Q: [partially inaudible, on reform of the Security Council and India's chances for permanent membership in the Security Council]

SG: I think you make it sound as if it were up to me. If it were up to me, then you probably would not have a problem. We have 189 member states who have to debate this issue and settle it and they have been debating this for seven years and I hope that, in the not too distant future, we will see some progress. But obviously, when one talks of the expansion of the Council and begins to think of countries that are likely to join, India's name comes up quite frequently.

Q: Are there any plans for sending UN observers or troops in Afghanistan?

SG: At this stage, there is no discussion of us sending UN observers to Afghanistan and I think before we even begin thinking of sending observers to Afghanistan, we must first determine what they are going to do there, what will be the mandate, what are they going to achieve. And then begin to see if any governments will give us troops for that operation. But I must say that, at this stage, there is no hint in the Security Council or amongst the membership that troops will be sent to Afghanistan.

Q: Do you think that the military staff of the UN that advises the Security Council is adequate?

SG: I think General Nambiar is right, and he can answer that from his own experience, and I can tell him that the situation hasn't changed much since then. But let me say that it is part of the reform. The reform proposals require that we strengthen considerably the military capacity at the UN headquarters for us to be able to do effective planning and back-stop the troops which are operating in the field much more effectively. And when I compare the resources of the men at the UN who are running and planning and supporting these operations, and I compare that with national level efforts, it is lamentable. At one point, when we had about 80,000 troops deployed, we had about 350 people, both civilian and military, at headquarters back-stopping these operations. And I think that there is now a realisation that while we don't want to become another NATO or create a NATO headquarters, we need much more resources and that in this first discussion the General Assembly gave us about 100 additional posts, but they are going to debate the issue further in May. I hope to get the resources that we need. I am determined to fight for that.

Q: How many recommendations from the Brahimi report were you actually able to get support for?

SG: Our decision-making process in the UN on these things is rather cumbersome. The first round of discussions, I would say, we probably got about a third of it implemented and I am not looking at it, there are aspects of it that I can implement myself without authority from the governments. So those aspects and those recommendations I am putting into effect immediately but there are certain recommendations that require governmental approval and budgetary resources for us to be able to carry through. On that I would say we have got about a third and there are other aspects that we need to go back to discuss in May.

One area where we seem to have run into some controversy is this whole area of information, if you need to set up a unit, you have to gather information for planning purposes to be able to anticipate. And so we're going to have to do quite a bit of convincing on that aspect. But I hope to be back in the General Assembly in May.

Q: What is your position on the establishment of the UN stand-by peacekeeping force; should the UN have it?

SG: I think the idea of a standard corps for the UN has been around for quite a while. I recall when I was head of the peacekeeping operations and we were desperately looking for troops to undertake urgent activities, I made a comment saying that, it will be like telling the Mayor of New York that I know there are lots of fires in this city, you will need a fire house, but we will build one for you when the fire breaks. Because it is really when the crisis has exploded and we need the troops that we have to go around governments, pleading and begging to get the troops. Member States have not been willing to consider the idea of a standing UN force for several reasons. First is the question of budget. How do you pay for it? Second, where do you locate it? And which legal regime covers it and a whole range of issues.

There is also a resistance from the big powers that they do not want to give the UN or the Secretary-General that capacity but the resistance doesn't only come from them. Some of the smaller ones do not want to have a standing army which can be used against them on the basis that they are either abusing their people, say humanitarian reasons, or they are not doing what they ought to do. So you have, let me say, general uneasiness about giving the UN a standing army.

So what we have tried to do is to engage governments and work out an arrangement where each government that is likely to participate in peacekeeping operations will join what we call the stand-by forces arrangement, where each government will indicate what capacity or capability to bring to the common effort, if they were to decide to participate in peacekeeping operations. It may be an offer of a battalion, a logistics unit, a hospital, so that at the time of need we can get into the system and extract who is going to offer what. But that depends on whether or not the government consents: "yes, I want to participate or not".

When we set up the force, the Military Advisor was a Canadian General, who is now head of the Canadian army, General Maurice Baril. I said: "Why don't you try and use a stand-by forces arrangement?" He did. He came and said: "I have a list of offers and our needs". I said: "Consult the governments," and almost everyone said no, we do not want to participate. I believe it was in Rwanda, and he said: "Well, that didn't help me," and yet it did. I said: "General, you've pulled a plug, how did it help you?" He said: "I got a quicker no. It is like a travellers' cheque, you need two signatures; without a second one, you know..."

So with the European Countries, for example a group of them, Scandinavian countries, the Dutch and the Canadians have come up to form what they call SHIRBRIG [Multinational Standby Forces High Readiness Brigade], where they have trained and positioned a brigade that can participate in UN peacekeeping operations should they decide to do so and they can deploy them very quickly and get into the field within a month to six weeks and in fact SHIRBRIG is the unit that I was referring to that is in Ethiopia and in Eritrea. India will be joining that force and probably will replace them as they rotate out. But they came together, trained together and have a brigade-size unit and they are now participating in Ethiopia. But it helps and yet it is not in the hands of the Secretary-General of the UN; it is still up to the governments. The only thing is we can move faster to cut down on deployment time. The lead time is very long, if they are on stand-by and they are ready, you can move them faster. Thank you.

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