It is time the United Nations stepped in to take charge of the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, President Thabo Mbeki suggested on Friday.
A concerted, global effort is required to defuse the ”extremely dangerous situation” currently prevailing in the Middle East and West Asia, he said in his weekly newsletter, published on his party’s ANC Today website.
His comments come two weeks ahead of South Africa assuming its seat as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.
”Is it not time that the United Nations, genuinely representing all nations, assumes its rightful position and leads a global process to address all the inter-connected challenges facing the peoples of the Middle East and West Asia!”
Mbeki said South Africa’s people and government are deeply concerned about what is happening in Iraq today, and what will happen there tomorrow.
”Inevitably, we will have to engage the United States government, the peoples and governments of the Middle East and West Asia, and the rest of the world about what is happening in this region today, and what will happen tomorrow.
”The fact that in a mere fortnight our country will take its seat as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council emphasises precisely this imperative, that the future of the region we have mentioned is a matter of vital and urgent importance both to our country and our continent.
”The stark reality is that our country and continent, like the rest of the world, however geographically distant from the Middle East and West Asia, cannot isolate themselves from any meltdown that might affect this region of our common world.
”As a consequence of this, it stands to reason that regardless of what might have happened in the past, and is happening now, affecting the Middle East and West Asia, we, together with the rest of humanity, must position ourselves as part of a sustained, concerted and determined global effort to defuse the extremely dangerous situation currently prevailing in the region,” he said.
Mbeki has recently returned from the United States, where he held talks with President George Bush on various African and global issues, but not on Iraq.
”The day we met President Bush was not the appropriate moment to discuss Iraq,” Mbeki said, noting that at the time the US president was still studying the hard-hitting Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report.
Mbeki warned against countries resigning themselves to ”the expectation that the sister peoples of the Middle East and West Asia are ineluctably condemned to be consumed by an unstoppable conflagration, foretold by current events as an impending and modern frightening apocalypse, as a result of which mere anarchy would be loosed upon the world”.
The grave situation in the region demanded the concerted attention and action of both the countries in the region and the rest of the world, he said. — Sapa