UN: There need to be radical reforms to the United Nations if it is to cope with the challenges posed by war, terrorism, poverty and human rights abuse, the secretary-general of the organisation, Mr Kofi Annan, said yesterday.
In a major report published to coincide with the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Centre, Mr Annan said the recent attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad was a direct challenge to world security.
Mr Annan said the divisions over Iraq since the US-led invasion in March would not be easily overcome. He said that war and other conflicts highlighted the problems of international legitimacy, new and more virulent forms of terrorism, the proliferation of non-conventional weapons and the spread of criminal networks.
In the report, Mr Annan said he was still reeling from the August 19th bombing of the UN compound in Iraq, which killed 22 people and injured 100.
"I see that attack as a direct challenge to the vision of global solidarity and collective security, rooted in the United Nations Charter," he wrote. "Its significance thus reaches beyond the tragedy that affects us personally, as individuals, or even institutionally, as an organisation."
Mr Annan said he had written to 191 nations two weeks before the annual General Assembly ministerial session, asking them to come up with ideas on fighting terrorism, weapons proliferation, poverty and promoting development as they had pledged in the 2000 UN Millennium Summit.
On weapons of mass destruction, Mr Annan noted there was no global comprehensive monitoring and enforcement system, even for nuclear inspections, and too little effort by nuclear powers to "diminish the symbolic importance of weapons".
He criticised the 191-member General Assembly for lacking priorities, the Security Council for being undemocratic, the UN Trusteeship Council for existing without real work and international financial institutions for making decisions without consulting the developing nations they were meant to serve.
Mr Annan said the sheer size of the General Assembly had produced an agenda crowded with overlapping items of interest to only a few, decisions taken that most nations ignore and "repetitive and sterile debates".
The opposite is often the case in the 15-member Security Council, whose decisions can affect war and peace, and in international financial institutions, which have a "decisive impact on the real world".
In both institutions, the developing world "feels its views and interest are insufficiently represented", he wrote. "For many, poverty, deprivation and civil war remain the highest priority."
Africa's development, in particular, continued to be hampered by war. "Many of the continent's recent conflicts have been characterised by extreme acts of violence perpetrated against civilians," he said.
Mr Annan added that decisions to take action have been "hesitant and tardy" such as intervening in massacres "verging on genocidal proportions" in the Congo and Liberia.