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| Sunday, 7 December 2003 |
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New high-level panel begins to chart U.N.'s future UNITED NATIONS, Saturday (Reuters) The head of a panel charting the future of the United Nations says his group is to come up with "practical and doable" proposals in analyzing the world body's failure to respond to threats of war. After deep divisions over the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last month chose a panel of former prime ministers and foreign ministers, among others, to make proposals for the United Nations in the 21st century. Speaking before the 16-member group started its first weekend retreat in Princeton, New Jersey the former prime minister of Thailand, Anand Panyarachun said on Friday, "we are at a crossroads." "We have to try to focus on the fundamental causes of failure of the U.N. system to take collective action or make a collective response to threats of peace and security," he said of the report the panel will deliver by next September. "We have to focus on a set of recommendations that are practical and are doable," Panyarachun said. The panel was formed after Annan told world leaders at the General Assembly session last September that the world body had reached a "fork in the road," possibly as important as in 1945 when representatives of 50 countries met in San Francisco to draw up the U.N. charter. He challenged the Bush administration's doctrine of pre-emptive military intervention, saying it could lead to the law of the jungle. But he said that the multilateral security system was also in disrepair, often incapable of dealing with threats of weapons proliferation, terrorism and poverty Panyarachun said the world remembered U.N. failures more than its achievements. "It is true that the U.N. has had a mixture of good and disappointing results," he said. "But be that as it may. in recent years credibility of U.N. is at stake." "If the U.N. is found to be wanting or not as effective as people expect, it could mean we are moving towards the end of the U.N. system," he said. Included in the group is Qian Qichen, China's former foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov, a former Russian prime and foreign minister, former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. The American delegate is Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser. |
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