Friday, September 8 2006 12:14 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: Shashi Tharoor, India's candidate for secretary-general of the United Nations, lamented that UN peacekeepers often take too long to arrive at an international hot spot and has promised he would mount more effective operations, if elected.

"We simply don't get our soldiers out to operations quickly enough," said Tharoor at a discussion on the 'Future of United Nations' at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Thursday during a campaign stop in Washington.

Tharoor, currently UN undersecretary-general for public affairs and a 28-year veteran of the organisation, partially faulted world governments for having "lost a real sense of the urgency behind the need to provide soldiers ready and able to move at very short notice."

"I think we really have to run peace as effectively as governments have run war in the past," Tharoor said.

He championed changes at the United Nations, although he acknowledged that getting approval needed from the world's nations would be difficult.

"We need reform not because the UN has failed, but because it has succeeded enough to be worth investing in," he said.

Tharoor also cautioned that UN dealings with Iran over its nuclear programme did not represent a repudiation of Iran. The United States says Iran is working toward building nuclear weapons. Iran maintains that its programme is for peaceful purposes.

"Iran remains, as a member state, a key partner of the United Nations and I would try not to lose sight of that," he said.