United Nations members are deeply divided today over proposals for an urgent overhaul of the world body.
The reform proposals were made this week in the report into the troubled Iraq oil-for-food programme.
Ambassadors from 32 countries negotiating a document for world leaders to adopt at next week's UN summit took up the question of management reform less than 24 hours after a 1,036-page report on the oil-for-food programme blamed bad leadership for putting $5.7 billion in the pocket of Saddam Hussein's government.
Management reform is one of seven major issues in the draft document where serious divisions exist.
In a first breakthrough, negotiators agreed to include the phrase Millennium Development Goals - which the United States had initially objected to - in response to an amendment proposed by US Ambassador John Bolton.
With time running out, however, the negotiating group was still trying to cope with 250 proposed changes in the latest 45-page draft.
"They have to get an agreement," UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said. "The heads of state will be in town soon and they are coming to look at a serious document, and they must have a document for them."
There is widespread agreement among the 191 UN member states of the need for management reforms in the UN Secretariat, headed by Mr Annan.
But there is a deep division, mainly between developed and developing nations, on whether the secretary-general should get more power at the expense of the General Assembly, which controls the UN budget and oversees most management decisions.