Countries that act unilaterally on the world stage undermine the authority of the United Nations and weaken the broad consensus needed to confront global problems, Pope Benedict XVI told the world body today.
In his speech to the UN General Assembly, he said notion of multilateral consensus was "in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world's problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community".
This appeared to be a reference to the United States, which led the 2003 invasion of Iraq even though the Security Council refused to approve it.
But the Pope also said that the international community sometimes had to intervene when a country could not protect its own people from "grave and sustained violations of human rights".
Speaking in French and English, he said the international community must be "capable of responding to the demands of the human family through binding international rules”.
In an apparent reference to the conflict in the Sudanese region of Darfur, the pontiff said that every state had the "primary duty" to protect its citizens from human rights violations and humanitarian crises but outside intervention was sometimes justified.
Pope Benedict called for "a deeper search for ways of pre-empting and managing conflicts by exploring every possible diplomatic avenue, and giving attention and encouragement to even the faintest sign of dialogue or desire for reconciliation."
He called human rights, particularly religious freedom, "the common language and ethical substratum of international relations," and added that promoting human rights was the best strategy to eliminate inequalities.
Pope Benedict also called for religious freedom to be protected against secularist views and against majority religions that sideline other faiths - an apparent reference to Muslim states where some Christian minorities report discrimination.
"It should never be necessary to deny God in order to enjoy one's rights.”
Later today, the Pope is due visit a New York synagogue just before the start of the Jewish Passover holiday. He will also visit a Manhattan parish founded by German immigrants in 1873.
He arrived in Washington on Tuesday on his first visit to the United States as pontiff.