ABSTRACT
The United Nations (UN) came into existence in 1945 primarily as a security organization designed to prevent wars and punish aggressors. The core of the UN—its Security Council—was set up in such a way that the five most formidable powers of that era, Great Britain, the United States, France, Russia and China, dominated it by dint of their military might and their veto power. The UN Security Council, unlike its weaker predecessor, the League of Nations' Executive Council, was emphatically designed to deter or prevent such calamities. At the start of the Spring 1945 meeting, one of the central controversies was the issue of the veto. In the 1999 Yugoslavian issue, the UN came into play at the end of the bombing campaign. The peace settlement concluded between the President of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, the special emissary from Russia, Victor Chernomyrdin, and the Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, specifically assigned the UN the supervising authority over the reconstruction of Kosovo.
