Changes in world body needed to combat poverty and threats to global security By SHAWN McCARTHY UNITED NATIONS -- The global community needs to overhaul the United Nations and forge a new consensus on maintaining collective security in order to avert the myriad looming crises of the 21st century, says the draft of a major report on reform commissioned by Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The report is due to be released next week and is expected to kick off nine months of debate over the future of the embattled world body, culminating in a leaders' summit next September.

Chaired by former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun, the panel that wrote the report said the UN needs to be prepared to take concrete action to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and in particular to keep such weapons out of the hands of terrorists. But it must also find new and effective ways to address the scourges undermining human security in the Third World, including disease, poverty and underdevelopment.

"What is needed today is nothing less than a new consensus between alliances that are frayed, between wealthy nations and poor, and among peoples mired in mistrust across an apparently widening cultural abyss," says a draft copy obtained by The Globe and Mail. "The essence of that consensus is simple: We all share responsibility for each other's security. And the test of that consensus will be action."

The report makes a series of recommendations at improving the functioning and credibility of the world body, including calls for governments to increase official development aid; streamline the General Assembly's agenda; create a Security Council peace-building commission; and expand the Security Council itself.

Although the panel includes Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to former U.S. president George H.W. Bush, some of the panel's conclusions are sure to rankle key members of Mr. Bush's son's administration in Washington, who are already deeply suspicious of the United Nations and would be reluctant to give it more money and authority.

The panel rejects the so-called Bush doctrine, which reserves America's right to attack any country posing a threat to U.S. security, with or without UN approval.

"If there are good arguments for preventive military action, with good evidence to support them, they should be put to the Security Council, which can authorize such action if it chooses to," the panel wrote.

"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, as distinct from collectively endorsed action, to be accepted. Allowing one so act is to allow all."

The draft urges the Security Council to adopt a series of principles that would guide its approach to security threats, including the use of military force only as a last resort.

Paul Heinbecker, the former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, said there will almost certainly be U.S. resistance to some of the panel's work, but that there could be much for the Americans to embrace, particularly calls for better collective action on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.

"If it can produce some kind of consensus on these questions, I think there will be something in it for the Americans, and there has to be something in it for the Americans to take it seriously," said Mr. Heinbecker, now a senior researcher at the Centre for International Governance and Innovation at Waterloo University.

Prime Minister Paul Martin has shown a keen interest in the effort to revitalize the world body as an antidote to the toxic mixture of aggressive unilateralism by Washington and obstructionism by its erstwhile allies.

Canadian sources said they expect Mr. Martin to endorse much of the panel's work, particularly its call for the adoption of a UN principle known as the "responsibility to protect," which would commit the world body to intervene in internal crises when governments fail to protect their own people.

However, many states, including heavyweights such as South Africa and China, are wary of any principle that would give Western powers more scope to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign countries.

The panel also recommends that the Security Council be expanded, with one option being the creation of six new permanent members to join the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, which have had permanent status since the UN was formed in 1945.

In that option, Africa and Asia would each get two permanent seats, and Europe and the Americas one each.

Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, South Africa and Egypt are thought to be leading contenders for permanent seats if there is an agreement to create them.