By Irwin Arieff

January 20, 2004

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Rights groups on Tuesday welcomed U.N. Security Council pledges to crack down on the forced use of children as soldiers but said they feared council plans would not fully protect children caught up in war.

At a public meeting, many of the council's 15 members vowed to ensure the United Nations would continue to "name and shame" countries and groups found to force children to fight their wars and to consider imposing such sanctions as asset freezes and arms embargoes on repeat offenders.

But activists said the council needed to protect children in war from a wider range of rights violations, such as rape, and set up a monitoring system to ensure wrongdoing was promptly reported and acted upon.

"There are huge holes in the system," said Kathleen Hunt of the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, an ad hoc coalition of rights groups.

"There are people out in the field gathering information on violations, but there's no one with final responsibility to ensure the information is reported in a timely manner and acted on so the problems can be fixed."

Without a mechanism for gathering accurate and reliable information, "the council will be unwilling to commit to sanctions," said Jo Becker, representing the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.

Council members displayed little enthusiasm for a monitoring system, with some diplomats warning it could create a costly new bureaucracy within the United Nations.

But several agreed that looking solely at the recruitment of child soldiers was too narrow an approach.

"One of the most shocking developments in recent conflicts is the appalling prevalence of sexual violence," said German U.N. Ambassador Gunter Pleuger.

RAPE AS WEAPON OF WAR

"Systematic rape as a weapon of war, often combined with murder and mutilation, as well as contemporary forms of slavery, especially the abduction of children as sex slaves, are not covered by the current list (of violations)," Pleuger said, urging that the U.N. list of violations be expanded.

France has circulated a draft resolution intended to set the U.N. program in concrete. Diplomats said discussions were just beginning although the council hoped to adopt a text by the end of the month.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's last report to the council, issued in November, listed for the first time 15 countries and more than 40 rebel groups around the world known to rely on child soldiers in conflicts.

The report said the council should punish groups and governments recruiting children through arms embargoes or by cutting off their sources of financing, while the leaders of such groups could be punished by restricting their travel or barring them from serving in government.

Olara Otunnu, Annan's special representative for children and armed conflict, acknowledged the Security Council risked political fallout in all its actions.

"But I hope that at this watershed moment, the best interests of children, our children, will trump all other considerations," he said, urging the council to create a monitoring mechanism and act against violators.

The 15 countries in which Annan said governments or rebel groups, or both, use child soldiers are Afghanistan, Burundi, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Russia's Chechnya republic, Myanmar, Nepal, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Uganda.