United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has predicted the United States would fail in its bid to delete the phrase "Millennium Development Goals" from a document on wide-ranging UN reforms.
The goals, put forward at a 2000 UN summit, describe eight objectives on poverty, hunger, primary education, Aids and other issues, with dates to implement them.
Days before the largest gathering of world leaders in history on September 14th-16th, UN ambassadors were still in talks aimed at overcoming divisions on how to tackle extreme poverty and enhance human rights, UN management reforms and global security.
The United States proposed that "Millennium Development Goals" be substituted by "internationally agreed development goals" and wants to make sure Washington does not commit itself to a timetable on foreign aid, as the European Union has done.
"I think the idea of expunging the phrase "Millennium Development Goals" from the document is not on," Mr Annan told BBC World Service radio.
"It's a phrase that has been embraced by the whole world," he said. "And this is why I think that anyone who tries to remove it is going to fail."
But US Ambassador John Bolton maintains some of the language went further than what the United States had agreed to in previous conferences and that the United Nations was trying to paper over differences that had existed for years.
But Annan insisted most of the 191 UN member states disagreed with the US position.
"These are simple objectives. People want to live in dignity. We have to respect their human dignity and we have to give them dreams and targets to meet," he said.