Annan wants full UN overhaul

Kofi Annan said that his reform proposals should be treated as a single package.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told member countries on Monday that his proposals to expand the Security Council and overhaul the way the global body fights poverty and terrorism should be treated as a single package and not an "a-la-carte menu" of choices.

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In proposing the most wide-ranging changes of the United Nations since its creation in 1945, Annan recommended new standards for anti-poverty assistance, a new human rights body, a condemnation of all forms of terrorism and a series of management reforms.

He also repeated his earlier recommendation to expand the Security Council from 15 to 24 seats.

He declined to take a position on two competing proposals before the U.N. General Assembly but said he wanted the body to decide before September.

Annan presented the 63-page report to the 191-member General Assembly a day after it was publicly released on Sunday.

Many see the report as an effort to restore confidence in the world body, shaken by the debate over the U.S. invasion of Iraq, corruption in the oil-for-food program and revelations of sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers.

"The temptation is to treat the list as a-la-carte menu and select only those that you especially fancy," Annan said. In this case that approach will not work. What I am proposing amounts to a comprehensive strategy."

This meant giving equal emphasis to "three great purposes of the organization: development, security and human rights," he said.

A BBC poll found a majority of people in 23 countries surveyed want a more powerful United Nations controlled by a Security Council expanded to take in Germany, India, Japan and Brazil. Most wanted the Security Council to have the power to override a veto by one of the five current permanent members -- Britain, the United States, Russia, China and France.

FREEDOM FROM WANT

Annan sought to balance U.S. and European concerns on terrorism and arms proliferation and poor countries' focus on development. He stressed that freedom must include freedom from want.

"Even if he can vote to choose his rulers, a young man with AIDS who cannot read or write and lives on the brink of starvation, is not truly free," Annan wrote in the report.

The United States is expected to object to a timetable for donating 0.7 percent of national income to "make poverty history." The United States currently spends 0.1 percent for development.

The report seeks a Security Council resolution making clear when the use of force is necessary. The Bush administration has insisted on the right to act unilaterally.

"If you need the help of other states to achieve your objectives, you must also be willing to help them achieve their objectives," Annan told the assembly. "That is why I urge you to treat my proposals as a single package.

The proposals also face objections from Arab nations because of a call for a treaty to define terrorism as any act intended "to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians." A treaty has been bogged down on arguments about resistance fighters, code for Palestinian suicide bombers.

A key innovation calls for creation of a smaller Human Rights Council to replace the 53-nation Geneva-based Commission on Human Rights, many of whose members are rights abusers seeking to protect other abusers. The new group would be elected by a two-thirds General Assembly vote.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International were quick to embrace this proposal. But both cautioned that any overhaul should retain independent investigators and the ability for witnesses and victims to testify.

Canada was the first nation to react. Its U.N. ambassador, Allan Rock, said the report included many Canadian priorities such as the "responsibility to protect" civilians from atrocities when governments failed to do so, and, as a last resort, use military force.

"A lot of hard work lies ahead but we are optimistic," Rock said.

The humanitarian group Oxfam also stressed the responsibility to protect civilians. "Millions of people are dying because of conflict and poverty while rich countries are busy jostling for Security Council seats," said Nicola Reindorp, head of Oxfam's New York office.

The full report is on the United Nations Web site: http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/.