Inside Camelot

A distinguished diplomat, Gharekhan has served as the prime minister’s foreign affairs pointsman and as the personal representative of the secretary general to the UN. There must be pretty little that he does not know of international affairs over the past two decades despite his subdued, almost self-effacing manner. The book reflects his character: lucid, informative, reflective, frank, fair and sober. The events he recounts were explosive and ferociously contested by powerful countries when they happened. Surely not all the dramatis personae could have been well-behaved or agreeable. We have it all, a blow-by-blow account from the rink itself where the author played the referee between the likes of the US president’s representative, the Chinese and Russians, and Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, to mention but a few. But the book blows no whistles of scandal or outrage; there are no smuggled confidential notes and papers to embarrass, no accusations with an eye on the bestseller lists.

The title comes from the shape of the table at which the Security Council assembles in the chamber. How much luck this horseshoe has brought to the UN is anyone’s guess. If the tragedies of Rwanda and Somalia or the events relating to Iraq are anything to go by, not much. But the book points out that for the few unhappy things the UN is unable to prevent, there are many more that it does, even if they do go unnoticed.

The author was associated with the Security Council for six years, as India’s representative from 1991-1992, and as the personal representative of the secretary general to the Council from 1993-1996. These were exciting years, of the world emerging from the Cold War era, UN involvement in cases of civil strife or civil war in Somalia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Angola etc, the invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf War, Resolution 687 and Oil-for-food, Yugoslavia and Bosnia, the Middle East peace process, and the Lockerbie disaster. The author’s account of each of these virtually makes the reader relive the experience. The intent is made clear in the introduction itself: "It is not my intention to provide the definitive history of each of the conflicts covered in the book, nor of the policies pursued by members of the Council nationally, nor indeed of the peace-keeping operations concerned. It is however the definitive history of the handling of those conflicts by the Security Council.... I want the readers to get a ‘feel’ of the Security Council." In that he has most certainly succeeded. I have been to the UN building several times and attended the General Assembly twice but have never had the good fortune to be seated at the horseshoe table. Having read Gharekhan’s book I felt I sat there with him. His account of the election of the secretary general in 1991 (Boutros Ghali) and in 1996 (Kofi Annan) is especially gripping.

‘Some thoughts on reform of the Security Council’ is a useful chapter that shows the road ahead with all its present uncertainties. Like most things about the UN, the desire for reform too is an earnest wish for something better, knowing fully well that the ideal has always given way to the feasible. If only wishes were horses! Let’s hope that we will see some movement in both reform and re-form, as Gharekhan puts it. "The former would deal with the structure and the latter with the ways and means of achieving the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter." There will be more permanentmembers one day, including India, but hopefully the horseshoe table will remain.

(Salman Khursheed is a former deputy foreign minister and president of Congress Party in UP).