STOCKHOLM, Jan 26: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Monday that the slaughters in Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s could have been prevented if the world had taken action as he opened the first international genocide conference in over 50 years.

"There can be no more important issue, and no more binding obligation, than the prevention of genocide," Mr Annan told ten heads of state and officials from dozens of nations gathered for the three-day conference hosted by Sweden.

The UN chief singled out as "especially shameful" the failure by the international community to take action in the former Yugoslavia during the wars of secession in the early 1990s and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

"The events of the 1990s, in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, are especially shameful. The international community clearly had the capacity to prevent these events. But it lacked the will," Mr Annan said.

He said those memories were "especially painful" for the United Nations. "In Rwanda in 1994, and at Srebrenica in 1995, we had peacekeeping troops on the ground at the very place and time where genocidal acts were being committed," he said. "Instead of reinforcing our troops, we withdrew them."

More than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were killed when Serb forces captured the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995 and the massacre is known as Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

Mr Annan himself has been criticised for the failure of the United Nations to respond to warnings that Rwanda was descending into bloodshed that claimed the lives of up to one million Tutsis and Hutu moderate. Annan was head of UN peacekeeping operations during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Among the delegates at the "Preventing Genocide" conference were heads of state or government from Armenia and Latvia. Israel is taking part in the conference, although it sent a low-level representation after coming close to boycotting the conference during a diplomatic row with Sweden over an art exhibit a week ago.

Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson, the only western European leader attending the conference, said that nations had no choice but to work together to "prevent future mass murders".

During mass killings in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia, "the world stood paralysed", Mr Persson said. "And we can offer no guarantees, it can happen again," Mr Persson said. He added that lack of information was not the main problem, as eyewitness accounts of atrocities spread around the world quickly, thanks to modern technology.

"We do not lack the information, but we have to improve our ability to believe it, to believe the unbelievable," Persson said. The conference is the first major inter-governmental conference focussing on genocide since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, conference spokesman Stig Berglind told AFP ahead of the meeting.

Some governments sent justice ministers, whose portfolio include international law, and others have dispatched specialised academics and researchers.

The European Union is represented by foreign policy chief Javier Solana.Security was tight in the centre of Stockholm as police cordoned off streets around the Norra Latin conference centre and put up barriers and tape to prevent cars from parking nearby.

Organizers stressed that the talks are to focus on the future, and will be based on "the principle of the international community's joint responsibility for preventing genocide". But Mr Persson also said that any credible preventive strategy must include provisions for the worst case, when atrocities do occur. "Potential perpetrators of genocide, mass murder and ethnic cleansing must know that their crimes will not go unpunished," he said. The conference closes Wednesday, and organisers said they hoped for a final declaration and follow-up conferences. -AFP