Colonel Gaddafi spoke for over an hour and a half during his allotted 15-minute slot at the UN general assembly yesterday, causing Mr Brown's own speech to be severely delayed.
Col Gaddafi, who has caused the UK prime minister a raft of diplomatic headaches over the release of the Lockerbie bomber by the Scottish government, branded the UN security council the 'terror council' during his speech, even going as far as tearing up the UN charter at the podium.
When he finally took to the stage, Mr Brown said: 'I stand here to reaffirm the United Nations charter, not to tear it up.
'I call on every nation here to support its universal principles.'
In his speech Mr Brown identified five 'urgent challenges' facing world leaders: Climate change; terrorism; nuclear proliferation; poverty and shared prosperity.
On seeking a global bargain for nuclear weapons he called for 'statesmanship not brinkmanship'.
'Once there were five nuclear-armed powers,' Mr Brown, who has already revealed Britain is considering cutting its total number of nuclear warheads, said. 'Now there are nine, with the real and present danger that more will soon follow.
'And the risk is not just state aggression, but the acquisition of nuclear weapons by terrorists. So we are at a moment of danger when decades of preventing proliferation could be overturned by a damaging rise in proliferation. If we are serious about the ambition of a nuclear-free world we will need statesmanship, not brinkmanship.'
Mr Brown's four-day visit to the US continues today when he travels to Pittsburgh for the G20 summit.
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