Annan says UN 'overstretched' by global conflicts

By Warren Hoge

Friday, March 21, 2008
UNITED NATIONS, New York: Kofi Annan, the former secretary general, said the United Nations was "overstretched" in conflict areas and should resist taking on new responsibilities as long as major powers proved unwilling to supply needed support.

"I don't think the UN is in a position today to go in and take over in Afghanistan; I don't think the UN will get the resources to play a major and active role in Somalia," he said Thursday. "We are already struggling to get the resources in Darfur, where some have declared it a genocide."

The United Nations, he said, must make clear what it can and cannot do. "To create the impression of action when nothing is happening is, I think, more damaging," he said, in a conversation with journalists.

On the issue of Iran's nuclear program, he said he backed Security Council resolutions putting pressure on its government to stop enrichment of uranium, but he warned that taking military steps to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons would be "a real disaster."

"We cannot, I am sure, take another military action, in Iran, and I hope no one is contemplating it," he said.

It was Annan's first conversation with UN journalists since completing his second five-year term in office on Dec. 31, 2006. He divides his time between Geneva and his native Ghana and was in New York to receive an international justice award from the MacArthur Foundation at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel Thursday evening.

He said that the United Nations' current difficulties in trying to get 26,000 peacekeepers into Darfur to replace an underequipped 7,000-member African Union force illustrated the quandary that the organization faced.

"We have these conflicts where no one really wants to get involved, powerful countries with means will not touch it with a barge pole, they will support weak, ineffectual initiatives by others, sometimes by a subregional or regional organization, to create the impression of action," he said.

"I can understand why some countries will not put troops on the ground in Darfur for reasons I think we can accept," he said. "But I cannot understand why they cannot spare a couple of helicopters."

The United Nations says that the force needs 24 helicopters to patrol the vast Darfur area, but thus far no country has responded to repeated requests for them from the current secretary general, Ban Ki Moon.

Annan was asked about the perception of some member states that Ban was overly influenced by the United States. Annan came to office a favorite of Washington but fell out of favor with the Bush administration after the Security Council refused in 2003 to endorse the invasion of Iraq. He later said the war violated international law.

"Almost every secretary general at one point or the other is perceived as close to the Americans and at another point fighting the Americans with their daggers drawn," Annan said. "It comes with the territory."