Mark Lazarowicz: Edinburgh North & Leith

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	United Nations reform
	Mr. Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh, North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op): If he will make a statement on United Nations reform. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Bill Rammell): The Government support the United Nations and are fully committed to its reform. We welcome the Secretary-General's decision to set up a high level panel to make recommendations on the way in which the UN can better deal with threats to international peace and security. We are supporting the panel's work and hope that it will make clear recommendations on identifying and tackling the full range of threats to global security. Mr. Lazarowicz : I welcome the Government's support for the debate on UN reform, especially given the genuine threat of terrorism. Will my hon. Friend ensure that the debate also takes account of the way in which the UN and the wider international community deals with issues such as climate change, world poverty and the sort of continuing dispute, for example, between Israel and the Palestinians, which was the subject of the previous questions? Does he agree that moves to reform the UN would be discredited if they were perceived simply as attempts to change international rules to favour the most powerful nations and allow them to be more successful at getting UN endorsement for their actions than they have sometimes been in the past? Mr. Rammell: First, I assure my hon. Friend that that is not the intention of the reform debate. We have to demonstrate that the UN has both the physical and political capacity to face up to key strategic challenges such as international terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. However, at the same time, we must tackle global insecurity and inequality. Our arguments are not about justifying the actions of the most powerful; they are emphatically about ensuring that the UN has the capacity to face up to the issues that I outlined. Indeed, the Secretary-General has been arguing for that.

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	30th March 2004,Cols 1406-7