UN Secretary General Kofi Annan threw down the gauntlet to world leaders on Monday, pressing them to adopt the most wide-ranging reforms since the UN was founded 60 years ago.
Annan called for an expanded Security Council, fixed rules for when nations could go to war, strengthened human rights and boosted development and trade, as well as an overhaul of the UN bureaucracy.
"This hall has heard enough high-sounding declarations to last us for some decades to come," Annan said in a speech to the UN General Assembly to present his 63-page report, which he called the biggest UN reforms in history.
"We all know what the problems are and we all know what we have promised to achieve. What is need now is not more declarations or promises, but action -- action to fulfil the promises already made," he said.
Annan wants the major changes to be agreed at a summit of world leaders at UN headquarters in September, which will mark the UN's 60th anniversary.
"What I am proposing amounts to a comprehensive strategy," he said, urging member states to adopt the package as a whole and steer clear of "a la carte" picking and choosing.
But he now must convince the UN's 191 member states to support his program, and some nations on Monday were already raising concerns about certain parts of the reform package.
One of the most sensitive ideas is to expand the Security Council, with Annan offering two models. One option would add six new members to its five permanent powers: Britain, China, France, Russia and the US.
The other would add a third tier of semi-permanent members to the council, the top UN body for international peace and security.
Annan said the council should adopt a resolution setting guidelines to determine when military action can be authorised, an issue in the spotlight since the US invaded Iraq.
He has said that the deep divisions over the war threatened to undermine the international system of security in place since the UN was established in the wake of World War II.
"The United Nations must be brought fully into line with today's realities," Annan said, maintaining that an expanded council would be more representative.
On terrorism, Annan put forward a long-elusive definition that said no cause could justify non-state entities killing or harming civilians in an attempt to influence government policies and actions.
The proposal takes aim at insistence from many Arab nations that attacks on civilians to fight "state-sponsored terrorism" by Israel are acceptable, which has long been a stumbling block to agreeing a definition of terrorism.
On development, he pressed nations to honor their commitments to provide 0.7 percent of GDP for development aid and called for full debt relief for the world's poorest, debt-ridden countries.
Yet he said developing nations must take concrete steps to fight AIDS and cut poverty in half, part of an ambitious set of agreed targets known as the Millennium Development Goals to be met by 2015.
Annan also proposed replacing the UN Commission on Human Rights, long criticized for protecting offending nations, with a human rights council elected by the 191 UN member countries.
Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, which have launched a joint campaign to get four permanent council seats, quickly said in a joint statement that member states would back the first council reform model with more permanent members.
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