World leaders gathered at the United Nations this weekend have good reason indeed to reflect on its failures over the last year - but also on the organisation's potential contribution to a more just and better-governed world. For all its failings in Kosovo and now in East Timor, the UN would still have to be invented if it did not exist. It now needs to be reinvented to take account of a world transformed by "a recognition that there are rights beyond borders", in the words of the Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, in his address to the General Assembly this week. "A global era requires global engagement", he insisted. "Indeed, in a growing number of challenges facing humanity, the collective interest is the national interest". These are challenging words - and welcome ones from the man who holds responsibility for bringing the UN back towards the centre stage internationally. They justify the principle of intervention in spite of national sovereignty, if necessary over the heads of political leaders, when their citizens' rights are threatened. For this reason they are controversial and contested by a number of African and Asian states and by Russia and China on the Security Council. But even they have moved somewhat towards the new ethos of humanitarian intervention involved. It is not difficult to understand why there should be such resistance to it from states not represented on the Security Council. If intervention is to become genuinely operational it will be necessary to undertake a thoroughgoing reform of the UN's decision-making, including the possibility of qualified majority voting on key issues, and of its representative structures. Otherwise the suspicion will always be there that the major powers simply apply their own criteria and interests.
Mr Annan was at pains to defend the UN's record in East Timor from critics who attacked the decision to withdraw the Unamet mission after the Indonesian military and militias unleashed their attacks following the vote for independence on August 30th. The Security Council's "prompt and effective action" in agreeing a multinational force reflected exactly the unity of purpose he called for. But the grave problems it has faced since arriving in East Timor this week only serve to underline the shortcomings attending the whole UN approach. The UN's show of military determination in Dili yesterday was impressive, but remains largely symbolic given the difficulties the multinational force faces because it is so few in number. A great deal still depends on securing the co-operation of the Indonesian government and military. That makes the UN's task exceedingly tricky over the next couple of months, while the political struggle in Jakarta is unresolved. It also points up the difficulty facing the human rights dimension of the UN's involvement. The decision to convene the Human Rights Commission in Geneva could make work on the ground in Dili more dangerous. But it is certainly correct, giving a lead to universal values and bolstering the argument for making the UN much more than simply the sum of its most powerful parts in the years to come.