Annan drafts UN changes

Annan’s report, titled In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security, and Human Rights For All, calls for expanding the 15-nation Security Council before year’s end to ensure more democratic representation on the UN’s most powerful institution.

While Annan said he would leave it to governments to determine the structure of an enlarged council, he backed efforts by India, Brazil, Germany and Japan, which are seeking permanent Security Council seats, to ensure that an agreement cannot be blocked by a single member that opposes their candidacies. ‘‘It would be far preferable for member states to take this vital decision by consensus,’’ Annan wrote.‘‘But if they are unable to reach consensus, this must not be an excuse for postponing action.’’

The contentious international debate that preceded the Iraq war led to ‘‘declining public confidence in the United Nations’’ by supporters of the war, who believed the organization had failed to enforce its own resolutions, and opponents, who faulted it for failing to stop the war. Annan urged that the Security Council forge agreement on ‘‘when and how force can be used.’’ He proposed that it adopt a resolution setting out principles —— including a determination whether the military option is proportional to the threat —— that would guide it in making the decision whether to go to war. UN officials said they expected stiff resistance to the proposal from the Bush administration. But they say that Washington appreciates Annan’s support in the report for the Bush administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative.

The US is also amenable to Annan’s call for an anti-terrorism convention that would define terrorism as any act that is ‘‘intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or noncombatants’’ to intimidate a community, government or international organization.

He also called for strengthening the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. But he said that the Commission on Human Rights, which has included countries such as Sudan, Cuba and Libya with histories of rights violations, has ‘‘been increasingly undermined.” In its place, Annan proposed creating a smaller Human Rights Council, whose members would be appointed by the General Assembly. — LAT-WP