Time to rethink your world role, Annan tells UN

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By Felicity Barringer in New York and Peter Fray in London
August 1 2003




Mr Annan . . . UN bashers warned to be careful as "they may need us".


The United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has called for a basic rethink of the international institutions mostly sidelined during the Iraq war.

"Many of us sense that we are living through a crisis of the international system," he said on Wednesday.

The war and crises in Africa "force us to ask ourselves whether the institutions and methods we are accustomed to are really adequate to deal with all the stresses of the last couple of years", he said.

Mr Annan suggested these were issues that world leader members of the General Assembly should discuss at their meeting.

"If we are going to make preventive action, or war, part of our response to these new threats, what are the rules? Who decides? Under what circumstances? Did what happened in Iraq constitute an exception? A precedent others can exploit? What are the rules?"

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/31/1059480481969.html