Blair Calls on Un to Unite Against Terrorism

The prime minister, Tony Blair, today told the UN security council that the world must unite to defeat terrorism, which he said had "disfigured countries in every continent".

Mr Blair said that terrorism was no longer just a movement, but was an "ideology and a strategy ... not just to kill but to cause chaos and instability, and to divide and confuse us".

He was addressing the security council ahead of his speech to the much-maligned UN summit this afternoon. The summit - attended by over 150 world leaders - is being held to work out how to move forward on the organisation's Millennium Goals of fighting global poverty.

Mr Blair tabled a resolution requiring action not only against people who practice terror, but those who encourage and support it. It was adopted unanimously by the council.

Critics have blamed the rise in terrorism on moves like the war in Iraq, but Mr Blair said this was not the cause of terror.

"The root cause is not a decision on foreign policy but a doctrine of fanaticism and we must unite to uproot it," he told the security council. "They have their strategy and we have ours and we should use it to defeat them."

The US president, George Bush, spoke to the security council earlier today. He also called for a comprehensive international agreement to fight terrorism. "The terrorists must know that wherever they go they cannot escape justice," he said.

Mr Bush also revealed plans this afternoon to drop all trade tariffs, subsidies and other barriers and called on other nations to follow the US example.

The summit, being held on the 60th anniversary of the UN, has been beset with problems. Last night, just hours before the summit began, the member states eventually agreed on a final declaration to tackle global poverty and reform the body. But critics say poorer nations appear to have lost out in the watered-down document.

At the start of the multinational assembly today, the secretary general, Kofi Annan, admitted that the members had failed to achieve the sweeping reform the organisation needed.

"Let us be frank with each other, and the peoples of the United Nations. We have not yet achieved the sweeping and fundamental reform that I and many others believe is required," he told the assembled leaders.

The Millennium Development Goals include targets to cut extreme poverty and child mortality by half and to reverse the spread of HIV/Aids by 2015. But at the opening of the assembly today, the world leaders had before them a document that has been continuously cropped in order to win support from all 191 member states.

In what he described as a "high risk gamble", Mr Annan and other leaders of the general assembly decided to drop the issues on which there was no agreement, decide on language for which they thought they could win approval, and put a clean text to member states.