The Secretary General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change continues work towards its December 1st deadline to present to Kofi Annan its recommendations on how the United Nations can transform itself into a 21st Century organization.

The 16 member panel recently held a closed door meeting in Baden, Austria. The Economist  reported that the group was "near agreement" on an issue that has plagued the United Nations since it was created - the makeup and legitimacy of the U.N.'s Security Council. The Council's current composition of five veto wielding permanent members and ten regionally elected nonpermanent members has long been considered outdated and undemocratic.

The panel is composed of "eminent persons" such as former US national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, Yevgeny Primakov, a former Russian prime minister, Gareth Evans, former Austrialian foreign minister, and Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and former Director-General of the World Health Organization. Now this group has shown an "overwhelming consensus" to expand the Security Council's from its present two tiered, fifteen member, structure to a three tiered, twenty four member plan.

The proposal calls for the existing permanent five (U.S., Great Britain, China, France, and Russia); a second tier of seven or eight "semi-permanent" members elected on a regional basis for a renewable four or five year term; and a third tier of members also elected regionally (following the current practice) for a non-renewable two year term. Nations such as Germany, Japan, Brazil, India, and South Africa have been mentioned as potential tier two members. There has also been talk of using a nation's record of contributions to UN peacekeeping as one of the criteria for determining semi-permanent membership.

Some criticisms of this proposal have already surfaced. According to professor Joe Schwartzberg, author of Revitalizing The United Nations- Reform Through Weighted Voting, "The High Level Panels' proposed recommendations may appear, at first glance, to offer a significant improvement over the present situation in respect to the make-up and functioning of the UN Security Council; but it exacerbates some of the principal shortcomings of the existing system ...People will see the scheme for what it really is, a device for perpetuating the privileges of the presently advantaged powers by the co-optation of an arbitrarily selected second tier of states." (+ MORE)

The Panel's mission is to:

• Examine today's global threats and provide an analysis of future challenges to international peace and security
•  Identify clearly the contribution that collective action can make in addressing these challenges
•  Recommend the changes necessary to ensure effective collective action, including but not limited to a review of the principal organs of the United Nations.

The Panel has divided the issues they are working on into 6 "baskets" :

• Civil Wars/Internal Violence (with a focus on prevention, mediation, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding)
• Traditional international tensions and rivalries
• Social/Economic Threats such as poverty, hunger, and AIDS
• Weapons of Mass Destruction
• International Terrorism
• Organized Crime

According to The Economist report, the panel has "abandon any distinction" between threats such terrorism and weapons of mass destruction versus threats such as hunger, poverty, and AIDS. All are "inextricably linked."

The panel appears close to a consensus on thorny issues such as how to deal with pre-emptive or preventive attacks. There is also agreement on humanitarian intervention and a nations "responsibility" to protect its citizens and the United Nations responsibility to do so when nations cannot or will not defend its populace.

The Panel is expected to finish a first draft of its report in September, which a final draft delivered to Secretary General Annan in December. He will then present it with his own comments and recommendations to the General Assembly in 2005 where it is expected to serve as a focal point for the UN's sixtieth anniversary. Two-thirds of the General Assembly (including all of the Permanent Five members) must approve of it for the portions that will require changes in the U.N.'s charter to be adopted.