国际英语新闻：At debate, world leaders reflect over "marginalized" UN

A case in point is NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999 -- one of the first examples of military intervention without UN Security Council approval, which ultimately paved the way for the invasion of Iraq.

"The UN -- in part because of its insufficient response to crises in the Balkans and Africa in the nineties, where peacekeepers found that their hands were often tied -- has been deemed too cumbersome to react promptly to security challenges," said Bancroft, cofounder of TransConflict, an organization undertaking conflict transformation projects and research throughout the Western Balkans.

REDRAWING POWER MAP

Some leaders at the UN forum made appeals for reforms to the global economic and political governance in accordance with the shift in the international power.

"The nations represented here know how deeply the world has changed in the six and a half decades since the UN was formed," said British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. "All of us have to respond to a world that is profoundly altered."

"So we must reform and renew our multilateral institutions in line with the changing map of power," Clegg said.

Many leaders expressed concerns about the increasingly dominating role in global economic and financial governance of the G20, which comprises 20 largest economies in the world. While recognizing the G20's crucial role, they emphasized that the United Nations still has a unique legitimacy to play a central and irreplaceable role.

"The UN must ... look to focus on its strengths -- particularly its capacity for preventing crises and conflicts from occurring in the first place -- in order to re-affirm its purpose and legitimacy as the global actor," Bancroft said.

Leaders said that the UN will have to undergo a key overhaul if it is to play to full potential in the current world. Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, the so-called G4 group, and African countries highlighted the reform of the UN Security Council, the UN's most powerful organ to impose sanctions and dispatch peacekeepers, and reiterated their aspiration for the elite permanent seats.