Friday, April 22 2005 09:43 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Jakarta: Pressing for the UN reform, Secretary General Kofi Annan yesterday (Apr 21, 2005) hoped member States would be able to overcome their differences to secure an agreement on the "vital issue" before September even as he called for a "comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy" to deal with the menace.

"Just about everyone agrees that the United Nations needs reform - but each country tends to approach the issue through the prism of their own most acute concerns," Annan told a closed-door meeting of the assembled Foreign Ministers and leaders in Jakarta on reforms, ahead of the Asian-African Summit beginning today (Apr 22, 2005).

"It is my hope that member States will be able to overcome their differences to secure agreement before September on this vital issue," he said.

Annan said the Security Council should be broadly representative of the realities of power in today's world. The General Assembly should take bold measures to streamline its agenda and speed up the deliberative process, he said.

India is among the countries bidding for a permanent seat in an expanded UN Security Council.

Annan also said that the "States should commit to a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy based on five pillars: dissuading people from resorting to terrorism or supporting it, denying terrorists access to funds and materials, deterring States from sponsoring terrorism, developing State capacity to defeat terrorism and defending human rights."

Annan also felt the world had lost consensus on basic principles about what constituted a threat to peace and security, about when the use of force was legitimate and advisable and about who should authorise it.

"After all, when force is used without international consensus, some of the biggest repercussions are in your part of the world. Likewise when there is inaction in the face of horrendous human rights crimes, as we saw in Rwanda, the weak and the poor suffer the most," he told the delegates.

He said that the world "is not paying enough attention to the challenges of development. Every day people are dying from poverty, hunger and disease but we are not seeing enough action to meet key commitments to boost resources for development even though we have in place an agreed development framework".

He noted that the contribution of the UN to the cause of human rights was very important. "But it is uneven, it is often politicised and it does not focus on all human rights in all countries."

Annan underlined that "we cannot have security without development; we cannot have development without security; and we cannot have either without respect for human rights".

He said that the challenges facing the world were truly interconnected and action on each of these fronts reinforced progress on the others.

"Inaction on any one of them threatens progress on the others," he said, adding it prompted him to propose UN reforms.