Next month, the United Nations convenes its Millennium Summit. One of the key issues the world body must face in the next century is its role in peacekeeping operations. The magnitude of the challenges were made plain this week when a special commission released its final report. It makes for grim reading. Not only because of the growing need for such missions, but because there is little sign that governments have the political will to support the U.N. in these endeavors.

Currently, the U.N. has deployed 35,000 troops in 14 missions around the world. Total costs for peacekeeping operations between July 1999 and June 2000 reached $1.417 billion, while headquarters support added another $41.7 million to the bill.

The U.N.'s record is mixed. There have been successes, notably in the Golan Heights, Cyprus and Latin America. The Cambodia mission, which ended that country's civil war and administered national elections in the early part of the 1990s, is also widely considered to have been a triumph. In Sierra Leone, Angola and Congo, its efforts have been futile. In Rwanda and in Srebrenica, in Bosnia, the U.N. was powerless to prevent massacres and genocide.