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UNITED STATES, Aug 24 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Ongoing failures in United Nations peacekeeping work has led to demands to improve its ability to address conflicts.

The Panel on UN Peace Operations, set up in March to examine the situation and submit recommendations, released its report earlier this week. If the UN is to strengthen its ability to deal with military conflict, some believe it will have to develop a stronger military force itself, thus moving towards the establishment of its own standing army. Such a move is much feared by those who oppose the growing influence of the international body, in particular the International Criminal Court.

Among the report’s many recommendations, is “providing peacekeeping troops with the authorization, equipment and backing to respond to violence against civilians and to take action against one side in a conflict if it violates peace agreements,” reads a UN press release. During the Rwandan genocide the UN already had sufficient forces to save at least a few hundred thousand citizens. UN headquarters strangely refused General D’Allaire’s repeated pleadings for permission to destroy secret arms caches or to simply jam the radio broadcasts directing the slaughter. A standing UN army was not needed, just the will to do something with what was already available.

The British Broadcasting Corporation reports that “the UN experts did not go as far as calling for a ‘rapid-reaction force’ – a proposal put forward by a former UN secretary-general which has been criticized by the United States as a step towards a ‘UN army’.”

The Panel also “calls for more steady funding for the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations so as to overcome confusion of ‘the temporary nature of specific operations with the evident permanence of peacekeeping and other peace operation activities as core functions of the UN’.” Not surprisingly, Canadian “Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy and National Defence Minister Art Eggleton today welcomed [the] recommendations,” according to an official government press release. According to the CBC, “a detailed plan of the recommendations is now being put together. It will be presented for consideration to world leaders who will be gathering at the UN for the Millennium Summit in early September.”

For more, see the BBC – Experts call for UN to take sides