The report from the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change is being published in New York today. “We welcome this report on new and evolving security threats. It recommends joint measures to strengthen our collective security and steps for the necessary strengthening of the UN,” said Foreign Minister Petersen.

The Foreign Minister emphasised that the panel’s terms of reference were not confined to the issue of the expansion of the Security Council. Its primary task was to analyse the most important global threats to peace and security, and to examine how the international community could address them .

“It is encouraging that the panel is unanimously behind practically all the recommendations, and in particular to see that all its members agree that security threats, defined in the broadest possible way, must be addressed collectively and on the basis of established international law,” continued Mr Petersen. “Norway also considers the panel’s recommendations to intensify UN efforts for peaceful conflict resolution and state building to be particularly important. Norway can and will help to ensure that the necessary progress is made in this field.”

The report should give new momentum to the issue of whether to expand the Security Council. This would require all parties to show greater flexibility than has been the case until now. In the forthcoming debate, Norway will stress that one of the factors on which the legitimacy of the Security Council depends is whether small countries have a reasonable chance of being represented on the Council. The panel makes it clear that the right to self-defence set out in the UN Charter still applies, but that the international community also has to play an active role in preventing attacks and violence directed at civilians.

“I am also pleased that the panel so clearly states that development is an essential basis for a collective security system that takes prevention seriously, and that we need to intensify efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for development and poverty reduction,” said the Foreign Minister.

In the next few months, Norway will play an active part in discussions with other countries on the panel’s recommendations. The aim of these discussions is to take the necessary steps in connection with the UN summit in September 2005, five after the adoption of the UN Millennium Declaration.

The high-level panel was appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in autumn 2003. The panel was chaired by Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand, and included Norway’s Gro Harlem Brundtland. Its terms of reference were divided into three main parts: 1) to examine today’s global threats and provide an analysis of future challenges to international peace and security, 2) to identify clearly the contribution that collective action can make in addressing these challenges and 3) to recommend the changes necessary to ensure effective collective action. The panel’s report will be an important basis for the Secretary-General’s report to the UN summit in 2005.