The Prague Post Online: News: Insiders mull failed UN campaign

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Insiders mull failed UN campaign

Reputation, track record cost country Security Council seat

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 31st, 2007 issue

The Czech Republic’s “diplomatic maturity” may have cost it a nonpermanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the UN’s 15-member peacekeeping body.

After two unsuccessful rounds, the country withdrew its candidacy for the 2008 East European seat Oct. 16, allowing rival Croatia to pass through the third round uncontested.

While the Foreign Affairs Ministry prepares an analysis of what went wrong with the Czech campaign, insiders speculate that a range of factors, from the country’s stance on human rights to President Václav Klaus’ troublemaker reputation, might have led to its failure.

The Czech Republic trailed Croatia by only five votes in the first round. The second round, however, left Croatia with 108 votes and the Czech Republic with only 86, prompting the country to withdraw from the race. That gave Croatia the two-thirds majority it needed to be elected.

“We didn’t want to block Croatia,” says Martin Palouš, the permanent Czech representative to the UN. “We wanted to end it in a gentlemanly manner.”

Although many factors could have contributed to the loss, it is likely the Czech Republic’s status as a veteran UN member played a decisive role, Palouš says.

As a founding UN member, the Czechs have held an UNSC seat four times since the UN’s establishment in 1945.

Unlike Croatia, “the Czech Republic is a known trademark,” Palouš says. “Croatia, on the other hand, is a country that, 12 years ago, was itself the subject of UNSC talks.”

By voting for Croatia, a UN member since 1992, the other 74 member states that have never held a UNSC seat may have hoped to increase their own chances of being elected in the future, Palouš says.

Additionally, the country’s hard-line stance on human rights issues may have cost it the votes of nations whose governments have been the recent subjects of Czech criticism.

“We started off with a handicap of at least six votes,” Palouš says. “From the beginning, nations like Iran, Burma and Cuba were definitely not going to vote for our country.”

The Czech Republic’s reputation as a human rights ambassador may have also alienated developing countries, which failed to identify with the “diplomatically mature” Czech platform. “For third-world nations, human rights issues are problems for developed countries,” Palouš says.

When lobbying for the support of developing countries, the Czech Republic had to diversify its focus on issues that were relevant to those nations.

According to Palouš, the Czech Republic “tried to focus its priorities on economic and developmental aid,” but “our strong stance on human rights played a more definitive role.”

The UNSC candidacy began in 2003, initiated by the Social Democrat-led Cabinet of Prime Minister Vladimír Špidla.

Despite his party’s initial opposition to the candidacy, current Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek’s Civic Democrat-led Cabinet decided to follow through with the previous government’s agenda after the 2006 elections.

As the country’s campaign efforts stagnated due to a domestic political debate, Croatia remained focused on the candidacy. “While Croatia was busy lobbying for four years, we only started to work on it here for the past year,” Topolánek says. “Two-thirds of the game was lost.”

At Topolánek’s request, the Foreign Affairs Ministry is preparing an in-depth analysis of the Czech campaign in the UN. “We are waiting for the green light to release the information,” ministry spokeswoman Zuzana Opletalová says.

The candidacy’s unexpected failure has elicited criticism from leading politicians, including European Parliament Deputy Josef Zieleniec, who blames Klaus’ “anti-European” views for the debacle.

“As an EU member state, the Czech Republic should have held all the trump cards. … This obviously didn’t happen in our case,” he writes in an Oct. 19 editorial in the daily Mladá fronta Dnes. “Thanks to the [diplomatic strategies] of Václav Klaus, the Czech Republic has earned the reputation of a European troublemaker.”

Zieleniec also criticizes Klaus’ September speech to the UN, in which he voiced his skeptical views on global warming.

“At a time when the fight against climate change is becoming a priority for the UN Council, it is difficult to imagine that a country whose leader is the only one in the world who denies its logic would be elected to the UNSC,” he says.

Despite this criticism, James J. Townsend, Jr., the director of the Program on International Security at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., says the country should remain optimistic.

“I wouldn’t read into it as though it were some dark conspiracy theory. For whatever reason, Croatia seemed to have the upper hand, but I haven’t heard of one silver bullet that did it,” he says. “My message to the Czech Republic is to continue being an involved UN member, and to keep trying.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com

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