The UN rolled out the red carpet yesterday for more than 170 leaders attending the world's largest summit one day after approving a blueprint to reform the world body on its 60th anniversary.

 

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan will meet a host of world leaders during the three-day gathering tasked with endorsing the 35-page reform document approved by the UN General Assembly after months of negotiations.

 

The reform package sought to strike a balance between fighting global poverty and battling terrorism, while promoting human rights, preventing genocide and UN management reforms.

 

On development, the reform package agrees to adopt and implement comprehensive national development strategies to achieve internationally agreed poverty-reduction goals, including the Millennium Development Goals set five years ago.

 

It also backed an early reform of the 15-member UN Security Council, as an essential element of the overall effort to reform the UN, to enhance its legitimacy and effectiveness, asking the General Assembly to review progress on the planned expansion by the end of the year.

 

"We didn't get everything we wanted," said Annan, who had presented a much-more ambitious plan to reform the institution. "But we can build on it," he added.

 

Annan hailed the adoption of the UN reform package, but deplored the fact that it did not contain a chapter on disarmament and non-proliferation, calling this "a real disgrace."

 

"The good news is that we have an outcome document (for the upcoming summit of world leaders)," the secretary-general told reporters after the assembly endorsed the package.

 

"I would encourage you not to describe it as a failure," he told reporters who pointed out that the proposals agreed were much less ambitious than what the UN chief had envisaged.

 

"Reform is a process, not an event and we are going to continue after the summit" of world leaders, Annan said.

 

US officials had pushed hard for UN management reforms and the creation of a new Human Rights Council.

 

"We didn't get everything we wanted." said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns. "We had to compromise."

 

Burns said that it is "not a 100 per cent victory, but it's a very good beginning…. There is some unfinished business. We have to come back in a few months."

 

Britain's UN envoy Emyr Jones Parry said on behalf of the EU that the compromise document "is a tremendous achievement."

 

"It means that the summit can start on a correct basis," he added. "For us the challenge will be . . . to actually maintain the progress of what has been agreed today."

 

'Document is solid'

 

"The document is solid," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko told journalists on the eve of the UN 60th anniversary world summit.

 

He said the accord was the product of months of "very intensive" negotiations among a core group of states and admitted it fell short of original goals because "all states tried to maximize their positions."

 

"As with any document produced by the UN, it is a compromise," Yakovenko said.

 

Yakovenko said that Russia's primary objective during the summit would be to fortify the role of the UN in general and of the UN Security Council specifically in managing world affairs.

 

In that regard, he said, it was more important that any decision on how to broaden representation on the Security Council will be "practically unanimous" within the UN than that it be taken quickly.

 

"There is no need to rush on this," Yakovenko said, adding that debate on Security Council enlargement had become "a somewhat emotional polemic."

 

Russia, which as one of the five permanent Security Council members has veto power in the body, would oppose any reform that it perceived as undermining the effectiveness of the council, he said.

 

On the US plan for creation of a new UN Human Rights Council, Yakovenko said Russia was in agreement with Washington on the principle but not on the practical selection of states to be represented in such a body.

 

"We think that all governments should have a right to elect members" to a UN Human Rights Council while, according to Yakovenko, the US would like to see only a limited quantity of states it perceives as "democratic" on the council.

 

The reform document was approved on Tuesday as Swedish diplomat Jan Eliasson succeeded Gabon's Jean Ping as chair of the incoming General Assembly's 60th session.

 

US President George W. Bush yesterday urged compassion for the needy and pressed the global community to "put the terrorists on notice" by cracking down on any activities that could incite deadly attacks,

 

Bush pressed for Security Council approval of a resolution calling upon all nations to take steps to end the incitement of terrorist acts and asked nations to agree to prosecute and to extradite anyone seeking radioactive materials or nuclear devices.

 

The UN Security Council adopted unanimously yesterday a resolution prohibiting incitement to commit acts of terrorism and to prevent such conduct.

 

(China Daily September 15, 2005)