UNITED NATIONS, April 14: Former US president Bill Clinton said on Wednesday that the United States should try and build a world with more friends and more partners and fewer enemies.

“In an interdependent world, no nation is big or strong enough to occupy, jail or dispose of all of its adversaries or its potential adversaries,” Mr Clinton said at a press conference at UN headquarters where he was formally introduced as UN’s top envoy to tsunami recovery.

He said the world had a moral obligation to rebuild tsunami-hit areas so they were in better shape than before the December disaster struck a dozen Asian nations.

Mr Clinton said rebuilding homes, schools and hospitals would be far more difficult and staggering than initial emergency relief.

“This is a problem that is nowhere near solved and we can’t lose our concentration on it,” he said, adding that he had promised to spend at least two years on the UN effort.

“We have a moral obligation to build these areas back better than they were before the crisis began,” he said as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan sat beside him.