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Thursday, Dec. 2, 2004

The panel's long-awaited report, which was commissioned by Secretary-General Kofi Annan after last year's diplomatic battle over Iraq, said the dangers confronting the world today cannot be dealt with by any nation acting alone, even a superpower.

The 95-page report laid out a new vision for collective action to tackle threats to global security and to make the Security Council "more proactive."

"Today's threats recognize no national boundaries, are connected, and must be addressed at the global and regional as well as the national levels," the panel said. "No state, no matter how powerful, can by its own efforts alone make itself invulnerable to today's threats."

Former Thai Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun, who chaired the panel, said members were divided over expanding the 15-nation Security Council - now dominated by post-World War II powers - an issue has challenged the world body's 191 member states for more than a decade.

The panel therefore presented two options: One would add six new permanent members and the other would create a new tier of eight semi-permanent members two each from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.

Panel members agreed that only the current five permanent members - the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - should retain veto power.

Seeking more influence over global decisions, Brazil, Germany, India and Japan joined forces in September to lobby for permanent seats. Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Wednesday that new permanent members should have veto power.

A joint statement issued Wednesday by the four countries, however, made no mention of the veto, instead urging the international community "to embrace this opportunity wholeheartedly to bring about the needed change" in the Security Council.

South Africa and Nigeria are the top candidates for one African seat and Egypt is pushing for the other, insisting that Arab nations must be permanently represented on the council, diplomats said.

The 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission - which has been criticized because its members, including Libya, have used the body to protect their governments from criticism - also should be expanded to include all member states, the panel said.

The issues facing the international community, the panel said, go far beyond fighting wars and must include campaigns to fight poverty, terrorism, environmental destruction, organized crime and weapons proliferation.

The report also addressed questions about the Security Council's role in authorizing the use of force, which came to the fore in the run-up to last year's war in Iraq when the United States had to abandon an attempt to get U.N. approval because of sharp opposition from France, Germany, Russia and other council members.

The panel said it saw no reason to change the U.N. Charter, which permits the use of force for self-defense only in case of an attack or if authorized by the Security Council.

But it recognized "nightmare scenarios combining terrorists, weapons of mass destruction and irresponsible states ... which may conceivably justify the use of force, not just reactively but preventively and before a latent threat becomes imminent."

"The question is not whether such action can be taken: it can, by the Security Council as the international community's collective security voice," the panel said.

The panel broadened the global threats that could require military action to include the protection of civilians from genocide and other atrocities.

It also set out benchmarks to determine when the use of force is legitimate, including the seriousness of the threat, whether force was a last resort and whether there was a reasonable chance of success.

Whether the panel's wide-ranging recommendations from the panel, which included former world leaders and former U.S. national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, attract substantial support remains to be seen.

Annan plans to use the report as a basis for his own proposals in March to the U.N.'s 191 member states. He has invited world leaders to a summit in September to take action on U.N. reform and the new global agenda.

"We'll give it our careful consideration," U.S. Ambassador John Danforth said when asked about the report.

While the Security Council's refusal last year to authorize the U.S.-led war in Iraq served as the backdrop for the report, the panel only mentioned it as a case that sparked widely differing opinions and intense public attention. It said the U.S. decision to seek U.N. authorization - even in failing to win approval - had reaffirmed "the centrality" of the U.N. Charter.

The panel said any good argument for preventive military action should be put to the council in the future. If it refuses to authorize an attack, there will still be time to use persuasion, negotiation, deterrence and containment - and to try the military option again.

In what appeared to be a message aimed at the United States, the panel said "for those impatient with such a response, the answer must be that, in a world full of perceived potential threats, the risk to the global order ... is simply too great for the legality of unilateral preventive action."

The panel also defined terrorism and suggested overhauling the international system to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and authorizing a one-time buyout to put younger staff in top U.N. position.

A senior U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said looking at the U.N. Secretariat, "there is a lot of, frankly, dead wood."

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