UN in Darfur Lets Members Feel Right at Home

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) — When Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi spoke at the United Nations in September, he suggested moving the organization from New York to New Delhi or Beijing. Both are excellent suggestions, worth considering. Even more than New York, New Delhi could use the jobs. And basing the UN in Beijing would provide fresh horizons to a UN espionage community surely bored out of its gourd with spying on New York.

But why stop there? The UN has 192 member states, each deserving in its way of the chance to play host. Some could serve the UN with far greater efficiency than the U.S., where diplomats are jammed into high-rent Manhattan, their budgets frittered away on pricey restaurants and their limousine windshields littered with parking tickets.

For convenience, there’s much to be said for Sudan — already a hub of UN activity. Sudan is a major recipient of UN- channeled aid and home to one of the biggest peacekeeping operations. True, there are a few awkward matters, such as genocide in Darfur, and the president of Sudan being under indictment by the International Criminal Court. But at the UN, that’s no bar to popularity.

In January, the UN General Assembly’s biggest voting bloc, the 130-member so-called Group of 77, installed Sudan as its chair for 2009. Sudan celebrated with a shindig in the UN Delegates’ Dining Room, featuring ice sculptures, lobster and chocolate-covered strawberries. So let no one object that Khartoum doesn’t know how to throw a diplomatic party.

Saudi Option

Or, what about Saudi Arabia? Jeddah is headquarters to the second-biggest voting bloc in the UN General Assembly, the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Located in the heart of the Middle East, this option is close to a whole raft of UN peacekeeping operations. Local dress codes could save female UN staffers lots of time picking out wardrobes during the workweek.

Of course, for policy wonks fixated on such narrow matters as stopping the Iranian nuclear-bomb program, the top choice for UN relocation would have to be Tel Aviv. Not that this would persuade the UN to treat Israel any better, but it might at least encourage the diplomats fiddling with sanctions on Iran to get serious about stopping that mushroom cloud.

Libya is another option. Qaddafi, when he spoke at the UN in New York, described himself as discombobulated by the change of time zones. That could be fixed in a trice, by relocating the UN to Tripoli. The move would help accommodate the rising importance of Libya at the UN. The country has graciously reached into its diplomatic bench to provide the current chairman of the UN General Assembly, and for the past two years has held one of the 10 rotating seats on the Security Council.

Nobel Choice

Not that we should neglect the West. Norway is a prime candidate, if for no reason other than the presence in Oslo of the Nobel Peace Prize committee. This group has devoted itself to handing out Nobels to the UN and its supporters, regardless of the farce, scandals, failures and pie-in-the-sky promises this might entail. It’s time for the UN to give back.

Then there’s Canada, which two years ago expressed interest in enticing the UN to move north. If the UN’s own climate predictions mean anything, there’s a load of prime real estate in the making as temperatures soar along the Canadian Arctic coast. Think of it as shifting the UN to a beach resort of the future; a gesture of thanks for its labors.

Nor should Russia be ruled out. From the founding contributions of Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union in 1945, to Russia’s reliable resistance to U.S. initiatives in the Security Council today, few governments have done more than the Kremlin to shape the character of the UN.

Personal Favorite

Nor, given Russia’s vast terrain, is there any reason to confine the options to Moscow. My personal favorite for a new UN base would be the Russian Republic of Tuva, located just north of Mongolia. Tuva’s capital of Kyzyl is just 5 miles (8 kilometers) from major air routes connecting Europe with Southeast Asia. The only hitch is that the short distance from this rich flow of commerce is vertical.

But we all have our favorites. With so many worthy options, all spared New York’s parking nightmare, is it right to exalt one location above all others?

In 1983, the U.S.’s No. 2 envoy to the UN, Charles Lichenstein, hinted at a better way. When a Soviet diplomat questioned whether the UN headquarters should be in the U.S., Lichenstein said that if the UN wished to remove itself from American soil, U.S. diplomats would “be down at the dockside waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset.”

Great idea. Why not put the UN on a giant barge, like the grand casino it is, and let it sail on forever? With hardship pay thrown in, surely that’s a sacrifice public servants would be willing to make.

(Claudia Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The opinions expressed are her own.)