Panel blasts peacekeeping, proposes far-reaching reforms.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has endorsed far-reaching proposals for improving UN peacekeeping operations, according to a UN report. In March he commissioned a panel of experts - chaired by former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi - to look into ways of “making the UN a more credible force for peace”. The panel’s recommendations include providing peacekeeping troops with the authorisation, equipment and backing to respond to violence against civilians, and to take action against one side in a conflict if it violates peace agreements. Furthermore, the Security Council should not finalise resolutions authorising large peacekeeping missions until members states have pledged the necessary troops and resources to deploy them successfully. Impartiality should not imply lack of action, the panel stressed. “Where one party to a peace agreement clearly and incontrovertibly is violating its terms, continued equal treatment of all parties by the UN can in the best case result in ineffectiveness and in the worst may amount to complicity with evil,” the report said. “No failure did more damage to the standing and credibility of UN peacekeeping in the 1990s than its reluctance to distinguish victim from aggressor,” the report went on. The panel recommended that the rules of engagement be sufficiently robust to ensure that UN contingents are not forced to cede the initiative to their attackers. Calling on member states to “accept that primary responsibility for reform lies with them”, the report stated that most failures occurred because the Security Council and member countries crafted and supported “ambiguous, inconsistent and under-funded mandates and then stood back and watched as they failed”. The panel chairman, Lakhdar Brahimi, told a news conference the basic message was: “Make sure before you send the UN...that you go there [into a situation] with your eyes open.” He said the panel had been shocked to see how poorly staffed and equipped the UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations was. “It is frankly scandalous that this organisation belonging to the whole of humanity cannot afford the necessary personnel to do the main activity of the UN,” Brahimi chided. Noting that some of the panel’s recommendations “come with a price tag”, Brahimi stressed the need for “significant” additional resources.