THE UNITED NATIONS has been in the news of late. As usual, most of the news is negative: evidence suggesting that one or more members of the Security Council were bribed by Saddam; an inability to deal effectively with various crises in Africa; the embarrassing presence of nations such as Iran, Syria, Libya, Zimbabwe, and Saddam’s Iraq on U.N. commissions on human rights, proliferation and weapons of mass destruction; the oil for food scandal.