Panel should help refashion global notion of collective security - Annan

A blue-ribbon panel examining new global threats and challenges should help refashion the international community's notion of collective security, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan told Foreign Ministers from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) today.

"Our era, an era of accelerating interdependence, demands effective collective policies and institutions," Mr. Annan said in remarks to the annual meeting in New York of NAM Foreign Ministers.

"But arriving at a robust, preventive, collective approach is made all the more difficult by the very diverse perceptions of the threats of our time, and by the very serious divisions among countries on some of the very principles on which international peace and security should be based," he added.

While some countries may emphasize one set of threats over another, the United Nations could not do that, Mr. Annan stressed. "A world not advancing towards the Millennium Development Goals" - set of eight time-bound targets aimed at global problems such as extreme poverty and hunger - "will not be at peace," he declared. "And a world awash in violence and conflict will have little chance of achieving the Goals. It is not only States that are interdependent; so are the issues."

Last November Mr. Annan appointed the 16-person High-Level Panel on Threats Challenges and Change to analyze future threats and recommend ways to respond collectively to them. It is to present its findings by the end of this year.