Blair Calls for Wide-ranging Un Reform

Tony Blair today called for wide-ranging reform of the United Nations, IMF and World Bank to foster a more effective response to global problems such as terrorism, climate change, poverty and unfair trade.

There was a "hopeless mismatch" between the challenges faced by the world and the global institutions set up after the second world war to tackle them, he said. The prime minister said that the west would sometimes need to take pre-emptive military action abroad, even if it was not on the basis of definite information.

"We should stand up for our own values, asserting that they are not western but global values," he said.

"But such values will only succeed if they are seen to be fairly and even-handedly applied."

"A few decades back countries could wait, assess over time, even opt out, at least until everything was clear. We could act when we knew.

"Now ... we have to act, not react; we have to do so on the basis of prediction, not certainty; and such action will, if not usually, then often be outside of our own territory."

A UN security council with no permanent seats for India, Japan, Germany or representatives from Latin America and Africa was no longer "legitimate in the modern world" and must be reformed, he said. "To meet effectively the challenge that faces us, we must fashion an international community that both embodies, and acts in pursuit of global values: liberty, democracy, tolerance, justice," said Mr Blair.

"These are the values we believe in. These are the values universally accepted across all nations, faiths and races, though not by all elements within them. These are values that can inspire and unify."

Taking on his critics, Mr Blair told his audience that the international community should bury its divisions over Iraq to support "a child of democracy struggling to be born".

"It has been three years since Saddam fell, and it has been three years of strife and bloodshed but it has also seen something remarkable," he said.

"A democratic political process has grown.

"How could we possibly, in the face of such a struggle so critical to our own values, not see it through?"

He said that such action would often need to take place overseas, alluding to the claimed links between the July 7 London bombers and extremist Islamic seminaries in Pakistan.

The roots of the July 7 attacks, he said, "are in schools and training camps of indoctrination thousands of miles away, as well as in the towns and cities of Britain".

The scale of the problems and the interdependence of the modern world meant that individual nations could no longer wait to react to dangers to their own states, but must unite to identify threats to global values and deal with them "pre-emptively". But he also insisted that western powers needed to demonstrate their even-handedness if they were to get support for this new idea of international relations.

"Such action cannot be done unless it is on an agreed basis of principle. Common action can only be done on a basis of common values. We must fashion an international community."

Western countries should "commit the same energy, engagement, and raw political emotion to the rest of the political agenda that preoccupies the world at large", he said.

"Liberty, democracy, tolerance, and justice: these are the values, after all, we believe in. These are the values universally accepted across all nation states ... values that can inspire and unify," he said.

The speech followed a more light-hearted press conference with the US president, George Bush, in which Mr Bush asked Mr Blair to stay as prime minister "as long as I'm president".

As the speech was about to begin, Washington's Capitol Hill was sealed off after gunfire was heard in the underground car park of a building adjacent to the Congress building.