A curious thing about the United Nations is that it has existed for sixty years without a definite identity. Sometimes the focus is on the general assembly, sometimes on one of its many do-good agencies and sometimes on the peace-keeping blue berets. Yet in none of these varying and flexible identities has the UN been recognized as an organization which is independent of its membership. This membership of 192 nations constitutes the general assembly, only two-thirds of which can sanction a change in the security council, a matter subject to intense rivalries, manipulation, horse-trading and regionalism. Where is then the UN?s centre of power that moves, directs and shapes its decisions?

A process of elimination leads us to the security council with its 15 members. Eliminate the ten rotating members and we have the five veto-holding major powers. List them according to the clout they wield and there is Bush?s America right on top. All of this, of course, has been obvious since 1945, but never openly acknowledged. That is till John Bolton, the recent Bush appointee as US envoy to the UN, jocularly announced that America was the sole member of the world organization.

Despite piously expressing support for the UN, the United States of America has been a prime UN-baiter. Its refrain has been that the UN is impotent, that it is dead, that it is ?tarnished? by scandals, that it has been marginalized and that it is presumptuous in its belief that it has authority over the American people without their consent. This attitude is evident in the unilateralism that once enabled George W. Bush to brush aside the security council and launch an illegal attack on Iraq. Reports from Iraq show that Iraqis are often unable to distinguish UN operations from the overall US presence in the country. Kofi Annan presented the problem pithily when he said, ?The UN hasn?t power unless those who have it switch it through the UN as a matter of choice.?

Under increasing pressure on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein had produced a 12,000-page dossier for the UN. An intense campaign started soon by the US forced the then Colombian president of the security council to ?hand over control of the document to Washington?. On the face of it, the hapless Colombian leader and the security council were blamed. But the moving force had been Bush?s America. This fact is glossed over, including by the US itself.

Not that the US has always had its way. Sometimes the secretary-general does things that go against its interests. Also sometimes, the other veto-holding permanent powers become obstructive. There is, however, always instant display of American ire and hints of retaliation. The common interests of the big four also prevents them from not taking the sole superpower into account. The moral of story is that the ongoing dialogue on UN reforms is entirely academic unless it faces up to what Pervez Musharraf would call the core issue ? that the US policy is to use the UN as a fig leaf when it can or bash it as something ?out there? when it can?t.

The UN is declared a basket case until circumstances bring it back into favour. So UN reforms must logically begin in the US, in the White House, in the presidential office, and essentially in the president?s mind. And Bush?s nomination of Bolton is the answer we have got so far. A council resolution, tailored to suit the US interest, is adopted and becomes the touchstone by which a nation is arbitrarily judged. Other resolutions which the US does not bother to veto on Israel for one ? are ignored. It is a situation one would be advised to ignore.

Against this extremely maladjusted background, what is New Delhi?s position? Does it accept that the persistent insinuation that it is for Kofi Annan to reform the UN is a colossal lie? Or does it recognize that the proposals for reform and the aspirations of nations, including India, to be a permanent member of the council have become dangerously intermixed? Changing the council composition will not necessarily to make the UN more effectual. Nor is anything to be gained by viewing the veto as a status symbol. Another veto added to the existing five will do nothing to improve the fragile cohesion the UN has managed to preserve. It will only increase the negative capacity of the council. Moreover, does any power currently agitating for permanent membership with the veto envisage using it against any of the original five? To ask this question is also to ask whether New Delhi has thought out the implications of its refusal to join the council without the veto. What the council needs is not more vetos but more permanent members, able and willing, to bring before the council points of view that have either been ignored so far or been poorly presented. More and varied opinions will, hopefully, give the council the force and substance it has lacked in the past ? a lack that has reduced it to what some call a ?lackey? of the US.

Recasting the council will be a long, complicated process, the end result of which is anyone?s guess. Which is why so many countries, inclined to flatter India without much cost to themselves, have ?pledged? support for India?s candidacy though carefully saying nothing about the veto. Yet New Delhi trumpets its aspirations from the roof-top. The undisguised glee with which New Delhi claimed Beijing?s endorsement of India?s candidacy reflects, at worst, a misreading of China?s position and, at best, a misplaced enthusiasm for its self-appointed cause.

China shares with the US and Russia the view that consensus is the only acceptable way of determining the shape of the council to come. Which firmly puts the assembly back to where it belongs. Manmohan Singh has spoken of discrimination. But discrimination has been at the heart of the UN since 1945 and to pretend otherwise is to misinterpret the world body in the interests of what appears to be a preoccupation with national prestige.

The position Manmohan Singh has taken does not suggest that the ministry of external affairs has applied its collective mind to the problem. No surprise that K. Natwar Singh failed to get Bush?s endorsement of India?s candidacy. That he ever thought that he could is an index of how out of touch he is.

?Hell, no?, was Kofi Annan?s answer to the question whether he would resign. It is the answer of someone who knows the reality behind the appearance, and also all the forces at work behind the well-polished image of the world organization. As for Condoleezza Rice?s advice that the UN must reform or die, she should convey that to her own president.