World Leaders Urge U.N. to Safeguard Rights Everywhere : Summit: Chiefs of state declare it is time to abandon the tradition of non-interference in nations’ affairs. Global interdependence cited by Boutros-Ghali.

World leaders, meeting in the first Security Council summit in history, pressed the United Nations to abandon its hallowed tradition of non-interference in the internal affairs of countries and move to protect human rights everywhere in the world.

Chiefs of state and heads of government ranging from President Bush and Russian leader Boris N. Yeltsin to Moroccan King Hassan II declared that the world community can no longer allow advancement of fundamental rights to stop at national borders.

And, they suggested, the United Nations should play a more active role in combatting abuses even if that means involving itself in issues that would once been regarded as off limits to the world body because they involved a country’s internal affairs.

“Civil wars are no longer civil, and the carnage they inflict will not let the world remain indifferent,” said the United Nations’ new secretary general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. “. . . Nations are too interdependent, national frontiers are too porous and transnational realities . . . too dangerous to permit egocentric isolationism.”

Meeting under the vaulted ceiling of the U.N. headquarters building that has become a monument to hopes for a more orderly world in the four decades since it was built along New York’s East River, the leaders wrapped their deliberations in traditional pomp and circumstance. While most wore plain dark business suits, Morocco’s Hassan was dressed in traditional North African robes and India’s P. V. Narasimha Rao donned the high-collared jacket named after the late Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister.

In keeping with the more activist vision most of the assembled leaders appeared to share, French President Francois Mitterrand called for establishment of a new U.N. rapid deployment force that could intervene in trouble spots around the globe to head off crises before they explode.

The force, as Mitterrand described it, would be relatively small--not powerful enough to deal with such things as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait--but nonetheless a sharp departure from the United Nations’ longstanding caution about intruding on the sovereignty of member states.

The proposal seems to build on the experience of last year’s Persian Gulf War, in which a U.N. force established a protected enclave in northern Iraq to shield Kurdish refugees from Iraqi military attacks.

Any attempt to pursue such an interventionist course would not go unchallenged, as strongly critical remarks by China’s Premier Li Peng made clear. Nevertheless, it reflected clear desire by major powers for the United Nations to assume some of the global leadership role held by the old Cold War superpowers, one now defunct and the other economically struggling.

The appeal for more assertive international action on global problems--particularly on the proliferation of nuclear weapons--was the most striking facet of a session called to outline a new vision for the institution in the aftermath of the Cold War.

The 15 nations on the United Nation’s preeminent body meet regularly throughout the year, but this was the first time they have ever been represented by their heads of state.

In another step marking the transition from the world power structure left in place at the end of World War II to the new order emerging from the collapse of East Bloc communism, Russia’s Yeltsin officially assumed the permanent member seat previously held by the Soviet Union.

The gathering of six prime ministers, five presidents, one king, one chancellor and two foreign ministers underscored the call for a new direction by assigning Boutros-Ghali to prepare a report on ways to strengthen “the capacity of the United Nations for preventive diplomacy, for peacemaking and for peacekeeping.”

In offering his proposal for a special U.N. rapid deployment force, Mitterrand volunteered 1,000 French soldiers who could be mobilized within 48 hours of a U.N. call and double that number within a week.

Asked about the feasibility of such a unit, British Prime Minister John Major, who presided over the meeting, told a news conference only that it “should be explored.”

The summit was generally harmonious, with the only discordant notes coming from China with its insistence on the principle of nonintervention, Japan with its demand for a permanent seat on the Security Council, and India with its refusal to go along with a final council declaration on nuclear proliferation.

In his address, China’s Li complained sharply about the demands “that all countries measure up to the human rights criteria or models” of others.

However, Geza Jeszenszky, the Hungarian foreign minister, invoked a plaintive example about the limits of the United Nations in the past. He recalled that when Soviet tanks put down the Hungarian rebellion in 1956, the United Nations ignored all the pleas by the Hungarians for help.

Jeszenszky said he understood why the Security Council, paralyzed by the veto power of the Soviet Union, could not help the Hungarians then. Now, though, “the United Nations should not leave people alone in the struggle for self-determination and democracy.”

Although he did not join some of the others in making specific proposals, President Bush echoed the call to “expand the circle of nations committed to human rights and the rule of law.”

“It’s an exciting opportunity for our United Nations,” he went on, “and we must not allow it to slip away.”

The problem of turning all this rhetoric into reality, however, was underscored by the final declaration of the conference. Ambassadors meeting for two weeks had tried to prepare a declaration that would be adopted by a consensus of all 15 members of the Security Council.

Despite all the talk about human rights, the declaration itself has barely a mention of the issue. The Chinese would not have accepted any ringing endorsement of human rights in the declaration. This raised the question of the difficulty of pushing any strong proposals that Boutros-Ghali may eventually make through a Security Council in which China has a veto.

China was not completely without support in the Security Council. Prime Minister Rao was irritated that India is often accused of human rights abuses in its suppression of separatists in Kashmir.

Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa called on the leaders, in pondering the U.N.’s future, to reconsider the Security Council’s makeup as well as its approach.

He said they should consider making membership “more reflective of the realities of the new era.” He suggested 1995, the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, as a target date.

While this suggestion seemed mild on the surface, the prime minister’s spokesman said that it was actually a veiled demand that Japan be granted a permanent seat on the Security Council within three years.

Although Japan, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, pays a higher assessment than any other U.N. member except the United States, it is not a member of the Big Five--the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China--that have permanent seats and a veto in the Security Council. That status is reserved by the U.N. Charter for the leaders of the alliance that defeated Germany and Japan in World War II.

Japan was represented at the summit meeting only because it had been elected to a two-year term on the council beginning Jan. 1. Germany, which is not serving on the council this year, demonstrated its influence nonetheless by persuading the leaders to adopt a strong statement on nuclear proliferation in their final declaration.

“The proliferation of all weapons of mass destruction constitutes a threat to international peace and security,” the declaration said. “The members of the council commit themselves to working to prevent the spread of technology related to the research for or production of such weapons and to take appropriate action to that end.”

These clauses were not accepted by India, for it possesses nuclear weapons and has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

World Leaders Gather

Meeting of Powerful U.N. Body

The gathering of leaders of the 15 Security Council nations marked the first time since the founding of the United Nations in 1945 that the council, the most powerful U.N. body, has convened at the highest level. Among the developments: Participants issued a declaration on collective security, arms control and nuclear non-proliferation. The declaration was not binding; only resolutions carry legal weight. The declaration asked Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to prepare a report by July 1 on strengthening peacekeeping, which could include creating a standing U.N. army. Boris N. Yeltsin said a worldwide defense shield could be created by merging the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative and technology now available in Russia’s defense complex. President Bush warned that nations such as Iraq are trying to acquire nuclear arms and weapons of mass destruction. Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, in his prepared remarks, stressed the importance of peacekeeping activities.

In Attendance United States: President Bush Britain: Prime Minister John Major Russia: President Boris N. Yeltsin France: President Francois Mitterrand China: Premier Li Peng Japan: Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa Austria: Chancellor Franz Vranitzky Belgium: Prime Minister Wilfried Martens Cape Verde: Prime Minister Carlos Veiga Ecuador: President Rodrigo Borja Morocco: King Hassan II Hungary: Foreign Minister Geza Jeszenszky (attending for President Arpad Goncz, who is ill) India: Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao Zimbabwe: Foreign Minister Nathan Shamuyarira (attending for President Robert Mugabe, whose wife died this week) Venezuela: President Carlos Andres Perez