Much more was riding on President Bush's U.N. address Tuesday than member nations' support, in troops and treasure, to help reconstruct Iraq. Bush appealed for U.N. help to rebuild both Afghanistan and Iraq. It's been a year since he warned the United Nations risked becoming irrelevant if it did not help remove Saddam Hussein. Yet the Security Council refused, and now there was the president, a year and a war later, asking for a new Security Council resolution to expand the U.N.'s role in post-war Iraq. The outcome could affect the Middle East, U.S. relations with its allies and the United Nations for years to come.

France has continued to resist U.S. control over the post-war process in Iraq, and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, shortly before Bush spoke, challenged the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military attack on terrorist regimes. Annan voiced his fears that if that doctrine is adopted, many other nations could resort to "unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without credible justification." His remarks received sustained applause in the General Assembly.

Annan said this may be a moment no less decisive for the U.N. than its founding in 1945. He may be right, for reasons other than those he cited. The War on America, which is the terrorists' side of the War on Terrorism, obliges the United States in some cases to take pre-emptive military action. When terrorists can hijack jets as weapons of mass destruction, nations can't afford to wait to be attacked. And when Security Council members refused to remove Saddam's regime, it didn't leave much choice for the United States, Britain and the coalition but to act on their own. If the U.N. can't adapt to the global war waged by terrorists, it will be abandoned as useless. It should pass the new resolution.

But the United States does need to build multilateral coalitions, avoid a go-it-alone strategy whenever possible and seek U.N. help to avoid the appearance of an occupying force in liberated countries such as Iraq. A multilateral operation blunts the appeal of terrorist groups who enlist recruits by inciting them to help drive out hated "foreign occupiers." In his speech, Bush rejected the demands of France and others that the United States hand over full control to Iraqis before minimal democratic institutions and elections are in place, and he called for a modest U.N. role in developing an Iraqi constitution, training civil servants and conducting free elections.

It was in every democratic nation's interest to remove Saddam Hussein's monstrous regime, and it is in their interest now to help make Iraq a model of free self-government. That includes France, still smarting over its lost Iraqi oil contracts and determined to thwart superpower America at every turn. The rift between traditional allies only works to the advantage of terrorists.

President Bush called on the U.N. to adopt a second new resolution to criminalize the spread of weapons of mass destruction and to interdict lethal materials in transit. He made no call for military action against outlaw regimes such as North Korea and Iran. His third major appeal was for the U.N.'s 191 nations to take humanitarian action against global crises such as AIDS and the human sex-slave trade.

The president said "there is no neutral ground" in the war on terrorism. That also applies to the other crises. Even a superpower can't succeed by itself. The attack on U.N. headquarters in Baghdad last month showed that no one is on the sidelines in these struggles. The U.N. needs to get more fully engaged.

Speech's highlights

• "Those who target relief workers for death have set themselves against all humanity. Those who incite murder and celebrate suicide reveal their contempt for life itself."

• "This process (of self-government) must unfold according to the needs of Iraqis, neither hurried nor delayed by the wishes of other parties."

• "Through out Proliferation Security Initiative, 11 nations are preparing to search planes and ships, trains and trucks carrying suspect cargo, and to seize weapons or missile shipments that raise proliferation concerns."

• "And a transformed Middle East would benefit the entire world by undermining the ideologies that export violence to other lands."