Diplomats said the United Nations also plans to focus on helping the country's political and ethnic groups build a broad-based government.

The top U.N. envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, said the world body should proceed cautiously in taking on a new peacekeeping operation. But Britain's U.N. envoy Jeremy Greenstock, speaking after the session, said a peacekeeping mission may become necessary at some point.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the council that the United Nations needs to be "very nimble" and prepared for a fluid and dangerous situation _ something the world body isn't used to, according to diplomats who sat in on the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The diplomats said Annan cautioned that Afghanistan has to be treated so as not to destabilize Pakistan, India, Kashmir, Iran or the Central Asian states.

"If not, we will come to see the Balkans and the Congo as child's play," one of the diplomats quoted the secretary-general as saying.

Annan refused to speak to reporters as he left the council meeting.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Annan appointed Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and highly respected expert on central Asia, to oversee all U.N. activities in Afghanistan and the region. The meeting Tuesday was his first with the 15-member council.

President Bush is pushing for the world body to take over so-called nation-building once the U.S.-led military campaign against Afghanistan is finished. U.S. deputy ambassador James Cunningham said Tuesday the United States envisions "an important role" for the United Nations.

According to diplomats, Brahimi told the council his top priority was to get humanitarian aid into Afghanistan before winter descends, then to help the Afghan people solve their political problems _ the establishment of a functioning government. Only then, he was quoted as saying, could the world body begin to help in rebuilding the country.

"He wants the cooperation of neighboring states to get land corridors to open up" so larger quantities of food and other humanitarian supplies can be delivered, Greenstock said. "There is the need for 50,000 to 60,000 tons a month, and we're only at about half that now."

The Bush administration hopes the Taliban, if it falls, will be replace by a coalition built, perhaps, around the 87-year-old former King Mohammad Zaher Shah, who was overthrown in 1973.

The diplomats said European countries, for the most part, support building a political framework around the deposed king.

Greenstock said efforts to create a consultative process among the Afghan parties "seem to be gelling rather slowly around the ex-king's efforts" and questions were raised during the council meeting about whether Brahimi could speed the process.

The former king sent a letter to Annan on Oct. 10 appealing to the Security Council to quickly deploy a U.N. peacekeeping force should the current military operations result in the sudden collapse of Taliban regime.

But some diplomats said there was no Security Council consensus for a U.N. peacekeeping force.

"What we're all conscious of is that any security assistance to Afghanistan must be acceptable to any emerging authority in Afghanistan," Greenstock said.