Remaining relevant

UN members are trying to mend fences after splits over Iraq

In a HARDtalk interview on 7 May, Dame Margaret Anstee, former United Nations Under Secretary General, says serious action needs to be taken to prevent the UN from becoming irrelevant.

Click here to watch the full interview

Dame Margaret Anstee became the first woman to rise to the position of Under Secretary General at the United Nations.

After 40 years working for the UN in situations as diverse as Salvador Allende's Chile and Joseph Savimbi's Angola, Dame Margaret Anstee has published her autobiography "Never learn to type" .

Action needed

She tells Tim Sebastian that very serious action now has to be taken to stop the UN from becoming irrelevant.

Member states are trying to mend fences in the Security Council she says, after the disastrous rifts thrown up by the decision of the coalition to go to war in Iraq.

In Iraq they'll discover sooner or later that they will need the UN.

Dame Margaret Anstee

On the role the UN should play in Iraq, or lack of it, she says: "Calmer heads might see that it would be in the US interest to give the UN a role in Iraq. It would not only give them a seal of legitimacy, but would prove that all the steps were being taken to enable the Iraqis to decide their own future."

"In Iraq they'll discover sooner or later that they will need the UN, because it will be a very long haul."

Dame Margaret Anstee adds: "It seems to me the world is at a crossroads. What we're seeing is not so much a crisis of the UN, but a crisis of multilateralism. The problem we have now is the paradox of an increased global world, yet at the same time national interests are still very much alive."

HARDtalk can be seen on BBC World at 0330gmt, 0830gmt, 1530gmt, 1830gmt and 2330gmt.

It can also be seen on BBC News 24 at 0430 and 2330