'Iraq crisis boosts case for UN overhaul'

Reform of the United Nations is now needed more than ever since the Iraq crisis has revealed the shortcomings within the institution, one-time General Assembly president Razali Ismail said yesterday.

The Malaysian diplomat, who led the last major push to overhaul the UN system in the late 1990s, said the US-led attack on Iraq might have been avoided had the Security Council already been revamped.

"The world has to search for a new formulation," said Razali, who is the UN special envoy to Myanmar.

"The Security Council cannot be involved in huge issues that deal with security and the lives of people on the basis of its present structure. That surely must be clear to everybody," he said in an interview with Reuters.

The career diplomat is touted as a possible replacement to Secretary-General Kofi Annan when he retires, with the post due to go to an Asian under a traditional rotation system.

But Razali denied any ambition to take the job. His 1997 plan suggested the Security Council be enlarged to 10 permanent members from five, and to 14 non-permanent members from 10, mainly to boost the presence of developing countries in a body dominated by WWII's victors.

He said such an institution would be harder for the United States, or any other country, to ignore.

"If you are not able, on a predictable basis, to get the Americans to accept that their best interests lie through doing things with the UN, then you have a problem.

"They can walk away...and do what they want to do. You must not allow such a situation to happen," Razali said, adding Iraq was just such an instance.

The United States attacked Iraq in March, quickly toppling President Saddam Hussein's regime.

The assault ended months of divisive diplomacy that saw Washington able to persuade only a handful of countries of its charge that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction.

"If you had read the signs earlier, you would have known that the Americans weren't bluffing," Razali said.

"They had worked out that they would go to Baghdad one way or another," he said, adding UN diplomats and opponents of the invasion could have done more to provide credible alternatives.

A workable plan to "de-fang" Saddam, with support from major powers in the region such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, was one possibility, he said.

Razali's reform plan, for a time the focus of serious lobbying and negotiations, eventually ran out of steam as countries wrangled over who would get the additional seats.

The Malaysian said his plan failed in part because of disagreements among developing countries, singling out Pakistan's opposition to India winning a permanent member seat as one major obstacle.

Asked about chances of reform, he laughed: "I have no clue what the prospects are, but it should be attempted."

He rejected the idea that the United States under President George W. Bush would be an implacable opponent to reform.

"There are people who are alarmed or even disgusted at what's happened. Even people working in the government of the United States, some of them that I know, are quite aghast at what has happened.

"We cannot accept: 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'. In many ways the UN is broken. We have to fix it."