Cuba calls for UN reform to prevent possible military attack against Iran

Cuba today called for radical United Nations reform and a strengthening of the General Assembly to confront current challenges that include the threat of “powerful and influential forces” in the United States and Israel paving the way to launch a military attack on Iran.

“The Security Council, on its part, possibly under the illusion of preventing it, moves on to adopt sanctions against that country which, together with the unilateral sanctions illegally imposed by a group of States, are seeking to suffocate the Iranian economy,” Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla told the General Assembly’s annual session.

He dubbed a recent report by UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano, which faulted Iran over the availability of information about its nuclear programme as “politically biased”, saying it had increased tensions and created the pretexts for a war escalation.

“This threat is too serious to trust the capacity of the Security Council, where the country that bears the highest responsibility for the crisis has relied on its ability to impose on others its own designs,” he declared.

The wars against Iraq and Afghanistan show that neither one nor a few governments can be entrusted with deciding when all diplomatic steps to prevent a war have been exhausted, “when the death of hundreds of thousands or millions of persons and the destabilization of a big region in the planet or in all of it will be inevitable,” he said.

“The United Nations should be radically reformed and the faculties of this General Assembly should be reinstated. It is indispensable to found the Security Council anew. It is necessary to reiterate that the United Nations Secretary-General and all other international agencies high officials, including the IAEA, have a duty with all member States, expressed in clear mandates and adopted in conformity with the UN Charter and the rules of procedure.”

Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Samuel Santos Lopez also called for UN reform during his address to the Assembly.

“We generally need more decisive action which affirms multilateralism as the new paradigm – à form of multilateralism that listens to the voices of the peoples who are living in extreme poverty and underdevelopment, that really and effectively democratizes the world order broadly beginning with this Organization, including its Security Council and the whole of the United Nations System,” he said.

The Foreign Minister stressed re-establishing the “representational and democratic rights” of the 192 Member States.