7:41 AM Oct 25, 1995

DON'T THINK OR SPEAK WITHOUT US APPROVAL!

Geneva 25 Oct (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The United States has proposed reforms for UNCTAD that would inhibit, if not prevent, the secretariat of the UN Conference on Trade and Development from 'independent thinking' and prevent any views or studies being presented when "sufficient delegations" object to the secretariat drafts before publication.

Presenting a 'non-paper' Monday at the monthly consultations for the UNCTAD Secretary-General, the United States delegate, spoke of the US long-standing commitments for reform of UNCTAD and calling for discussions on UNCTAD's role and that of its secretariat, made proposals to muzzle the secretariat and subject its views and studies to a pre-censorship.

As one observer present put it later, the US presentation was like the remarks of a character in a Lewis Carol tale, for beheading the messenger bringing bad news about the failure of the emperor's policy, or in more recent times the punishment meted out to dissenters under Stalin or in right-wing dictatorships that were supported by the US.

In its non-paper, the US called for elimination of the annual Trade and Development Report which the US viewed as "an insufficiently focused instrument, inappropriate for regional- or country-specific policy formulation".

The US also wanted all secretariat agendas, outlines and papers for meetings to be provided first in draft form to delegations to scrutinise, and for amending or eliminating them if "sufficient delegations" disagree with the subject matter.

The US proposal would be in direct violation of the UN Charter, and its provisions on the role of the secretariat, as an independent UN organ.

The US also wanted that if the subject matter of a secretariat analysis or proposed meeting had been or would be covered in another international organization, the secretariat initiatives should be cancelled.

The UNCTAD's annual Trade and Development Report, which has been attracting media and academic attention and support over the last few years for its prescience in foretelling crisis like that of Mexico because of volatility of short-term capital flows -- making the BWIs and their policy analysts and economics uncomfortable.

All this has made UNCTAD a bete noire of the United States and its right-wing Congress and think tanks.

The US and the BWIs (including the recently set up WTO) which want to run the world economy in the interests of their major shareholders, and particularly the TNCs, got support early this year from the Global Governance Commission, headed by Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson and former Commonwealth Secretary-General Shridath Ramphal. This body of "wise men" called for abolishing UNCTAD and UNIDO and the UN's ECOSOC, and creating a UN Economic Security Council.

But the strong stand that the NAM and the Group of 77 took against these moves, resulted in the UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali ending a long period of uncertainty and filling up the post of UNCTAD Secretary-General, with the approval of the General Assembly.

The US views, at the monthly consultations on 23 October, brought no direct response from other delegations or the secretariat -- both perhaps because the US took everyone by surprise and also because of the way it was presented.

But, France noting that the TDR had in fact been warning against the kind of crisis that overtook Mexico, thought that the secretariat perhaps could have done more in terms of alerting and prodding member-governments. Malaysia and Brazil also would appear to have stressed the role they saw for UNCTAD in terms of policy analysis and studies as well as in consensus-building.