Annan explores need for more robust peacekeeping missions

Recent comments by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, during a speech at Johns Hopkins University in the US and in an interview with the ‘Independent’ newspaper in the UK, were “the first public announcement ... of the lines along which he is thinking” on the need for more robust UN peacekeeping, and around which he was rethinking the force requirements for the DRC, his spokesman Fred Eckhard stated on Tuesday. Annan was reiterating the idea that a peacekeeping force, “although it does not go to make war, although it is distinctly configured to peacekeeping and not war-making ... needs enough of a war-making capability as a deterrent. It needs that extra military strength, so it would not have to use its military strength,” he said.

This was an evolution of Annan’s thinking that peacekeeping missions needed “an enforcement capability sufficient to deter any challenge to the peace agreement”, Eckhard said. This idea would be considered by Lakhdar Brahimi and his panel of experts who have been taking a fresh look at UN peace operations in light of the lessons of previous missions, particularly in Rwanda and Srebrenica, he added. Brahimi’s panel is expected to present a paper in late summer so that UN member states can rethink the basic principles of peacekeeping at the Millennium Assembly and Summit in September.