U.N. helps prevent global war

Press, 24 July 1985, Page 8

U.N. helps prevent global war

Twenty million people have been killed in wars or confrontations since World War II but the fact that there has not been another global war is due in some measure to the effort of the United Nations ' Organisation, says a United Nations official. Mr Paul Ignatieff, director of the United Nations Information Centre in Sydney, said in an interview that wars had occurred in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, which were areas that could least afford war. Asked to explain why the United Nations had failed to prevent war in Lebanon and between Iraq and Iran, Mr said that

United Nations was able to help countries only when they showed a willingness to use its services. One of the main reasons for setting up the United Nations was to prevent another world war, and this had been achieved. The United Nations had also notable achievements in maintaining peace in Cyprus in 1964, the Congo in 1960-64, and with peace-keeping roles on the Indian-Pakistan border and between Egypt and Israel. The main problem with the Iran-Iraq war was that the combatants did not want to stop fighting, said Mr Ignatieff.

He said that when the United Nations was founded 40 years ago the charter was signed by 51 nations. Now there were 159 signatories. The United Nations and its various agencies such as W.H.0., Unicef, 1.L.0., the World Bank, and Unesco had an annual budget of SUSB billion. Mr Ignatieff said that the governing bodies of the agencies were careful to keep budgets at zero growth and prevent an expanding bureaucracy. Every effort was made to reduce paperwork. For example, Unicef had 3700 pages of documentation in 1957 when it had a budget of SUS3S million. Last yepr the

paper-work had been reduced to 1800 pages and the budget was SUS3SO million. Mr Ignatieff is a Canadian, who was appointed director of the United Nations Information Centre in Sydney in 1983. He was also appointed Unicef representative for' the Pacific region in the same year. He has a background in economics, English, French, business administration, and marketing. He was in Wellington for a Unicef meeting at the week-end and addressed a meeting of the Christchurch branch of the United Nations Association last evening.