Leaders of more than a dozen nations including France and Afghanistan are to meet in New York onMonday to seek ways to give the United Nations the lead role in fighting global terrorism rather than the United States.
"In the same way as the United Nations should have theleading role in social and economic development in the world, itshould also have it in the fight against terror," conferencehost Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik told journalists.
Bondevik and Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaustsurvivor Elie Wiesel will lead the one-day talks entitled"Fighting Terrorism for Humanity" aimed at finding ways tocombat the root causes of terrorism like oppression and poverty.
"We can prevent and fight terrorism if we know more aboutwhy people are willing to sacrifice their lives and the lives ofothers," Bondevik said on Friday.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will open the conference.The US response to the September 11, 2001 attacks has beenprimarily military with war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Manynations opposed the war in Iraq, seeing scant evidence for thekey US charge that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction.
"I hope that they will not just think in military termsabout how to fight terrorism," Bondevik said of the UnitedStates. He said education and social reforms could help defusethe causes of terrorism.
About 15 national leaders are due to attend Monday's talksincluding French President Jacques Chirac - one of Washington'sbiggest critics over Iraq - Afghan President Hamid Karzai,Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and PakistaniPresident Pervez Musharraf.
US President George W. Bush decided not to attend,Norwegian officials said.Many foreign leaders will be in New York for the UNGeneral Assembly meeting.
Bondevik said terrorists often exploited poverty andreligion to recruit but that repression, human rights abuses andconflicts spawned by the collapse of states were often morepotent breeding grounds. "It can go deeper (than poverty), ithas to do with hatred," he said.
Proposals to jack up development aid to eliminate the rootsof terror "could be too simplistic. But we would have taken anargument from terrorists if we had managed to reduce, if not tosay eliminate, poverty."
He said it was time for a wider UN role two years afterthe September 11 suicide hijacker attacks.