Britain’s Major to Urge Watchdog Role for U.N.

Prime Minister John Major, host to the G-7 economic summit meeting of the leading industrial democracies, will urge his fellow leaders to enhance the role of the United Nations as a “world watchdog,” government sources here reported Sunday.

Major hopes that the summit meeting, which begins today, will support a stronger U.N. role, including intervention, in international disputes, aides said as the leaders began assembling here.

Major is reported to feel that he has the tacit understanding of his fellow leaders from the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada to push for a more interventionist United Nations, which proved its worth in the Persian Gulf War.

Major will also urge the G-7 leaders--and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, whom he will meet after the conference ends Wednesday--to call for a U.N. registry of arms sales to keep tabs on and control the flow of arms to volatile areas such as the Middle East.

And the G-7 meeting is also expected to issue a political declaration warning Iraq again that it must disclose the whereabouts of all elements of its nuclear program or face serious consequences.

Major’s broad proposals will underline the political side to the summit meeting, which will devote its first day today to informal discussions of foreign policy issues by the chiefs of government, while finance ministers will talk about knotty economic problems.

The two main economic topics on the agenda are what sort of aid should be given to the Soviet Union and the impasse in talks involving the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)--the world’s principal trading mechanism.

Major and President Bush have already said that Gorbachev will not immediately be promised aid in the form of money for the troubled Soviet economy.

Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, after meeting Major on Sunday, declared that he was not overly optimistic about any kind of aid that the G-7 could give Gorbachev. “I don’t expect miracles or blank checks,” he said.

GATT has become bogged down by sharp differences between the United States on one side and Britain, France and Germany on the other over reducing subsidies that European governments give to their farmers.

Last year’s economic summit in Houston called for a successful conclusion to the latest round of GATT negotiations by the end of 1990, something that did not happen because of the disagreement about high European farm subsidies.

American leaders have warned that without a new GATT agreement, the world economy could be racked by protectionism.

On the issue of the United Nations, Major wants that world body to be a peacemaking rather than a peacekeeping organization, taking a much more active role than it has in the past in quelling conflicts before they break out, according to sources at No. 10 Downing St.

The host leader also will press for establishment of a worldwide disaster-relief organization, in which the United Nations would play a leading role.

Major believes, aides said, that Gorbachev would support the British leader’s recommendations for a more powerful role for the United Nations.

A proposed declaration on a stronger future role for the United Nations and on the disaster-relief proposal is expected to be delivered by British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd at the summit Tuesday.