Kofi Annan, LATE AS USUAL!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By Caroline Overington, Herald Correspondent in New York and Maggie Farley

September 24, 2003

The United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, attacked American foreign policy - warning it could stoke terrorism and global chaos - just hours before President George Bush was due to defend the US-led invasion of Iraq in a speech to the UN.

Mr Annan said the use of military force against terrorist groups could encourage more terrorism, while pre-emptive strikes could lead to a lawless world where nations attack one another "with or without justification".

Without mentioning the US or its allies in Iraq by name, he told a New York conference on terrorism that nations were deluded if they believed military action alone could end terrorism.

He said the fact a "few wicked men or women" commit murder in the name of a political cause does not make the cause any less just. "Nor does it relieve us of the obligation to deal with legitimate grievance."

Mr Annan said terrorism "will only be defeated if we act to solve the political disputes and long-standing conflicts which generate support for it".

"Accordingly, there needs to be more on the horizon than simply winning a war against terrorism. There must be the promise of a better and fairer world, and a concrete plan to get there."

Mr Annan also said nations that launch military action against terrorists need to "respect the limits which international humanitarian law places on the use of force".

"Terrorist groups may actually be sustained when ... governments cross the line and commit outrages themselves, whether it is ... indiscriminate bombardment of cities, the torture of prisoners, targeted assassinations, or accepting the death of innocent civilians as collateral damage."

Mr Bush was expected to tell the UN that the US and its allies were justified in pre-emptively striking Iraq, because they were sure Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and the world was better off without him.

But Mr Annan said pre-emptive attacks represent a "fundamental challenge to the principles on which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability have rested for the last 58 years".

He said the UN Security Council may need to consider ways of authorising "coercive measures" to address certain types of threats, "for instance, terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction".

Mr Annan will launch plans for "radical reforms" of the UN at the General Assembly. Since the US sidestepped the UN to invade Iraq this year, the world body has been looking for a way to recover its global standing.

Mr Annan will ask the assembly for an overhaul of the UN's global role. His suggestions include expanding the Security Council and forming a panel to consider the UN's most pressing internal issues.

"We have come to a fork in the road," he said. "This may be a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the United Nations was founded."

Those close to Mr Annan said he was deeply shaken by last month's terrorist bombing of the UN building in Baghdad, and the loss of his friend and colleague Sergio Vieira de Mello. The UN had "lost its innocence", he said at a memorial service this week.

A UN official, who was in Iraq, said the bombing "made him recognise that the UN is in severe crisis. The kind of thing he's saying now he's never said before".