UN seeks greater role in addressing financial crisis

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UNITED NATIONS, April 16 (Xinhua): In about six weeks, the UN General Assembly (GA) will kick off a summit meeting, which the president of the 192-member body has called "the most important in the history of the United Nations."
Perhaps that remains to be seen, but the summit, slated for June 1-3, is on perhaps the biggest single issue to grip the world in decades, the world financial and economic crisis and its impact on development.
President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann of the General Assembly told reporters here Tuesday that the economic crisis, "worse than the Great Depression" of 1929, "is affecting the entire world and was brought about mainly as a result of social irresponsibility, greed-insatiable greed-on the part of a few countries" while "the vast majority that had nothing to do with that were paying the heaviest price."
The world body, designed to safeguard world peace and promote global development under the UN Charter, is seeking a greater role in helping the international community, especially the underdeveloped countries to tackle the current global financial crisis, a topic used to be dealt with by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
"In the past, financial responsibility roles were matters to be considered by Bretton Woods institutions, but now after 64 years, for the first time, we are looking at a new financial monetary trade architecture."
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were founded, the US dollar established as the international reserve and the gold standard set at 35 US dollars an ounce at Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, in the US state of New Hampshire, in 1944 with an eye to recovery following the end of World War II. Now, d'Escoto says it is the General Assembly's turn to take the lead. "We have to make sure we have a more stable world economy," he said. "That was one of the fundamental purposes when the United Nations was founded."
The summit is inclusive. The upcoming summit on the financial and economic crises that have swept the globe seeks to give a voice to nations not responsible for the turmoil but most impacted by it, D'Escoto said, adding that the so-called Group of 8 (G8) and Group of 20 (G20) industrialized nations represent only a fraction of the world's countries.