Thursday, September 1 2005 13:58 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Durban: Alleging that some powerful countries, including permanent members, were employing tactics to obstruct UN reforms, South Africa has warned that member States may not reach an agreement on the draft document before world leaders meet in New York especially with the US proposing hundreds of new amendments.

"Everything must start from scratch now," Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said addressing the country's Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs about the amendments submitted by the U S to a document dealing with UN reform.

The US amendments had, "thrown everything open again on all the things we thought we had reached consensus on". The Minister said this was the "real worry", especially in light of the fact that emissaries of African countries were still hoping to do last-minute work on an African position on UN reform while they were gathered in New York. "We can still do some work there and we can then judge whether we'll be able to succeed or not."

Dlamini-Zuma said an underlying problem was that there were countries, which want to keep the status quo, including countries that were presently among the powerful five permanent members of the Security Council (Russia, China, Britain, the United States and France).

"There were powerful countries that wanted to keep the status quo and were not courageous enough to say so in public, but instead used tactics to create an environment that acted against change, she said.

"It will be important in the end to see who does not want the reform of the UN," South African Foreign Minister said. "At the moment it is still very clouded."