Well, nothing could equal the inanity of the Arabs at the UN last week, writes Hassan Nafaa* The UN General Assembly last week played host to several Arab performances that can only be described as surreal: bizarre scenes that fore- grounded an official Arab order so well past its sell-by date that it can no longer even fathom what is going on around it, let alone claim to speak in international forums on behalf of the people it claims to represent. Given the terminal nature of the condition the noblest gesture it could perform would be to withdraw quietly from the field so as to make room for a new and fitter Arab order, both in terms of competence and legitimacy. The theatre of the absurd resurrected on the UN stage last week, in all its baffling complexity, could only have been the product of an entity in the throes of psychological trauma. Egypt's foreign minister, perhaps unwittingly, played the lead in the prologue to this spectacle. In his speech to the General Assembly Ahmed Abul- Gheit stated that expanding the membership of the Security Council had long been one of the most important items on the international community's agenda for reforming the UN. In the course of his exposition he defended Egypt's qualifications for occupying one of the permanent seats allocated to Africa in the expanded Security Council. To be fair, Abul-Gheit's presentation of the Egyptian position reflected understanding of the intricacies of this sensitive issue. This, together with the cogency of his arguments, and the flexibility of his stance, made for a persuasive performance. Egypt believes that permanent seats on the Security Council should be distributed in a manner that ensures the equitable representation of all major civilisations. Nor did Egypt want to monopolise the African seat: it was willing, said the foreign minister, to share it with Nigeria and South Africa. If the Arab order had the slightest degree of sense it would have thrown its weight behind the Egyptian proposal, which was rational, realistic and credible. It would have lobbied among African, Islamic and Third World nations to secure the broadest possible international support. No one would have been hurt by such an effort, since in this instance Egyptian interests are the same as those of the Arab order as a whole. Sadly, the behaviour of certain governments proved, once again, that the current Arab order is desperately lacking in vision and foresight and that many of its constituent parts are still prey to irrational and atavistic instincts. Thus it was that the rest of the play unfolded in its superb folly as one after the other Arab player swaggered on stage. The following day Farouq Al-Sharaa ascended to the podium to deliver Syria's opinion on the question of an expanded Security Council. Instead of supporting the Egyptian position, the moderateness of which renders it understandable and acceptable to the majority of UN members, the Syrian foreign minister proposed a permanent Arab seat to be occupied by Arab nations in rotation. The Syrian position struck me as curious on at least two levels. Firstly, few would have missed the petty dig at Egypt in this obvious bid to undermine Egypt's prospects at obtaining a permanent seat that is certain to be designated to Africa in the context of any agreement over broadened Security Council membership. Secondly, little thought went into this proposal, which lacks the minimum ingredient for success. A permanent Security Council seat, by definition, is assigned to a specific country. While such a seat can conceivably be rotated between two or three countries at the most, the idea of 22 Arab countries playing musical chairs would inevitably deprive any "permanent" Arab seat of substance, let alone permanence. Such a proposal can have validity only in the context of arrangements for non-permanent seats on the Security Council. According to the current method for distributing non-permanent seats, Arabs are guaranteed permanent representation through a seat that is occupied alternatively by a country from Arab North Africa and a country from Arab Asia. As it would be virtually impossible to secure two seats for the Arabs, the Syrian foreign minister's proposal not only unjustifiably vied with the Egyptian position but was also at odds with both Syrian and Arab national interests. Nevertheless, the Syrian position was almost reasonable when compared with the heights of absurdity attained by Libya. When, the next day, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdul-Rahman Shalgam stepped on to the stage, he made it obvious that no issue was closer to Libya's heart than the question of expanding the membership of the Security Council. But, far be it for Libya to support the Egyptian proposal of an African permanent seat rotated between Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa, or to support Syrian proposals for an Arab permanent seat rotated among the 22 members of the Arab League. Instead, Shalgam demanded a permanent seat for the African Federation and insisted that out of all 52 nations in the federation Libya was most fit to occupy it. One stands agape. Libya has every right to distance itself from the Arab order, even if it has not officially resigned from the Arab League. Libya may even have the right to drop the Arabs from all consideration in its calculations over the allocation of chairs in an expanded Security Council. Indeed, one is struck by the fact that Shalgam did not cite the Arab world or the Arab League among those regional affiliations that he said had to form the cornerstones of any global democratic order. But by what stretch of the imagination can he justify a permanent seat on the Security Council for a country with no more than five million people in a world with six billion, and for a country that is still categorised as terrorist and has only recently emerged from years of Security Council sanctions? It is not difficult to imagine the murmurs of surprise that swept the General Assembly. Members were as dumbstruck as they would have been had a citizen in their own country stepped out from half a life behind bars to claim his eligibility for appointment as minister of the interior. If Libya had the slightest hope of obtaining a permanent seat on the Security Council, we would say, go for it. However, one can only guess that the Libyan foreign minister himself was aware of the inanity of his proposal even as he presented it. One cannot therefore help but wonder at the true motives. Was Libya trying to get back at Egypt for purportedly not doing its bit to help Tripoli in its times of trials and tribulation? Or was this just another flagrant instance of those spontaneous outbursts of madness one is accustomed to hearing from the Libyan regime at precisely the wrong time, and in precisely the wrong place? Perhaps I should take this opportunity to apologise to the reader for the anger that seeps from between the lines of this article. I would, however, stress that this anger is not the product of some chauvinistic bias that champions Egyptian diplomacy right or wrong. Anyone familiar with my writings knows that I have never hesitated to level criticism against Egyptian foreign policy positions when I regarded such criticism necessary. My anger, here, stems from a profound anxiety over the future of the Arab world and my continued frustration at Arab muddling in the face of the perils that confront us. Moreover, although much of this muddling may be a product of ignorance and misunderstanding, a goodly proportion betrays spurious motives. Just as I feel it my duty to criticise Egyptian positions, especially if they are founded solely on an unjustifiable chauvinism, I feel it my duty to stand up firmly against those Arab positions that reflect equally unjustifiable and odious inferiority complexes. It appears that Arab regimes are insufficiently aware of the crucial importance of the battle that is in progress to reform the UN and, at its heart, the Security Council's composition and decision making procedures. That this battle is still in its tentative, exploratory phases is evident from the Arabs' handling of it by their customary scrambling among themselves to obtain international posts. This time, however, the situation is different, because nominations to permanent Security Council seats are not conducted as a free-for-all, but rather on the basis of agreed upon criteria that nominees must meet in order to represent major regional blocs. The Arabs must therefore awake to the fact that if they do not yet have a first among equals they should find one to represent them in an international institution that will sooner or later evolve into a global government. The perpetuation of petty tribal rivalries -- so familiar in the Arab world and so futile -- has one result: to block the path to any effective Arab role in the Security Council. In other words, if the Arabs keep on as usual they will lose the battle over positions in an expanded Security Council before the battle begins. Unfortunately, this is the most likely scenario if Arab regimes remain as they are. It is truly time for change -- either that or death! * The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.
