Eritrea: Govt Tells UN Debate That United States Causes Or Lengthens Crises Worldwide

30 September 2008

UN News Service (New York)-The "misguided and domineering policies" of the United States are causing and exacerbating crises around the world, Eritrea's Foreign Minister told the General Assembly today, calling for collective international action to check the power of Washington.

"The fingerprints of the sole superpower are discernible in most of the conflict situations that are raging in many parts of our globe with the deleterious economic, financial and humanitarian ramifications that they invariably entail," Osman Saleh told the final day of the Assembly's annual General Debate.

He accused the US of adopting a "management by crisis" approach, citing the ongoing Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict, the fighting and humanitarian suffering engulfing Somalia, troubles in Sudan and the recent border clashes between Djibouti and Eritrea as examples of where Washington had initiated or perpetuated troubles or blocked options for solution.

"These days, candid efforts are not exerted to prevent and manage conflicts. On the contrary, crises are deliberately spawned and allowed to fester so that their 'management' would provide the United States with the opportunity and latitude for control in a situation of permanent instability.

"The absence of countervailing forces in a unipolar world has only aggravated the situation. Principal among these is the weakness of the United Nations to pursue an independent line and act as a bulwark of robust multilateralism."

Mr. Saleh said the US too often cited the war on terrorism as the reason for its actions, even though that war "has long been derailed from its original objectives and intentions" to suit other purposes.

"This untenable state of affairs cannot go on and should not be tolerated. The human sufferings have been, and are, too great; the time too long. In the event, collective international efforts to check US excesses are timely and imperative

"The perils of unchecked unipolarism have become glaringly obvious in the past years. This reality can only accentuate the need for bolstering the United Nations, to make it a democratic and a robust institution of multilateralism through prolonged and concerted collective efforts."