By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent

United Nations -- In his third annual speech to the U.N. General Assembly September 23, President Bush urged the United Nations to "take decisive action" and "show courage" to address the challenges of the day: help for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the humanitarian crises of AIDS and human trafficking.

Those challenges, the president said, "require urgent attention and moral clarity."

"Helping Afghanistan and Iraq to succeed as free nations in a transformed region, cutting off the avenues of proliferation, abolishing modern forms of slavery -- these are the kinds of great tasks for which the United Nations was founded," Bush said.

He opened the assembly's debate with a half-hour speech that concentrated on the defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and the importance of economic assistance and an orderly transition to self-government for Iraq. "All nations of good will should step forward and provide that support," he said.

"The primary goal of our coalition in Iraq is self-government for the people of Iraq, reached by orderly and democratic means. This process must unfold according to the needs of Iraqis -- neither hurried nor delayed by the wishes of other parties," the president said.

"Iraq as a dictatorship had great power to destabilize the Middle East. Iraq as a democracy will have great power to inspire the Middle East," he said.

The advance of democratic institutions will serve as an example in the region, especially to the Palestinian people, he said, adding that the Palestinian cause is being betrayed by leaders who cling to power by feeding old hatreds.

The United Nations can contribute greatly to the cause of Iraqi self-government by assisting in developing a constitution, training civil servants, and conducting free and fair elections, said the president.

Bush said that the new Iraq resolution the United States is working on with other members of the Security Council "will expand the U.N.'s role in Iraq," but he gave no other details on the text, the timing of a vote, or other issues such a resolution would address.

He said the United States will ask the Security Council to adopt a new anti-proliferation resolution calling on all U.N. members to criminalize the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, enact strict export controls, and secure any and all sensitive materials within their own borders.

"The deadly combination of outlaw regimes, terror networks, and weapons of mass murder is a peril that cannot be ignored or wished away," the president said. "If such a danger is allowed to fully materialize, all works, all protests, will come too late. Nations of the world must have the wisdom and the will to stop grave threats before they arrive."

The United States, he said, "is determined to keep the world's most destructive weapons away from all our shores, and out of the hands of our common enemies."

AIDS and human trafficking are challenges "to our conscience," Bush continued. "We must act decisively to meet the humanitarian crises of our time."

Human trafficking -- especially young girls and women who are bought, sold, or forced across borders to work in the sex trade -- is a form of slavery, the president said.

"We must show new energy in fighting back an old evil. Nearly two centuries after the abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade ... the trade in human beings for any purpose must not be allowed to thrive in our time," he said.

The 58th General Assembly began somberly with remembrances of the terrorist attacks that have hit nations from all parts of the world as well as the United Nations itself with the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad which killed 22 people, including U.N. Special Envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

Attending the session were Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Iraqi Governing Council President Ahmed Chalabi.

Also scheduled to address the assembly on the first day were French President Jacques Chirac, South African President Thabo Mbeki, His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco, Brazilian President Luiz Lula Da Silva, Nigerian President Olusegun Obsanjo, and Indonesian President Megawati Soekamoputri.

Opening the session, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan issued his own challenge to the assembly's 191 member nations and emphasized the importance of a successful outcome in Iraq as well.

"Whatever view each of us may take of the events of recent months," he said, "it is vital for all of us that the outcome is a stable, democratic Iraq at peace with itself and with its neighbors and contributing stability in the region."

"Subject to security considerations, the United Nations system is prepared to play its full part in working for a satisfactory outcome in Iraq, and to do so as part of an effort by the whole international community, pulling together on the basis of a sound and viable policy," the secretary general said.

"If it takes extra time and patience to forge a policy that is collective, coherent and workable, then I for one would regard that time as well spent," he said.

Annan asked U.N. member states to take "a hard look at fundamental policy issues and at the structural changes needed to address them. The "time is ripe" to decide whether to continue the world organization on the founding principles of 1945 or make "radical changes," especially in the way the Security Council deals with the use of force and threats to security, he said. The council must also be expanded to be more representative of the U.N. membership today, he said.

"Excellencies, we have come to a fork in the road," the secretary general said. "This may be a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself when the United Nations was founded."

Annan said he would be appointing a high-level panel to examine current challenges to peace and security, consider the contribution which collective action can make in addressing these challenges, review the functioning of major organs of the U.N., and recommend ways of reforming U.N. institutions and processes.

To regain the confidence of states and world public opinion, the Security Council, Annan said, needs to begin "serious discussions" on what criteria should be used for an early authorization of coercive measures to deal with certain types of threats such as those from terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction, genocide, or other comparable massive violations of human rights.

Once again this year, the U.N. response to threats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Liberia "has been hesitant and tardy," he said.

The secretary general said the United Nations must also tackle with equal energy such so-called "soft threats" as environmental degradation, the spread of infectious diseases, and the persistence of extreme poverty, and it must continue the pursuit of human rights, democracy and good governance.

"History is a harsh judge: it will not forgive us if we let this moment pass," the secretary general said.

"I urge you to seek agreement on ways of improving [the United Nations], but above all of using it as its founders intended -- to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, to establish the basic conditions for justice and the rule of law, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom," Annan said.

"The world may have changed ... but those aims are as valid and urgent as ever. We must keep them firmly in our sights," he said.