Nations Security Council, propelled by the failure of others, imposed tough economic sanctions on Yugoslavia yesterday in hopes of halting the carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina.Ignoring a last-minute peace bid by Serbia and Montenegro -- the only republics remaining in the Yugoslav federation -- the Security Council approved an oil embargo, a freeze of foreign assets, the suspension of air traffic and a ban on trade of all but food and humanitarian supplies.U.N. members also will be required to reduce Yugoslav diplomatic missions, and Yugoslav teams will be barred from sporting events.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- African nations, long reluctant to intervene in each other's crises, launched a new continent-wide security council yesterday with powers to send African peacekeeping troops to conflict zones. The new African Union Peace and Security Council, formed on the model of the United Nations Security Council, follows a string of failed pan-African peace efforts since the 1970s. But Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, a member of the new council, promised this one would be different because "we have learned from our own experience that peace, security and stability are necessary for sustainable development."

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations Security Council expanded its blockade of Iraq to bar commercial air shipments last night and warned that military action may be in store.Approved 14-1, Resolution 670 requires all countries to bar any Iraq-bound flights containing goods other than food needed for "humanitarian circumstances." It requires countries to deny overflight of any plane bound for Iraq or Kuwait without an inspection.Only Cuba opposed the resolution.The council also voted to consider action against any country that evades U.N. sanctions and called on nations to detain Iraqi ships used to violate the sanctions.

WASHINGTON - President Bush has authorized the most significant U.S. diplomatic contact with Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979, sending the State Department's third-ranking official to Geneva for a meeting this weekend on Iran's nuclear program, administration officials said yesterday. The decision appeared to bend, if not exactly break, the administration's insistence that it would not negotiate with Iran over its nuclear programs unless it first suspended uranium enrichment, as demanded by three resolutions of the U.N. Security Council.

MOSCOW -- Kosovo's looming independence, and promises of quick U.S. and European recognition, have undercut and infuriated Russia at a moment when this oil-rich behemoth is eager to show that its global clout has been restored, analysts say. Russian officials have spent weeks issuing dire assessments of the U.N.-administered province's pending declaration of independence from Serbia, expected to be announced this weekend. The Russians have repeatedly derided Kosovo's possible change in status as a "Pandora's box" that will destabilize Europe by setting off a chain reaction of shifting borders.

WASHINGTON -- Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former top military commander in Iraq, delivered a blistering critique of U.S. involvement in the Iraq conflict yesterday, calling American political leaders "incompetent." Addressing an audience of journalists who cover the military, Sanchez said the armed force's mission to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein was flawed from the start. National leaders, said Sanchez, "have unquestionably been derelict in the performance of their duty."

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is preparing to declare that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is a foreign terrorist organization, senior administration officials said yesterday. If imposed, the declaration would signal a more confrontational turn in the administration's approach to Iran and would be the first time the United States has added the armed forces of any sovereign government to its list of terrorist organizations. The Revolutionary Guard is thought to be the largest branch of Iran's military.

BAGHDAD -- A car bomb killed 11 people yesterday in a Kurdish district of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, police said, and a U.S. military helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing south of Baghdad. Meanwhile, the Security Council voted unanimously yesterday to expand the United Nations' presence in Iraq to help tackle political, economic and humanitarian problems that have eluded the U.S., British and Iraqi governments. The resolution directs the U.N. to help reconcile rival factions and to mediate territorial disputes, such as in the northern Kurdish territory, where there is a pending referendum on the future of oil-rich Kirkuk.

UNITED NATIONS -- The Security Council authorized yesterday an extensive United Nations peacekeeping operation in Darfur aimed at protecting civilians and aid workers in the violence-racked region of Sudan. The council voted 15-0 to begin sending a joint U.N.-African Union force of up to 26,000 troops and police to Darfur before the end of the year to quell the violence that has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced more than 2 million in the past four years. It will take a year to muster the full force, and the cost will be about $2 billion, said peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno, who added that a substantial number of troops will arrive in Darfur before year's end. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon called the resolution "historic and unprecedented," and said it would help "improve the lives of the people of the region and close this tragic chapter in Sudan's history."

UNITED NATIONS - The Security Council increased the number of soldiers allowed in the U.N. peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone by 2,000 yesterday and is likely to expand the force by several thousand more in the next week or two. The Sierra Leone mission, originally limited to 11,000 soldiers by the council, is the largest U.N. peacekeeping operation. The increase was required after reinforcements from Bangladesh, Jordan and India arrived this week Those troops were expected to push the force above the limit set in February, before the United Nations took over peacekeeping in Sierra Leone from a regional contingent led by Nigeria.

UNITED NATIONS -- The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court told the U.N. Security Council yesterday that Sudan has shown no signs that it will hand over a senior official and a militia leader charged with war crimes, and he asked the council to increase pressure on the regime. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's first report to the council since the court issued the arrest warrants last month underscored the court's delicate position: It must rely on the same government that backs the attacks on civilians in the Darfur region to ensure that Sudanese suspects face international justice.

WASHINGTON -- The greeting given to visitors at the presidential palace in Khartoum, Sudan, is an exercise in intimidation. You pass guards in white uniforms with AK-47s, walk under a pair of enormous elephant tusks, then file past a machine gun emplacement. Guests are reminded that they have entered the rebuilt palace where Gen. Charles Gordon - the British father of humanitarian interventionism - was killed in a 19th-century Islamist uprising. The message of warning to a new generation of Western idealists is given and taken.