Agreement Reached On U.N. Pact

The 191-member U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday adopted a watered-down document for world leaders to approve at a U.N. summit, shedding many of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's most ambitious goals after weeks of bitter debate.

The compromise 35-page document is supposed to galvanize global action to combat poverty and launch a major reform of the United Nations itself. But to reach a consensus, much of the most progressive language in the text was gutted.

A definition of terrorism and details on how to replace the discredited U.N. Commission on Human Rights will not be included. U.S.-led efforts to overhaul U.N. management have been diluted, while nuclear nonproliferation likely won't be mentioned at all.

CBS News reporter Charles Wolfson reports that Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns called the negotiations "an extraordinarily difficult process," but said "this is a very good start."

"It's not a complete 100 percent of everything we wanted but it's a good beginning," Burns said. "The U.S. didn't get to dictate this document."

Diplomats called the document a breakthrough after so much debate. Several were pleased with the creation of a peacebuilding commission and a long section on development. That includes a mention of the desire by "many developed countries" to spend 0.7 percent of their gross national product on development aid.

"Don't expect Rome to be built in a day, it wasn't," Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry said. "Against the difficulty of this negotiation, it's complexity, this is a very substantial gain."

Several nations were angry with the way the document was pushed through the General Assembly before it was translated from English into the five other official U.N. languages, a violation of U.N. protocol. That gave ambassadors little time to review it.

"This process is a clear violation of the most basic elements governing democratic processes," Venezuela's Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez said from the floor after the vote.

With some heads of state already in New York for Wednesday's opening of a three-day U.N. summit, the diplomats were running out of time for producing a substantive document for world leaders to adopt.

Annan says the United Nations needs revamping if it is to meet the challenges of the 21st century. He came out with a list of recommendations in March that General Assembly President Jean Ping turned into a draft summit document in June. It has gone through numerous drafts.

"This is the largest gathering of world leaders in the U.N.'s history," said CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk, "and it is a great opportunity to find common ground, but reform is on the agenda because changes are needed to make the organization work."

The seven issues facing negotiators were terrorism: a stronger Human Rights Council to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission; a new Peacebuilding Commission to help nations emerging from conflict; new responsibility for governments to protect civilians from genocide and war crimes; disarmament and nuclear weapons proliferation; overhauling U.N. management; and the promotion of economic development.

"For better or worse, the success of the 60th anniversary of the world body will be judged on whether or not a serious consensus document on world poverty can come out of the three-day summit," said Falk.

Annan also had urged the 191 U.N. member states to agree on a plan to expand the powerful U.N. Security Council, but the negotiations became so contentious the idea was shelved last month.

Akram said the negotiators, ambassadors from 15 countries, had agreed to language on terrorism, the Peacebuilding Commission and on human rights. Negotiators were also close to agreement on the responsibility to protect, but still differed on management reforms, trade and climate change, he said.

The Pakistani ambassador said he expected a core group of 32 countries to make a judgment Tuesday on whether the entire text is sufficiently balanced to be presented to all 191 U.N. members, "and then in the larger group our hope is that nobody will pull it apart."

Many of the agreements were reached by leaving the most contentious issues to further negotiations.

The latest language on the Human Rights Council, for example, eliminates a two-thirds requirement for membership and steps to consider making the council a permanent U.N. organ.

Egyptian Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said it was too early to decide the council's status. "Let us give it a chance to function, and then we will review it," he said.

His country favors a council that would be a subsidiary body of the U.N. General Assembly.

Germany's Pleuger said member states underestimated the amount of preparatory work needed to reach consensus. The negotiating process also was thrown into disarray when United States submitted hundreds of amendments a few weeks ago, he said.

"We have reached a fork in the road," Annan warned member nations. "If you, the political leaders of the world's nations, cannot reach agreement on the way forward, history will take the decisions for you, and the interests of your peoples may go by default."