Secretary-General's interview by Barbara Crossette at the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Academic Council on the UN System

SG: It went very well. We covered lots of territory: Iraq, the Middle East, the crisis in the Congo, Liberia, you name it. We covered quite a lot of territory. Of course in Iraq, my Special Envoy Sergio [Vieira] de Mello just got there about 10 days ago. He has had good initial contact with Mr. [Paul] Bremer [US Administrator for Iraq], and they are figuring out how they will cooperate together. I have instructed him to talk to as many Iraqis as possible. He will be travelling to all the regions to gather information and then sit down again with Bremer. I expect him to meet me in Amman on the 21st or 22nd June to give me his first-hand impressions. The Quartet will be meeting there — that is, [US] Secretary of State Colin Powell, [Russian Federation] Foreign Minister [Igor] Ivanov, [European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier] Solana and myself — to discuss the Middle East peace process and, of course, the road map, and what we do to accelerate, or push, the implementation. Of course, you are all aware of what is going on, on the ground, and the attempts by the extremists to derail the process.

Q: I was going to suggest that maybe you could talk a little about whether you rank yourself among those pessimists who think that the road map has already been badly damaged — or whether, obviously if you are going to be coming back to meeting, that there is some continued hope of going on.

SG: I think the process is in a bit of distress but is still alive. I think it is going to be extremely difficult. We have many hurdles to jump. The extremists will do everything to derail the process. But it is important that the leaders, having taken the decision to negotiate and engage, should stay the course. I think the personal involvement of President [George W.] Bush is critical. The Quartet has put lots of effort into developing the road map. But the American leadership and the personal involvement of the President, I hope, will be sustained over the period. And that will help us.

What is difficult is both sides have difficulties with the extremists. [Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud] Abbas, in addition to that, does have the problem of [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat — how the two work together and how they cooperate to ensure that the peace process moves forward. So all of us — the Quartet, the President and the leaders of the region — have to work very hard to maintain the process and to sustain it. We need to work with the Palestinians to strengthen their institutions and, above all, their security capacity, to be able to do what is demanded of them in the road map. And, for the first time in this process, we would also have a monitoring mechanism that is going to be put in place to monitor the performance of the parties. But it is going to be a very, very tough road.

Q: In the meantime you must be hearing from your refugee people that the lives of the Palestinians must be so full of tension, apart from their economic difficulties and so on.

SG: Obviously, it is a very tense situation: lots of roadblocks and closures, which make it very difficult for them to move around and for us to do our humanitarian work. Last year I did send in a Special Envoy, Catherine Bertini, to study the situation and to give me a report as to how best we can deal with the humanitarian effort and encourage the Israelis to open up to allow some Palestinians to go to Israel to earn their living. But, of course, each time you press them and they open up a bit, there is a bomb, and they close up again. And, of course, the Prime Minister tells you, “We have to protect ourselves”.

But I think what we need to really try and do is to find some way of breaking this cycle of violence. It is known that when there is a suicide bombing, there will be a retaliation and revenge. We also know that when there is a targeted assassination, there will be a reaction. We really need to find a way of breaking that and supporting them. In fact, I did an interview with two Israeli journalists today, and they asked the question, “The monitoring mechanism you are putting in -- [US] Assistant Secretary [of State for Nonproliferation Issues John] Wolf plus 10 people -- is that enough?” I said that that would be enough if the parties are really determined to cooperate and make it work. But if it doesn't work, over time they are going to need more assistance and greater effort. That could be in the form of a force, to really help create a calm environment that will allow the parties to continue their negotiations. Of course, we will need to get the two parties to agree. But it may have to come to that.

Q: I assume that you are also going to try to work out a way to get this into the Security Council's purview in some way, which has something the United States has pretty much resisted , hasn't it, over a period of time?

SG: Yes, and of course the Israeli Government has also resisted. We have a very interesting situation here. When we talk of the United Nations in the Quartet, it is the Secretary-General. They have accepted my involvement, but not the involvement of the United Nations as an organization. They are very ambivalent about the Security Council getting involved. This is why the US believes that sometimes when you bring in the Council, you complicate the issue. But I think if we can work with the Quartet — the Russians, the European Union and myself — keeping the Council informed and involved, with the US playing a very active role, we may be able to get somewhere.

Q: If we could go back to Iraq just for a minute, are you more satisfied now that the UN will have quite a significant role, or at least a role that is important enough to make a difference? Because you are already involved in a number of things.

SG: We do have a role. The resolution is ambiguous, and my representative on the ground will have to, as I put it, give it functional interpretation and interpret it in a manner that will make sense on the ground.

There are two areas where we are in the lead: the humanitarian situation, and that is going well. In the past, working with the Iraqis, they had set up 44,000 distribution centres. We brought in the food, and it was distributed around the country. I was a bit worried, given the security on the ground, that the humanitarian effort may be disrupted and we can't get to the people. So when I checked and they said that it is working. I said that at least they were smart: they want their food. The other resumptions may be slow, [but] that is working very smoothly and very efficiently.

We are also going to be responsible for the oil-for-food programme for the next six months. But when you get to the other areas — helping the Iraqis establish a Government, the question of police and the question of security, the question of human rights — we need to work with the Coalition and the Iraqis, because in some of those areas we are to assist, we are to encourage, we are to promote –which implies that the responsibility is elsewhere. And, indeed, it is with the Coalition, who, under the Geneva Convention and the Hague Regulations, has the responsibility to promote the welfare of the Iraqi people through effective administration. Of course, the Security Council has given them added authority. So I would hope that our cooperation will be effective on the ground and we will be able to make it happen, focusing on the Iraqi people and the country. What do we do to help them? What do we do to help put this country together? I think that if we approach it that way, it should be easy for us to work. So far so good. Bremer and Vieira de Mello are working very well together. But the most difficult issue, apart from security [and] essential services, is going to be the political process, and how you move from where we are to establish an Iraqi Government that will have full authority and sovereignty vested in it.

Q: The UN has two, or maybe three, great advantages. One: a certain amount of trust over the years. The Iraqis know there were, for example, UN officials who were even willing to buck the trend of the big Powers, to be sympathetic to the Iraqi people. Also, the UN knows the Iraqi cast of characters, I often think, very well — particularly, one would have thought the inspectors and other people who had long ago decided which people to trust or which people to work with and so on. These are great advantages. Plus, the UN is not in any way an occupying Power.

SG: Those are great advantages. In fact, when Sergio Vieira de Mello left here he was worried as to how he was going to settle down. I said that we have lots of assets in the country and it shouldn't be difficult because we've had UN agencies and inspectors working there for over the past six, seven years. They know who is who; they know the country. When he got there his Office was set up and things were working, and he could hit the ground running. He was quite impressed by that. These are assets that we can share with the Coalition, and work with them to improve the situation.

The other advantage we have — although I must say, not all Iraqis are fond of the UN, because they blame us for starving them through the sanctions for so many years — but at least they accept that we are not an occupying Power. They also believe –not just the Iraqis but the region, the regional countries –will feel more comfortable with UN involvement. Other countries outside that would want to go in and make contributions are also quite keen to do it under the UN umbrella. So we do bring lots of assets, apart from the experience that we have from other peacekeeping operations. I could see from the discussions between Bremer and Sergio that there is a very healthy relationship and sharing of experience there, which is very good.

Q: From your talks in Washington and elsewhere, do you think that it is possible that — in some quarters at least — the Administration has some understanding that perhaps it was pretty foolish to allow the kind of rhetorical attacks and demeaning of the UN that took place — for whatever reason, whether it was to build up a case for war, whatever it was —that this may have been counterproductive in the end, now that they need you?

SG: I warned them a couple of months ago, “Be careful knocking the UN. You may be embarrassed having to turn to the UN.” In fact, they gave me the assurance that they were going to stop the UN-bashing and that the President also agreed that the UN-bashing must stop. But I presume this is within the Administration. There are others outside the Administration who will continue, and they have pushed it to a fine art. So I don't think we will be able to stop them. But I could sense yesterday that the Administration wants to work with us. They realize we need to be together in Iraq. But, of course, I didn't go to the Pentagon. I was only at the State Department and the National Security Council. I do not know if the Pentagon has the same attitude. But we will find out.

Q: You will find out, right.

SG: But at least their man on the ground –because Bremer reports to the Defence Department –is working very well with us. I suspect he has probably told them that we are not so bad after all.

Q: And Sergio will be a great ambassador.

SG: He is a great ambassador. He works well with people and he is a good team-builder.

Q: And he has probably already learned Arabic; he speaks everything else.

SG: He has got a couple of Arabic-speaking staff members, colleagues, and he also has an adviser who is a former minister from Lebanon. So we have a team of people who know the region. He himself visited there as a boy with his father, when he was in the diplomatic service. But that is all he knows about it.

Q: A long time ago.

With Afghanistan and Iraq getting so much of our attention, I thought we could turn to Africa a bit — which faces such severe challenges, and because you will be going to Africa for a summit of the African Union. So shallow is the reporting that, I think, most people don't even know there is an African Union and that the OAU [Organization for African Union] has more or less dissolved itself into something else.

AIDS, prolonged wars, new wars and then these upheavals that seem to arise from the ashes of the last one before the ashes are even cold; and then the southern-most countries with the danger that Zimbabwe poses, economically as well as in political terms.

I was reading just this week [UN Children's Fund Executive Director] Carol Bellamy told the African Economic Summit that the continent has 12 per cent of the world's population, but 43 per cent of child deaths, and 90 per cent of the world's AIDS orphans are all living in Africa.

When you go to the African Union summit next month, what kind of messages do you take throughout your period here, certainly as Secretary-General and before? You've always offered them hope, but you've also offered them, every once in a while, a scolding or a little bit of hard advice –tough love, whatever you would call it.

SG: This is an interesting question. But before I turn to Africa, let me say a word about Iran. Earlier today, somebody had asked me about Iran and the discussions going on among certain quarters as to whether one should focus on Iran next and if there should be a regime change in Iran. Of course, this is something I cannot support. If there is going to be a regime change, I think it is for the Iranians to decide. As I indicated, I thought one has got one's hands full already with Iraq. So that is an area where we need to be very careful before we open another front.

But on the African question, all the statistics you have indicated are right. They are tragic; they are painful. Some African leaders have responded well and are showing leadership -- showing leadership not only in fighting AIDS, but trying to adapt their own systems to reduced manpower within the area of agriculture or the educational sector. The terrible thing with the AIDS epidemic is that it is really destroying Africa. It is now an issue of governance: you have AIDS, you have famine, and it turns into governance. Each place affects the other. With AIDS some of the most productive people in society are dying. Hospitals are losing doctors; schools are losing teachers. Therefore you cannot have an effective civil service to do the sorts of things you need to do. We used to talk of training. We are getting to the stage where we talk of replenishment of talent. In some areas, you may have to bring them in.

So, what started as a health problem is affecting the whole area of governance. It is also exacerbating the famine situation, because in most of these countries it is women who handle the agriculture. They are the most productive. Don't ask me what the men do, but the women are the most productive. In past famines they were the ones who held the family together and who knew how to use their ingenuity to feed the family and keep it going. But 58 per cent of AIDS cases today are women, so AIDS today in Africa has a woman's face.

And then you referred to the orphans -- millions and millions of them. In some households a child as young as 10 is the parent looking after younger siblings. And so it is an enormous challenge that we can only beat it if you have complete social mobilization of society, and education and resources, not just money. It's leadership –leadership at all levels — starting with the Presidents and the Prime Ministers, down to the community level. The countries that have responded that way have done extremely well.

Of course, when I go to the African Union in Mozambique I will talk to them about the conflicts in Africa, which have also displaced millions and have prevented the continent from moving forward economically. No one invests in a bad environment. People see Africa as a continent in constant crisis. It scares away investors. We need to try to resolve those conflicts. The G-8 has indicated they want to work with us to resolve these conflicts so that we can focus on essential economic and social matters.

The other area they need to look at is agricultural production. We cannot accept a situation where we go through one famine after the other without focusing on long-term food security and doing something about rural areas and agricultural productivity. The problem with the donors is that they respond to the emergencies but they often don't react to long-term development. When you talk about long-term development they say, “But we've already given billions for emergencies.” But that does not solve the problem down the line. But I think there is greater awareness that we need to tackle the issue on two fronts.

I think with NEPAD [New Partnership for Africa's Development], the new African initiative, the G-8 and other developed countries are going to work very closely with them. The Africans have accepted a partnership and indicated that they are going to improve governance; they are going to set up a peer review to ensure that each of the Governments are respecting human rights, democratic principles, and they are running their countries responsibly. In return, the donor community would work with them. This is an initiative that came from the Africans themselves. If they live up to the commitments they have made to themselves and to their people, we can see Africa beginning to take off.

Q: The President of Senegal [Abdoulaye Wade] has spoken many times about the various things Africans can do, I know for one. And there are others as well. Have you been drawn at all into the genetically modified foods on the African front because there is great debate over whether people who need food should be denied it?

SG: This became a great crisis during the famine in the six Southern African countries. I recall when we were in Kananaskis at the [2002 G-8] summit, I thanked the leaders for the contributions that they had made and indicated that we do have a problem in that some of the countries were rejecting genetically modified food. President Bush, who was there in the room, said, “Kofi, come again. Who is rejecting it? The hungry ones?” I said, “Yes”. He could not – And of course [Canadian Prime Minister Jean] Chrétien said, “I eat it. What is wrong?”

But some of the countries refuse to accept it. In Zimbabwe, where they refused, we agreed to mill it. They were concerned that the seeds may get into the hands of the farmers, it will contaminate their agriculture and they would not be able to export beef or other things to Europe.

In fact, even in Evian, it came up because I made the point that we really have to work with Africa to improve its agriculture because it is the only continent that the green revolution missed. We need to introduce disease-resistant and high-yield crops. Again, President Bush perked up and said, “This is what I believe. With genetically modified food, we can feed Africa and the rest of the world.” Chrétien supported him. But, of course, given the Europeans' position, President [Jacques] Chirac [of France] stopped it and said, “This is another debate for another time, not here.” He was right because we would have focused on genetically modified food.

In fact, Zambia refused to take it. He claims that his scientists have told him it wasn't safe. I organized a discussion here at the UN on genetically modified foods. Three scientists came to talk to us. It was fascinating what they said. Almost all of them agreed that, from their point of view, it was safer to eat genetically modified food than organic. They make the point that genetically modified food has been tested. You have gone through all sorts of things and you know what one is allergic to and others, while the organic have not been tested. But I do not think most people in the room believed that, but that was the point they were making. The African position is much closer to the European position; there is much more contact and much more traffic between them. I think if we are going to improve African agriculture, we need to look at some of these high-yield and disease-resistant crops. We need to manage our water better and try to get more crop per drop and really harness rain water, which is not done. There are a lot of things that can be done.

You raised a question about Zimbabwe. I'm sorry, I missed that one. In a way, it is a problem for the whole region. It is an important country, and what happens affects the neighbours. I think they are beginning to come through the famine situation, but politically they are in a very difficult situation. The opposition leader is in jail. Presidents [Thabo] Mbeki [of South Africa] and [Olusegun] Obasanjo [of Nigeria] have been trying to mediate and trying to see whether they can get them to form a national Government or find some way out. But they haven't quite succeeded yet. But I think one should keep trying.

Q: In Robert Mugabe's party, are there any other factions or people with whom they can talk, or is it really such a one-man show?

SG: There are others, but he has pretty strong control over the party. The parties that came out of the political movement and that sort of thing are pretty close-knit. Even though there are differences, they tend to hold together. You know, you have the ANC [African National Congress] in South Africa, you have his group. So, he is pretty much in control. There are discussions that there may be changes and all that, but it does not happen.

Q: Yes, and then it doesn't happen. It never happens. We have scant time left and a lot to go. But before we leave Africa entirely, I was reminded today when talking to [British] Ambassador [Jeremy] Greenstock about the trip I made with the Security Council a few years ago to Congo. We went to a town on a sort of side trip, a few us, to Kananga, which had once been a railhead. You could tell it had once been a prosperous town. It was a total ruin. The people ran out from behind trees, gardens, their houses and fell down in front of the Security Council, yelling “Paix, paix.” They would say, “Please, here, stay now.” It was so heartbreaking because it was obvious that everywhere we went in the Congo, when they saw the Security Council motorcade come, they thought, “Here comes salvation.” He said that he will never forget their faces when we all drove back to the airport and left. And that wasn't just in one town. Now we are again trying to do something with another part of Congo. If this world were perfect, how much do you need to make an effective presence – peacekeepers, peace enforcers, again civilian administration -- what would you send?

SG: I think you need to tackle the issue on two fronts: on the political front, to get the warring parties to settle and, on the military side, to ensure that the atrocities on the ground do indeed stop, and the civilian population is protected and you don't have so many people displaced. On the political side, we've made some progress, with the Sun City agreement. But getting it implemented is a problem. I am sending in another mediator, Moustapha Niasse, the former Prime Minister of Senegal, who helped negotiate the agreement to help them with implementation. You won't believe it: they got stuck on the issue of the army –who becomes the army commander. You have the army, you have the air force and you have the navy. The only real force is the army. And everyone wants to be the army chief and ensure that they have positions in the Government commensurate to their power on the ground. So I'm sending, along with Mr. Niasse, General Maurice Baril, who was Chief of [the Defence] Staff of the Canadian [Armed Forces] and a former Military Adviser here, for them to spend some time to walk them through this.

We are also going to increase the peacekeeping force. But if I had a really free hand, I would have liked to see a really well-equipped force in Congo, a force that should have gone in earlier. We are now trying to get the [troop] ceiling lifted to 10,800 –and you are talking of a country about the size of Western Europe. So 10,800 is not much of a force. And even that you have to fight for to get the budget to be able to do it. I would also want to see some of the countries with capable armies come in and join the peacekeeping operation on the ground. There is no infrastructure, no roads, no rails. So you do quite a lot by air, which makes the operation quite expensive. Of course, it is sometimes extremely difficult putting these air assets together. And yet, we know the capacity exists. It exists amongst the members of the Council, but it is not offered.

Q: Jean was talking about what people, among scholars and other experts, can do. One of these cases that makes this clear is Bosnia -- where the Secretary-General asked for a large number of troops, didn't get them, and even didn't get the ones that he got. You were there in Bosnia. And then the headline says the United Nations fails at something else. The history is never conveniently told.

SG: It has been extremely difficult. I do not know what you academics and intellectuals can do. But there are two UNs, which you are never able to explain to the public: the UN –that is, the Member States, the Security Council, the General Assembly -- that takes the decisions, gives us a mandate; and the Secretariat, that implements it. When the United Nations gets into trouble, it is always the Secretariat. The Member States do not speak up. You don't know which UN they are talking about, and they don't defend the troops and the people. And you can't tell the public that there are two UNs.

Take Iraq. In a way, the UN and its relationship with the US has become collateral damage of the war. But, when you look at it seriously, it was a division among Member States, which is normal. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. In normal parliaments, this would have been accepted, and you go on. But this became such a big issue. And of course, now we are beginning to heal the divisions. But when people talk about the UN, of course these days they mention the French perhaps, but it is the Secretariat that is being knocked –it is the institution. And the Member States and those who took the decisions are often left to the side.

Q: The failure of one super-Power to persuade the others to vote in its favour is then written off as “the UN is irrelevant”, which is a bit of a stretch. And I think a lot of people are now –enjoying is the wrong word –but the inspectors were pilloried for not having found any weapons.

SG: In fact, that came up yesterday in Washington.

I think the point you made that the US could not get the votes, not even from the neighbour. It was a tough discussion in the Council. Of course, some argue that the United States had to go to Iraq to make the Council more credible. We saw the situation where, in defiance of the Council, one goes to Iraq to fight to make the Council more credible. In any case, I think the essential thing is that we need to put the past behind us, heal and move on.

On the weapons, yesterday I was asked about it when I had a press conference with Secretary of State Powell. I said, yes, in the UN there was a discussion that there should be patience and the inspectors should be given more time: weapons-inspection is very time-consuming. I said those doing it now may probably need a bit more time and we should be patient. I am not going to apply double standards; we should give them a bit of time.

Q: Well, they had a delineated programme which they were never allowed to complete, as those who followed the situation closely would know.

SG: That is correct.

Q: I wanted to just get back to an old issue –globalization and anti-globalization –because it seems to me that a lot of the anti-globalization campaign in this country is coming out of college campuses. You have been familiar with this ever since that infamous day in Seattle and maybe before that –but the anger about globalization, however placed, in the big demonstrations in places like Dallas, one rarely sees people from developing countries; one rarely sees poor people. This is an issue that has some other political agenda.

You have obviously done a lot here to keep the UN off the front lines of this fight, and have done it successfully. What is your sense of where this is coming from among this group of people? Because it's in many of the prestigious colleges here, it will influence a generation of people's thinking.

SG: You have various groups coming together in this anti-globalization movement. You have some very serious ones, who are often embarrassed by the violence that accompanies their demonstrations, because there are some anarchists who are just out there to break up things. For example, you have Jubilee 2000 that has been campaigning for debt relief. They brought me about 20 million signatures they have collected around the world in support. Those kinds of organizations are serious. I think the feeling they have is that the benefits of globalization are not being shared fairly, that globalization does not have a human face, that it is exploiting the third world and that there is a lot more one can do to assist and feed the third world. We have the money, we have the resources, but it is not being done.

I recall the meeting in Genoa, where these leaders, we had to go into a meeting where you are almost in a fortress, barricaded away from the people. You have no idea what is going on outside, and suddenly we were told that somebody has been killed in the demonstration and [Italian] Prime Minister [Silvio] Berlusconi says that what we are doing there is not going to count. Nobody is going to cover it; they will focus on the dead man. Another leader says: “But what are these people about? Why are they shouting? We are the decision-makers. What authority do they have?” and the next leader said: “Be careful, they vote for us. They put us in; we can't ignore them”.

But I think this question of equity and questions of fairness, I think the inequities in the world today really gall some of the young people and some are really genuine. Today, we live in such an interdependent world. They see it on television. They see the poverty here and the others see the wealth on the other side. The third world demonstrators you don't see, because they often don't have the money to jump in a plane and go to Seattle, and they will not be in Cancun. Of course, some of the Mexicans will be in Cancun.

A couple of years ago we were in Thailand for an UNCTAD [UN Conference on Trande and Development] meeting and someone threw a pie in the face of Michel Camdessus, the head of IMF [International Monetary Fund]. We were having dinner that night. Michel was very quick. He said, “Being French, I like patisserie, but I don't like to eat it this way.” But the fellow who did it flew from Washington to Bangkok to demonstrate. I said, “You are a banker. Why don't you seek him out and advise him to save his fare and do it in Washington, where you both live?”

But the remarkable thing is they can afford to fly around and do this. We saw it in Lausanne, in Geneva and in Evian. People travelled thousands of miles to come and do this. It is quite remarkable. The third-worlders cannot; if they could, some of them would be there too.

Q: Often, you have said, I think, that the trouble with globalization for many of them is that they are not part of the benefits and that there has to be a more positive, productive way to…

SG: This is why the argument is funny, because some of those who fight against globalization want to see the end of globalization…

Q: And the end of big corporations.

SG: The poor world wants more. They want more involvement. They want to be part of it. They want an open trading system. They want the subsidies removed from agricultural products of the big countries, and they really want to be involved.

Q: We have to do at least one question on this building itself and on your stewardship here. You, I think, once said that you would like part of your legacy, or maybe a big part of your legacy, to also be the changes that have been made in the UN. And a lot has happened here. You can talk a bit about it: the more-or-less cabinet system, the greater integration of agencies and heads of programmes, and so on. The appointment of a Deputy Secretary-General has been really revolutionary for the United Nations. We don't have time now to go into why the world doesn't know this, but we'll do it another time.

What else is on your mind? What else do you see that needs doing before your second term is finished?

SG: I think I would want to see the intergovernmental systems function better –the way the General Assembly operates. I would want to see down the line Security Council reform. During the Iraqi issue it became really topical. I got calls from lots of leaders –interestingly enough, from the big countries: Brazil, South Africa and others –saying: “What is happening? Can you bring a group of leaders together to discuss, go beyond the Council and let's see what we can do to find a solution to this crisis? Does it have to come to war?” So you saw these influential countries outside the Council itching to do something, to be a part, and I think down the line we really need to become more serious about reforming the Council to make it more representative and more democratic.

But let me look at the immediate future. We have just gone through this Iraq war, and I am going to challenge those of you in this room. We hear a lot about new threats, new challenges, and we need to deal with them. But we've never really sat down to analyse what these new threats are as a community of nations, and how we should deal with them. And if the current international security system is not adequate, what adjustments do we need to bring to it. Does a new instrument include preventive war, and if it does, who decides? Has this Iraq war set a precedent that others could exploit, and if everyone can do it, what sort of a world are we going to be living in? What can we do to improve the situation? Let's accept that maybe the status quo needs adjustment. What do we do? How do we deal with this problem?

Any thoughts you have on that, I will be very grateful. We are beginning to do some thinking about this. Some have suggested a Security Council summit, but that sort of thing will have to be extremely well prepared. But it is a kind of reform that you can't limit to the Council. The broader membership would want to be involved, but we need to really take a critical look at the existing security arrangements.

Q: I think a lot of people don't know –I guess, in this room, a lot of people do know –that the idea of setting up, for example, a think tank within peacekeeping, this has always been resisted by Washington and other big Powers.

SG: That is correct.

Q: What is interesting is that there seems to be a kind of shadow Security Council that rises up once in a while. This week, on the ICC [International Criminal Court] extension of the immunity vote, again it is often Canada, Brazil –depending -- South Africa. Sometimes Japan has its own ideas; it may not get into the mix. Some European countries. That seems an indication that there are countries out there full-time thinking about what the problems are.

SG: In fact, even the current working of the Council, when they turn to regional groups, there is a tendency to say: “Look, if you are on the Council from our region, you must discuss with us. You must report to us more often.” But I am not sure that is going to happen. I think they are also beginning to find that there is strength and safety in group positions, because sometimes the individual countries come under tremendous pressure. If they say it is a group position –and you have to convince the group –they get a bit of protection.

But I think we really need to look at the Council. I would want to see that done. I am really happy you are discussing the four fears, but I think if we are going to really make this world a better place, we cannot focus so much on the security aspects, on terrorism and others –without looking at the economic and social aspects and human rights with the same sort of energy and enthusiasm.

That is why I was very pleased that President Bush came out with the $15 billion for AIDS. It was a good example at Evian. I could refer to it. We could push it. The European Union is going to try and see if they can give the Fund $1 billion a year for the next five years. France tripled its contribution. There was lots of talk about tackling poverty and really helping the poor, but we need to carry it through. I think that would also be very important not just for the credibility of the big countries in the world, but also for the welfare of the smaller ones.