The Secretary-General (interpretation from French): Mr. Brahimi has submitted a competent and very clear report, and I hope that Member States will accept it. I will try to convince them to accept the Brahimi report recommendations and to implement them, because the time has come to decide that if we are going to conduct peacekeeping operations, we must do so effectively; otherwise, we just stand with our arms crossed. But we cannot continue to work as we are doing now.
Question: You referred to yesterday's British Government report about United Nations reform, peacekeeping and the Security Council. Can I ask you a couple of questions? First, quite specifically, the British Government is proposing the establishment of a United Nations military staff college to train officers from different countries to try to avoid the misunderstandings and rivalries that have dogged some United Nations peacekeeping missions. Britain has actually suggested that such a college be established in Britain, offering to be the host to the United Nations college. Can I ask you for your reaction to that?
Secondly, more broadly, on Security Council reform, Britain is proposing a radical expansion, both of the permanent membership and of the size of the Security Council as a whole. A report from the Government and the third party in our Parliament, the liberal democrats, calls the present arrangement with only five permanent members unfair and unreasonable. That seems to quite a big gesture, for a permanent member to make that comment. Do you think this implies that there may be a more general willingness for radical change? If the Security Council -- this is really my question -- were to be expanded, and if that would make decision-making fairer, would it also make it more effective? Or is there a danger that by expanding the Security Council, we would make reaching tough decisions more difficult and end up with more consensus, more fudge, and, frankly, weaker decisions and a weaker United Nations?
The Secretary-General: On the question of peacekeeping, I have always maintained that the best peacekeepers are well-trained and well-equipped soldiers. The idea of establishing a training college for peacekeepers is something that I endorse wholeheartedly. There are other regional peacekeeping training establishments, but I think that the British Government's offer to put up a training centre for peacekeepers is a very positive development, because we would prefer to have men and women deployed to the field who know each other's ways, who have worked together, who have been trained with similar material, and who, hopefully, have equipment and other material which are inter-operable. I applaud the decision to set up a training college and to open it up to peacekeepers from around the world.
I am also pleased with the British announcement on Security Council reform, and the question you posed really reflects the debate which has been going on in this house. For a long time, a certain group of Member States maintained that the Council needed to be kept small for it to be effective. The other school felt that the Council had to be brought into line with today's realities, to be made more democratic and more representative; otherwise, it would begin to lose legitimacy. I think the British declaration is an acknowledgement of the fact that we need to make the Council more democratic and more representative. I also believe, and I trust that the British Government also shares this view -- otherwise they would not have put forward their proposals -- that it ought to be possible to reform the Council, to expand it, to make it democratic, more representative and, at the same time, effective. I think it is not beyond human ingenuity to do that. I reject the idea that expansion necessarily will lead to a confused and ineffective Security Council which fudges all issues. I do not think, if there is a problem of that kind, that it is necessarily one of size.
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