Leading Article: Triple standards?

NATURALLY it looks unfair to Arabs. The United States bombs Iraq in the name of the United Nations but does not do the same to the Israelis or the Serbs, who are no less guilty of violating UN resolutions. To make matters worse, the victims in all three cases are Muslims. Amr Moussa, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, has warned the West against double standards in the selective enforcement of UN resolutions. On Monday the Saudi Arabian cabinet called pointedly for the implementation of all UN resolutions, mentioning Bosnia, Israel's Palestinian deportees and Iraq.

To some extent these are debating points or ways of covering the embarrassment of governments that support the bombing of Iraq, but they should not be dismissed too easily. They reflect the way many ordinary Arabs see the situation, so these perceptions become part of the political reality with which we have to deal. Arabs are particularly indignant that Israel is allowed to get away with flouting UN resolutions which call on it to withdraw from occupied territories. Pointing out that this anger is deliberately fomented for political purposes by Muslim fundamentalists will not make it go away.

A partial reply is to note that not all UN resolutions are the same. None of the resolutions applying to Israel invoked Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, which deals with threats to peace, so there are no provisions for enforcing them. In contrast, armed action against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait was approved in Resolution 678. The current bombing is said to be covered by Resolution 688, which cites the repression of the civilian population as a threat to peace, though the relevance of this resolution is contested.

Nor are the subjects of all UN resolutions of equal importance. Saddam Hussein poses a major threat to peace because he is still trying to build up his armed forces and nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry with the declared purpose of attacking his neighbours. Israel is not a threat to neighbouring states, even if there is a limited expansionist element in its ideology. Its misdemeanours have been in pursuit of its security interests and primarily in response to Arab attacks. Serbia, in contrast, is clearly guilty of aggression in that it has provided massive help to Bosnian Serbs. Here the only excuse for the weak and patchy implemention of UN resolutions is that there have been disagreements over the feasibility and practical value of more forceful action. The Arabs have a point. The West has been shamefully ineffectual in defending the Bosnian Muslims.

In the real world it is impossible for the United Nations to be totally even-handed or to implement all Security Council resolutions with equal determination because it is no more than the sum of its parts, which are nation states pursuing their own interests. Its resources are anyway overstretched. Nor can it conduct any serious military engagements without the United States, which is not going to send its armed forces on missions that do not in some way further US interests. The Arabs are, therefore, being simplistic and unrealistic when they lump Iraq and Israel together. Yet their complaints - even those that are not quite honest - should be heard because the UN will lose authority if it comes to be widely perceived as too selective or partial in the enforcement of its principles.