SWITZERLAND: The United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, has said it is time to rebalance the global agenda to prevent the war against terrorism from damaging human rights and exacerbating divisions, writes Denis Staunton in Davos
Mr Annan told the annual meeting of the World Economic forum in Davos that the international security system was at risk, not only because of terrorism but because of the response to it.
"Both international terrorism and the war against it have the potential to overturn norms of behaviour and human rights standards while also exacerbating cultural, religious and ethnic dividing lines," he said.
"Business has a powerful interest in helping to prevent the international security system from sliding back into brute competition based on the laws of the jungle."
Mr Annan said that the single-minded focus on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction was distracting from the goal agreed at the Millennium Summit in 2000 to halve the number of people living in poverty by 2015.
"The UN must also protect millions of our fellow men and women from the more familiar threats of poverty, hunger and deadly diseases," he said.
Shortly after Mr Annan spoke, the US Attorney General, Mr John Ashcroft, defended the conduct of the war in Iraq and insisted that the US had no imperial ambitions.
"If you look at the United States and its performance, and where it is in the world and what it does in the world, it's not an aggressor. The United States doesn't seek to consume territory or to acquire an empire," he said.
Mr Ashcroft said he believed the war against terrorism would succeed, but Washington needed help from like-minded countries.
"We know in no uncertain terms that we are incapable of having the kind of success alone that we could have working together. The United States needs, in a very significant way, the wholehearted co-operation of our friends and freedom-loving colleagues around the world, and we seek to improve our level," he said.
Mr Annan called on business leaders to use their influence to encourage the EU and the US to work for a global trade deal that would benefit the world's poor by ending agricultural subsidies.
"More than anything else, we need a poor-friendly deal on agriculture. No single issue more gravely imperils the multilateral trading system, from which you benefit so much. Agricultural subsidies skew market forces. They destroy the environment and they block poor-country exports from world markets.
"For all our sakes, and for the credibility of the system itself, they must be eliminated," he added.
Representatives from 20 countries met in Davos yesterday to discuss how to revive trade talks after the collapse of World Trade Organisation (WTO) discussions in Cancún last November. The US said this month it wanted to return to negotiations and indicated it was prepared to agree to an end to all agricultural export subsidies.
The EU has shown less willingness to give ground on agriculture, arguing that last year's reform of the Common Agricultural Policy represented a major step towards eliminating market-distorting subsidies.