Gaddafi, UN and NPT

I read about his heroics when I was a little child. A group of military officers led by a 27 year old Muammar al-Gaddafi, overthrew a pro-western government ruled by King Idris in Libya through a bloodless coup in 1969. Unlike, the military dictators, Gaddafi was neither the commander-in-chief of the army nor ruled the nation as a dictator. He handed over the nation to the people and established democracy. He didn’t hold any official post in the government but does remain as a de facto leader of Libya.

After 40 years of the revolution in Libya, on 23^th September 2009, Gaddafi delivered a speed at UN. While I don’t fully agree with all the things he spoke, but I do share some views common. It is well known that UN has become a puppet in the hands of veto-powered nations. It is courageous of Gaddafi to speak in UN about it and yes, the history will remember that someone finally spoke about it in public. The first 10 minutes of his speech were full of fireworks… he spoke about the reasons on establishment of UN, how the veto-powered nations are holding UN for ransom and why UN failed to prevent 65 wars that took place after the formation of UN.

According to UN charter, ‘all nations are equal irrespective of their economy and size’ and yet there are five nations that hold veto power. When UN was formed, the five victorious nations of World War II considered themselves superior than others and framed a constitution of UN that gave them an upper hand than rest of the countries. These five nations include United States of America, France, United Kingdom, Russia and China. These nations are permanent members of UN Security council and hold a veto power on all resolutions made within UN. The responsibility of the Security Council is to uphold peace and security in the world.

But the fact remains is, the permanent members of Security council itself are the ones creating non-violent situation in the world. Almost every conflict or the threat to the world has been created by these five nations. I can’t imagine, the President of the world’ most powerful country lies to the rest of the world that a tiny nation has so called ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and goes on for the war that killed thousands of innocent people.

Another discriminatory resolution passed by veto powered nations is “Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty” (NPT), which allows only the five veto-powered nations to have nuclear capabilities and rest of nations, should disarm and not test nuclear weapons. In the recent UN Council meeting, Obama called out India to sign NPT. India has outright rejected the proposal.

The question before all of us is, why do we have something called United Nations that cannot serve its purpose? Why can’t there be actual democracy in United Nations and no-veto powered nations? Why can’t all the nations be treated equally?

I guess… only the power and economy dictates the world. The nations that have power and economy do as they like and the nations like India, whose economies are dependent on these veto-powered nations, just keep silent. It’s the weaker nations like Libya raise their voices…but those voice just remain unheard.

We (Indians) need to say our next generations to stand on their own feet than being dependent on some nations whose foundational policies towards other nations are discriminatory.