UN: UN secretary general Kofi Annan yesterday urged world governments to endorse sweeping reforms of the organisation, including an enlarged Security Council with new rules on when it can authorise military force.
Mr Annan also called for a body to replace the existing UN Human Rights Commission, a new commitment to ending world poverty, and a sweeping overhaul of the UN bureaucracy.
"This hall has heard enough high-sounding declarations to last us for some decades to come," Mr Annan told the General Assembly, where he introduced his 63-page report encompassing the biggest reforms in the UN's 60-year history.
The report is widely seen as an attempt by Mr Annan to reassert his leadership and to restore confidence in the UN after the bitter divisions over Iraq, and allegations of mismanagement and corruption in the UN's oil-for-food programme in Iraq.
He challenged world leaders to agree the reforms at a summit in September marking the UN's 60th anniversary.
"What I am proposing amounts to a comprehensive strategy," Mr Annan told world diplomats at the special General Assembly session yesterday morning. "I urge your heads of state and governments to be ready to take those decisions when they come here."
Mr Annan offered two models to expand the 15-member Security Council. One would add six new countries to the current five permanent members, which are the US, Britain, China, France and Russia, and bring the total number of permanent and non-permanent members to 24.
The second option would add a third tier of eight semi-permanent members: two each from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.
He also recommended that the council should set guidelines to determine when military action can be authorised, following the divisions which occurred when the US failed to get Security Council approval for the invasion of Iraq.
Mr Annan said deep divisions over the Iraq war threatened to undermine the international system of security and "the UN must be brought fully into line with today's realities.
"We all know what the problems are and we all know what we have promised to achieve," Mr Annan told the 191-member assembly. "What is needed now is not more declarations or promises, but action - action to fulfil the promises already made."
One of Mr Annan's boldest initiatives is to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights, "whose capacity to perform its tasks has been undermined by its declining credibility and professionalism", with a Human Rights Council elected by the 191 UN member countries.
The commission has been derided for rotating membership among countries regardless of their human rights record - like Sudan and Libya - and the new council would exclude countries with bad records on human rights.
The secretary general also sought to end a deadlock over the definition of terrorism by urging that no cause could justify the killing or injuring of civilians by non-state entities to influence governments, and rejecting a contention by some Arab nations that attacks on civilians to fight "state-sponsored terrorism" by Israel were acceptable.
The new definition states: "Any action constitutes terrorism if it is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organisation to do or abstain from doing any act".
Central to Mr Annan's reform package is the belief that world problems such as terrorism and poverty are interlinked.
He urged governments to honour commitments to provide 0.7 per cent of their gross national product for development aid, and to agree to full debt relief for the world's poorest countries, while pressing developing nations to step up the struggle against Aids.
"If governments take the decisions I'm suggesting in this report, I believe we have a much better chance of turning the tide against HIV/Aids and malaria in the next 10 years."
They would also have a much better chance of containing the spread of any new infectious diseases, of averting an attack by terrorists using nuclear or radiological weapons, and of preventing countries like Haiti, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone from sliding back into chaos or crisis.
A reformed UN would also have a better chance "of reaching a common understanding on how to deal with recalcitrant regimes like that of Saddam Hussein and of a United Nations that is much better able to take effective action - through a strengthened security council and a new, authoritative Human Rights Council, both working closely with regional organisations - to put a stop to major crimes against innocent people, such as those we are witnessing in Darfur".
The publication of the reform proposals comes just before former US federal reserve chairman Paul Volcker releases the results of an inquiry into corruption in the UN oil-for-food programme, including the activities of Mr Annan's son, Kojo.