After numerous rounds of lengthy and stormy negotiations which often ran late into the night, a blueprint for revamping the 60-year-old United Nations was finally submitted to and adopted by world leaders in September, thus making 2005 a year of reform in the world body's history.
The blueprint, though watered down compared with the one drawn up by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, envisions unprecedented changes to the United Nations in the areas of peace building, human rights, protection of civilians from genocide and the UN Secretariat's management.
But the document, a compromise among the 191 UN member states, largely contains principle agreements on almost all major reforms. Their negotiators have yet to determine the details of these reforms, most of them highly contentious, in the 60th session of the General Assembly.
Yet, after three months of talks, there were few major achievements accomplished in the implementation of the summit document. An ongoing crisis caused by a threat of the United States to block the UN 2006-2007 budget underscored the present dilemma in the reform process.
LACK OF BREAKTHROUGH
Under the summit outcome document, the General Assembly will, among other things, set up a peace building commission, upgrade the Commission on Human Rights to a human rights council, conclude negotiations on a comprehensive anti-terrorism treaty and conduct sweeping reforms of the UN Secretariat's management.
However, no breakthrough has so far been reported in talks on all these major reform proposals except for the creation of the peace building commission.
It was not until earlier this month that Jan Eliasson, president of the General Assembly, finalized a draft resolution on the establishment of the peace building commission which is designed to help countries emerging from conflict.
To ensure that the General Assembly can meet the year-end deadline set by world leaders for the new commission to be operational, the draft was adopted separately on Tuesday by the assembly and the UN Security Council.
But the talks on the upgrading of the Geneva-based human rights commission remain deadlocked. Eliasson had hoped that significant progress would be achieved in the talks by the end of December so that the human rights council would be in place before the annual human rights conference takes place in March.
With only one week left before the year end, diplomats here say, it is impossible for the developed and developing countries to bridge their differences over the size, criteria for the membership, and status of the new human rights body.
The stalemate also persists in the negotiations on the drafting of a "comprehensive convention on international terrorism," which the General Assembly's legal committee has been negotiating since 1996.
The committee's working group decided at the end of November to give up the initial schedule on completing the treaty by the end of the year because of the long-standing dispute over how to define terrorism.
The dispute has centered primarily on whether the definition of terrorism should cover resistance against foreign occupation and activities of national armed forces. The working group has adjourned for the year and agreed to resume negotiations in late February.
Annan, who repeatedly called for a definition of terrorism to enhance international cooperation in the global anti-terror campaign, has openly voiced deep disappointment at the lack of progress in the negotiations.
BUDGET CRISIS PERSISTS
On the front of management reform, confrontation escalated between the United States and the developing world, with the former threatening to hold up the United Nations' regular two-year budget.
Pushed by the United States, streamlining the management of the United Nations rocked by the Iraq oil-for-food scandal has become a priority in reinventing the world organization.
Washington, supported by many Western countries, has sought to expand the power of the UN secretary-general in disposing human and budget resources, including a review of the United Nations' programs that are more than five years old to determine whether they should be shut down.
But the developing countries, which make up a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly, balk at such radical reforms of the UN Secretariat for fear that the assembly's power would be eroded and the United Nations' work agenda reordered to serve Washington's interests.
Currently, the assembly's administrative and budgetary committee controls the United Nations' budget affairs, including the creation of new programs.
To exert pressure on the developing countries, US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton threatened to delay approval of the United Nations' biennium budget until after all major management reform proposals have been agreed upon by the General Assembly. He proposed an interim budget to finance the United Nations for three to four months.
But the US proposal to link reform with budget failed to win much support. Annan has warned that without a regular budget that should have been ratified by the assembly by the year-end, the world body would be very likely plunged into a financial crisis. Even European countries are cool to Bolton's idea to block the UN budget.
"Without budget, without reform," said a European diplomat, who asked not to be named. He predicted that a regular budget would be finally adopted by the year-end with some sort of face-saving compromise, probably including a timetable for the implementation of management reforms.
SECURITY COUNCIL REFORM LOSES STEAM
Updating the outdated composition of the Security Council was branded by Annan as the key to revitalizing the United Nations. The debate over an enlargement of the powerful UN organ gained much attention in the outgoing year, but was once again proved to be fruitless. The September UN summit only agreed to review the progress in the debate by the end of the year.
"I have decided to be in a listening mode on this issue (Security Council reform)," said Eliasson, president of the General Assembly, in a recent press briefing. "It is an important part of the reform agenda, but it requires careful nurture."
The Security Council is the most powerful UN organ, whose decisions are legally binding on all the 191 UN member states. It currently consists of five veto-holding permanent members -- China, Russia, the United States, Britain and France -- and 10 elected members with a two-year term.
This summer, three rival draft resolutions on the council expansion were tabled to the General Assembly, but none of them was put to a vote due to lack of support.
The African Union (AU) and the Group of Four -- Germany, Brazil, India and Japan -- called for an increase of six permanent members in their separate drafts, while another group of countries led by Italy proposed only increasing non-permanent members.
Earlier this month, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal and Ghana took a surprising move by reintroducing the AU's motion, with a view to seek a vote on it before the General Assembly adjourns before Christmas. But diplomats here say there is little appetite among the UN member states to resume the debate over this divisive issue at this moment.
Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram, who met with Eliasson on Dec. 9 along with his counterparts from around a dozen of other countries, warned that the move by the four African nations would revive the "destructive" confrontation and derail the ongoing negotiations on other UN reforms.
Even some African nations, including Egypt and Algeria, voiced opposition to the tabling of the AU's resolution at this time, saying it was not an action endorsed by the 53-nation regional body.