Moderator JOHN RUGGIE smiles at United Nations official JACQUES P. KLEIN during a panel discussion at the IOP entitled “The Search for Peace.” Please see story, page 3.

Three United Nations officials drew on decades of experience to urge a cautiously optimistic view of U.N.-mediated peace and nation-building at a panel at the Kennedy School of Government’s ARCO Forum last night.

The lively, contentious panel, entitled “The Search for Peace,” brought together three men who have held or currently hold the position of Special Representative to the Secretary-General (SRSG) of the U.N.

Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs John Ruggie, who moderated the event, described the SRSG position as possibly “the most difficult job in the entire world.”

According to James G. LeMoyne ’74-’75, who is currently an SRSG overseeing the U.N. presence in Colombia, the job entails peace-keeping and nation-building efforts.

But he said “the U.N. has no clear mandate for peace-building.”

“I can promise you,” he said to audience members interested in pursuing his line of work, “you will never have enough money, never enough time, never enough international support.”

Jacques P. Klein, a current SRSG, said he struggles with determining when it is necessary for the U.N.’s peacekeeping forces to intervene.

At times, he said, member nations have “no national security interest” threatened, but “what’s going on is so egregiously wrong that something must be done.”

The three speakers emphasized the current relevance of these moral quandaries.

Bernard Kouchner, a former SRSG and founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, said that the U.N. must ultimately deal with the threat posed by Saddam Hussein—but the time is not right.

“I don’t understand the timing of Mr. Bush,” he said.

But he said that in some situations preventive measures are necessary, “otherwise it will always be too late.”

When the U.N.’s peacekeeping forces move in, the situation can grow even more complex, Kouchner said. He used as an example the U.N.’s intervention in Kosovo, for which he served as the SRSG.

“In Kosovo we were aware of the victims, [but our] mandate was particularly unclear...We had to set up a state from garbage problems to the constitution,” he said.

LeMoyne was bleaker about the chances of lasting success in the U.N.’s nation-building mission.