Iraq War A Lesson On Need Of UN Charter: Annan

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In the interview, Annan was repeatedly asked whether the war was "illegal." "Yes," he finally said, "I have indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal."

Annan's remarks drew strong protests from the United States, Britain and Australia who insisted that the military action was legal.

In his interview, Annan said the war in Iraq and its aftermath had brought home painful lessons about the importance of resolving use-of-force issues jointly through the UN.

"I think that in the end everybody is concluding that it is best to work together with allies and through the UN to deal with some of those issues,” he said, adding, "And I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time.”

Annan stressed that such action needed UN approval and a much broader support of the international community.

Eckhard said this had been the Secretary-General's longstanding view. The spokesman added that one of the purposes of a High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which the Secretary-General had established, was to look at the issue of preventive war and to see how it could be employed in conformity with the Charter, which does not allow pre-emptive attacks.

"He has over the past more than a year used the words 'not in conformity with the Charter' to describe his view of the Iraq war and of course one of his purposes in establishing the UN panel on change was to look at the question of preventive war and try to bring that in conformity with the Charter principles, which do not promote preventive war," Eckhard said.

"Since the war he has been emphasizing the need for nations on the Security Council and the UN membership as a whole to pull together, saying it is in everyone's interest that stability be restored to Iraq," the spokesman said. "So once the invasion took place, he did not look back, he looked forward."

"But the principle of the Charter, called into question in his view by the invasion, needs to be addressed in a serious way," Eckhard said, adding, "And he asked the high level panel to look specifically at that issue. That panel is supposed to report by the end of this year and the Secretary-General would formulate his recommendations and put them to the General Assembly."

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Colin Powell rejected Annan's statement that the US-led war in Iraq was illegal. Powell said in an interview published on Friday the comment was ``not a very useful statement to make at this point.''

``What does it gain anyone? We should all be gathering around the idea of helping the Iraqis, not getting into these kinds of side issues,'' Powell said in an interview with The Washington Times.

Powell added that he was sure he would have the opportunity to talk to Annan about the comments the UN chief made to the BBC on Wednesday.

Powell, however, said: ``What we did was totally consistent with international law.''

In the wide-ranging Washington Times interview, Powell also acknowledged the serious security situation in Iraq after months of violence. Nearly 200 Iraqis have been killed in bomb blasts, clashes and other attacks over the past few days.

Powell said US diplomats and military commanders recognized that Iraqi elections set for January cannot proceed under the current security conditions in certain areas of the country but predicted it would improve.

``We don't expect the security situation as it exists now on the 16th of September to be the security situation'' on the day Iraqis vote, Powell told the newspaper.

``We know and he knows that these areas have to a brought back firmly under government control,” said Powell.