ANALYSIS: From Bush, a Plea to ‘Move Forward’

Neither contrite nor combative, president asks world to put aside differences

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

By Michael Moran

MSNBC Writer

Annan conceded that the Security Council had to do far more to assuage the worries of powers like the U.S. who might be targets of stateless terrorism, possibly even with weapons of mass destruction. He chided the Security Council’s permanent members for failing to reform the institution, who continues to reserve “vetoes” for the five nations that dominated the world in 1945, when the United Nations was founded, rather than 2003. The five are the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China. Proposals to add other powers — nations like India, Germany, Japan, Brazil or Egypt — as permanent members routinely fall prey to disputes among the five permanent powers over which countries should join and under what conditions.

President Bush addresses the 58th U.N. General Assembly at U.N. headquarters Tuesday.

Image Credit: MSNBC

UNITED NATIONS -- MSNBC
Seeking common ground after a year of international friction, President Bush asked world leaders assembled at the United Nations on Tuesday to put their disagreements over Iraq behind them and to work together to transform that country into a democracy that will “inspire the Middle East.”

In a speech that began by recalling the horrors of the 9/11 attacks, Bush tried to lay to rest the notion that the United States had written off the United Nations as a serious concern in its foreign policy. But even as he endorsed and honored the work of the United Nations and reaffirmed U.S. support for the concept of collective security, he remained unapologetic about his decision to lead a coalition to war against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq over the objections of the U.N. Security Council.

Turning his opponents’ arguments on their head, Bush asserted that the vanquishing of Saddam, who repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, finally showed that defiance of the Security Council would not be tolerated in the post-9/11 world.

“Because there were consequences — because a coalition of nations acted to defend the peace and the credibility of the United Nations — Iraq is free, and today we are joined by representatives of a liberated country.”

In a speech that ranged from Iraq to Afghanistan, from the Middle East to the trade in young women for the sex industry, one theme permeated the president’s remarks: the need for the world to “move forward” after the deep divisions of the Iraq debate.

“This is not everything some wanted, but there was no cowboy talk, at least that I heard, and that means, perhaps, there’s a desire to move on,” a European diplomat who attended the session told MSNBC.com on condition of anonymity.

* NO RETREAT

* SIGNS OF A THAW?

* A NEW CHALLENGE

* SKEPTICISM PERSISTS

(More: MSNBC.com)
2003 © MSNBC News.

Dan