€2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Zambia, Zaire, Liberia are other recent victims of such intervention. The World Bank and the IFC have the same basic orientation as the IMF. They openly declare that their objective is to promote private capitalist interest all over the world. This ideological role manifestly conflicts with the UN principle that a country and its people have the sovereign right to decide their path of development. The World Bank is no less interventionist than its accomplice, the IMF. The World Bank, as the financier of the Madras Urban Development Programme, which added 550 buses to the state owned fleet, has given an ultimatum to the Tamil Nadu government that the bus fares must be hiked by 20 per cent. In the absence of such an increase, the World Bank has threatened to suspend further development credit to the state.11 It is these kinds of institutions that the US would like to show to the Third World as models for international economic cooperation. Ronald Reagan's recent statement on the IMF would indicate the American hold over these institutions and would establish how they are utilised to promote the foreign policy objectives of the US.12 The developing countries have been demanding the democratisation of the decision-making process in IMF and World Bank in consonance with the General Assembly system wherein each member-state has one vote and the decisions arc taken by majority. But the demand is being neglecied without any sound reasoning. Due to all these negative features, the Bretton Woods system could never become as universal and genuine as the UNCTAD or the UNESCO. Another diversionary tactics adopted by the US with a view to diluting the importance and the binding nature of the UN system is to take up the crucial issues, such as NIEO, to very informal and pliable forums such as the Cancun Summit. As preconditions for participation, the US insisted that Cuba should not be invited to the summit, despite the fact that Cuba was the chairman of the NAM at that time, and that there should not be any demand for a new international organisation. Concluding Remarks: The UN system has com,c to stay as a permanent feature of our contemporary international life. Its number and functions are ever widening in the crisis situation. In the transitional epoch it plays an active role in mobilising world public opinon on all matters which are crucial to mankind; it has stood in favour of peace and progress and reflected the reality of the escalating anti-imperialist struggle. It counters the world reactionary elements through its resolutions, which mobilise world public opinion and put pressure on imperialism. The UN system helps in the democratistion of decision making on international issues: the UN system is essential for the developing countries in their struggle against international monopoly capital. The unity of ' the developing countries which has been forged through the UN system is often so strong that even the US-supported military dictators arc