NEW YORK: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called upon the world community to make a ``realistic appreciation'' of the promise, limitations and responsibilities of the United Nations. The UN, he said, should be judged by a ``sense of reality.'' Justifying the various UN missions, including the one to Iraq, Annan said in an article in New York Times that ``it is more often the aggressor than the victim who benefits from isolation and abandonment by the international community''. This, Annan stressed, means acknowledging the potential of the secretary general's office to advance the interests of all states only so long as it does not appear to serve the narrow interest of one state or group of states. ``This is the precarious balance to which any secretary general owes his office, his strength, his effectiveness and his moral authority,'' he said.WASHINGTON: US President Bill Clinton has announced that the US Government will sue tobacco companies to recover the costs of treatingpatients with smoking-related ailments. ``Tonight I announce that the Justice Department is preparing a litigation plan to take the tobacco companies to court,'' Clinton said in a surprise addition to his annual State of the Union address. He said the funds recovered would be used to strengthen Medicare, the government-funded public health care programme that has paid out billions of dollars over the years for treating millions of sick smokers. ``Smoking has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars under Medicare and other programmes,'' Clinton said, adding that Americans as a whole should not be held responsible for bearing these costs. Clinton's announcement came despite a landmark $205 billion settlement reached last year between several key cigarette makers and state governments.BEIJING: Chinese police have detained two state trucking company employees who tried to set up a labour rights group on charges of endangering state security, a rights group reported on Wednesday. Authoritiesnotified the families of Yue Tianxiang and Guo Xinmin of the charges yesterday, eight days after the men were taken into custody, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement reported. The pair organised the Chinese workers monitor early this month to demand unpaid pensions from the auto transport company in Tianshui city in western Gansu province, the group said.
