Kofi Annan: "These are bold reforms"

Annan Launches UN "Quiet Revolution"

The Ghanaian-born Mr Annan, who succeeded Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali as Secretary-General, told the UN General Assembly: "The reforms I am proposing are bold reforms. They are the most extensive and far-reaching in the fifty-two year history of our organisation."

Work on the report began soon after Mr Annan took over the post in January. It follows strong criticism of the UN by the United States, which has refused to pay the 1.6 billion dollars it owes the world body until it introduces reforms to drastically reduce inefficiency and waste.

The White House, which strongly supported Mr Annan's candidacy for the Secretary-General's post, welcomed the report.

The reforms aim to streamline the UN's complicated structure

Included in the report are measures which Mr Annan can take now as well as recommendations which require member state approval. Among the proposed reforms are:

• Streamlining the UN's complicated structure into a five-member cabinet headed by a Deputy Secretary-General. This new post would have to be approved by the General Assembly. The cabinet would oversee UN operations in the fields of peace and security, economic and social development, humanitarian development and UN development;
  
• Abolition of the UN's Department of Humanitarian Affairs, replacing it with an Emergency Relief Coordinator;
  
• Creating a Development Fund for poorer countries with money saved from the loss of 1,000 jobs and administrative restructuring. The UN calculates that the fund would be worth 200 million dollars by the year 2002;
  
• Join the various UN programmes to combat drugs, crime and terrorism into one Vienna-based centre;
  
• Streamlining and raising the profile of the UN's work on human rights and disarmament.

The plan also addresses the UN's grave financial crisis. Mr Annan wants to set up a revolving credit account with one billion dollars, in order to avoid relying on the UN's peacekeeping fund to subsidise the organisation as a whole.

Predictably, perhaps, many UN Departments have criticised the reforms. However, according to Maurice Strong, a Canadian diplomat and one of the key reform architects, such resistance is in itself "real evidence of the seriousness of the change."