The United Nations must show it is tough enough to ensure the security of its members so that individual countries do not take measures into their own hands, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday.
Speaking to Chinese university students in Beijing, Annan said fighting terrorism was best achieved through co-operation and information-sharing between states, not the use of force.
"Indeed, the first purpose of the United Nations, laid down in Article 1 of the Charter, is 'to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace'," Annan said.
"We must show that the United Nations is capable of fulfilling that purpose, so that states do not feel obliged or entitled to take the law into their own hands."
In remarks at Beijing's Tsinghua University, Annan stopped short of repeating comments from an interview in September in which he said the 15-member Security Council should have approved the invasion of Iraq in mid-March 2003.
Annan said others felt that doctrine was "a grave threat to international peace and security, since it might imply that any state has the right to use force whenever it sees fit, without regard to other states' concerns.