Downing Street Says » Prime Minister:

» Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Prime Minister:

Actually I would say to you that I think the United Nations can, in certain circumstances, be absolutely essential to solving the world’s problems, and there are situations that have arisen in which the United
Nations has come together and made a real difference, and indeed some of the things that we were talking about earlier in relation to some of the disputes in Africa and so on indicate that very, very clearly too. But there are two things that need to happen. The first is that we need to reform the institutions of the United Nations thoroughly because they are not as they should be; and the second thing is you can make any amount of institutional change, but the key thing is whether there is the right political alliance at the heart of the Security Council of the United Nations.

Now I think there is a case incidentally for broadening the Security Council and I favour that, but in a way whatever institutional framework you have, the basic point is we have to have political agreement between the leading powers. And that is why I say in particular I think the transatlantic alliance is really, really important. Europe and America, whatever their differences from time to time, they have the values system in common and they should be proud of their alliance and we should make sure that we use that as a basis for trying to engineer the right type of political alliance within the UN Security Council. So look, if the UN didn’t exist we would be inventing it, that is for sure, at least some people would, but I think it could be so much more effective but it needs reform, it needs leadership and it needs the right political alliance to motivate it.

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