April 8, 2006	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 9, 1427

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UNITED NATIONS, April 7: Three world leaders helping United Nations efforts to streamline and strengthen world body’s efforts in development, humanitarian assistance and environment, said on Thursday they were looking for serious reform that could help the organisation keep up with the dizzying pace of global change.

“We need to retool and reorganise ourselves to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow,” Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan told a press conference on Thursday at the end of the first session of the high-level Panel on UN System-wide Coherence, which was requested by national leaders at the 2005 World Summit.

“In life today, the only constant is change,” noted Mr Aziz, who added that as the world changed, all organisations that existed to help the world needed to fine tune and reorganise themselves to meet the needs of tomorrow.

The panel held a day and a half of intense discussions on a number of issues, including the need to provide a clear role for the United Nations, in order to accelerate development, fight poverty, build capacity in countries and assist countries in various reform initiatives.

Prime Ministers Luisa Dias Diogo of Mozambique and Jens Stoltenberg of Norway also co-chaired the panel, which is expected to produce a study, also requested at the Summit, laying the groundwork for a fundamental restructuring of UN work in the field.

“As you know, the UN has a broad mandate and there are many organisations and sometimes they do tend to work at cross purposes,” Mr Aziz said, citing the example of the social sector, where he said both the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) work in similar areas.

“Coherence means bringing them all together so we get the maximum firepower, the maximum punch, and get results. And the results are improving the delivery mechanism in the country,” he said.