Annan: World faces 'crisis of governance'

DAVOS, Switzerland (CNN) -- The worldwide economic recession has exposed a "crisis of global governance" that can only be addressed by the radical reform of the United Nations, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Wednesday as the World Economic Forum got under way in Switzerland.

Kofi Annan says the United Nations needs to be reformed.

"The current architecture of managing global affairs is broken and needs to be fixed," Annan said on the opening morning of the five-day annual meeting of global political and business leaders. "We have major new players coming on the scene and they need to be integrated and given a voice."

Referring to the U.N. Security Council, which gives permanent places and vetoing powers to the U.S., the UK, Russia, China and France, Annan said: "We cannot continue to run the world based on countries that won a war 60 years ago. It's either destructive competition or cooperation. We live in an interdependent world and the only way to move forward is to cooperate."

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http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/01/28/davos.wef.annan/index.html