Switzerland's government will likely try to win voters' approval to join the United Nations in 2002, President Adolf Ogi said yesterday.

''We will win,'' Mr. Ogi told UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan during a visit to the northwest city of Basel.

Although Switzerland hosts the second UN headquarters in Geneva and belongs to some UN agencies, such as the World Health Organization, the neutral Alpine country has refrained from joining the full United Nations and is only an observer of the UN General Assembly.

In a 1986 referendum, 75 percent of Swiss voters turned down an initiative to join.