The press and the un

The UN's work involves not only the delegations of member countries, the intergovernmental bodies under its aegis, and the secretariat, but also the press, or what is known as the "fourth estate/' UN activities are covered by correspondents from many countries, and to a large extent they shape world opinion on many important issues on the UN agenda. It is anything but easy to cultivate good working relations with foreign, especially Amer­ican, media. At the windup of every SC consultation (to say noth­ing of every formal council meeting), diplomats are beset in the UN lobby by a crowd of reporters. TV cameramen take close- ups of the ambassadors, ask them to step nearer, thrust out their microphones. Of course, it is possible to make a getaway through a side door, as some diplomats have done more than once. Or one can pause to answer the questions that are showered forth — "When does Russia plan to formally propose easing sanctions against Iraq?" "What rights does Russia reserve in the CIS oper­ations in Georgia and Tajikistan?" — the reporters trying to out- shout each other in the hope of eliciting answers to their ques­tions.

The very wording of the questions shows that the reporters who ask them want to hear sensational answers. Well, it cannot be helped, because the media are involved in a business enter­prise and need a bit of sensational material, a hint of scandal for the front page, to attract readers. (I remember one occasion on which a reporter asked me what the SC had discussed that day. Upon learning that the council had registered a smooth, suc­cessful completion of the UN operation in Mozambique, he re­marked disappointedly: "Successful? Then there's nothing to write about!") Be that as it may, ambassadors should not exit hastily through a side door unless they want the position of their country to be left to the guessers and speculators.

Many delegations attach great importance to working with the press. Some of them even rent premises at UN headquarters where they can give leading media representatives a closed brief­ing before an important meeting or, right on its heels, offer a frank assessment of the problem at hand or of the reefs on which a solution can founder. This "enlightenment" costs a pretty pen­ny but is undertaken as a necessity. "Do you know why we do this?" asked the press attache of a Western European mission in a moment of frankness as he chatted with his Russian colleague. "You will remember Carl Kraus, a well-known Austrian publish­er and journalist of the early twentieth century... who said that diplomats lied to journalists but, on reading the press the follow­ing day, came to believe their own lies". Well, there is some truth in this anecdote, as there is in any other. And it is a fact that diplomats, UN secretariat staff members, and even journalists themselves rely to a large extent on what they read in the press or see on television.

What I have described and am most familiar with, of course, are the methods that the Russian mission uses in its work — the diplomatic methods that are crucial to the fulfillment of our tasks. These tasks may be broadly defined as promoting Russia's na­tional interests at the United Nations, just as other countries strive to promote their own. But the unique nature of the United Na­tions is that one promotes the interests of one's own country only when they have been harmonized with the interests of others. This requires mutual concessions and compromises, but that's how multilateral diplomacy works. One cannot hope to intro­duce a national initiative in the United Nations and see it en­dorsed by all 185 member states without a single change. There must be changes and modifications to accommodate the interests of others. But the hoped-for result — a consensus among the UN's members — would be worth much more than any unilater­al action, since it promotes a global approach to the solution of the modern world's inescapably global problems.

LESSON 4