UN needs overhaul to survive as vital force

Rice, who has chosen John Bolton, a longtime critic of the organisation, to be her UN ambassador, said Washington needed to lead changes to fix an institution dogged by scandals over corruption in the Iraq oil-for-food programme and sexual abuse by peacekeepers.

"It is no secret to anyone that the United Nations cannot survive as a vital force in international politics if it does not reform -- if it doesn't reform its organisations, if it doesn't reform its secretariat, if it doesn't reform its management practices," she told a newspaper editors' conference.

Last month, Secretary General Kofi Annan proposed the most wide-ranging overhaul of the United Nations since its creation in 1945. He recommended the expansion of the UN Security Council, a radical program to combat poverty, a new human rights body and a condemnation of all forms of terrorism and a series of management and watchdog reforms.

"As important an institution as it is, one has to say that there are some things that are not so great about the United Nations right now. And everybody recognises that. And we've got to fix it," Rice said.

President Bush has had strained relations with the United Nations. In his first term, he challenged it to avoid becoming irrelevant and ordered the invasion of Iraq without explicit UN approval before increasingly turning to the organisation for support after the war.

Bolton, a hardline conservative who once said the United States should only make the United Nations work to benefit US interests, has pledged to work to improve UN accountability and complained of overlapping programs and mandates.

"He is going to be a force for what is always needed in the United Nations: American leadership to update and reform and strengthen this great institution," Rice said.

In a related development, a Congressional-mandated task force on UN reform visited the UN headquarters in New York on Friday, led by Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House of Representatives, and George Mitchell, former Democrat Senate leader.

Both praised the meetings with Annan and his senior staff as "candid" and "informative." Their report, to be completed in June, is expected to have an impact on Congressional calls to cut US payments to the United Nations.