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UNITED NATIONS, Jan 14 (AFP) - Secretary General Kofi Annan urged UN member states Tuesday to enforce new international treaties banning the use of child soldiers by naming and shaming those who exploit children.

"The time has come to ensure that the hard-won gains in crafting a protection regime for children are applied and put into practice on the ground," he told a public meeting of the UN Security Council.

"By exposing those who violate standards for the protection of children to the light of public scrutiny, we are serving notice that the international community is finally willing to back expressions of concern with action."

In a report to the council last month, Annan listed 23 parties, including governments and insurgents, that use or recruit children in five conflicts: Afghanistan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Somalia.

Annan described the list as "the beginning of a new era of monitoring and reporting on how parties treat children during conflict."

Annan's special representative for children in armed conflict, Olara Otunnu, noted that the list covered only conflicts already on the council's agenda.

He said Annan's next report would include a comprehensive list.

Annan hailed the entry into force in the past year of two landmark legal instruments: The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the compulsory recruitment of children under 18; and the founding statute of the International Criminal Court, which classifies the enlistment of those under 15 as a war crime.

The protocol was adopted by the UN General Assembly on May 25, 2000 and came into force on February 12, 2002. To date, it has been signed by 111 countries, and ratified by 45, including the United States, on December 23.

The ICC came into being on July 1 of last year, after 60 countries ratified the Rome Statute. The United States has withdrawn its signature from the statute.

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