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Madam President (of Finland),
Mr. President (of Namibia),
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentelemen,
I am deeply honored to welcome you all.
Never before have the leaders of so many nations come together in a single Assembly.This is a unique event.A unique opportunity. And therefore a unique responsibility.You, ladies and gentlemen, are the leaders towhom the world’s peoples have entrusted their destiny.They look to you to protect them from the great dangers of our time;and too ensure that all of them can share in its great achievements.
In an age when human beings have learnt the code of human life,and can transmit their knowledge in secondsfrom one continent to another,no mother in the world can understand why her child should be left to die ofmalnutrition or preventable disease.No one can understand why they should be driven from their home, or imprisoned or tortured for expressing their beliefs.No one can understand why the soil their parents tilled has turned to desert,or why their skills have become useless and their family is left hungry.
People know that these challenges cannot be met by one country alone,or by one government alone. Change cannot be held back by frontiers.Human progress has always come from individual and local initiatives, freely devised and then freely adapted elsewhere.
Your job, as political leaders, is to encourage such initiatives.To make sure they are not stifled, and that all your peoples can benefit from them.And to limit, or to compensate for, the adverse effects that change always has, on some people, somewhere.
Your peoples look to you for a common effort to solve their problems.They expect you to work together, as governments.And they expect you to work together with all the other institutions - profit or non profit,public and private where human beings join hands to promote their ideas and their interests.
People want to see this happen between neighboring countries,and among all the countries of each region.But since today’s biggest challenges are global, they expect above all that we will work together at the global level,as the United Nations.
My friends, that is why we are here. We are here to strengthen and adapt this great institution,forged 55 years ago in the crucible of war,so that it can do what people expect of it in the new era - an era in which rule of law must prevail.Last month I sent you a Report, produced by a panel of experts,which makes detailed suggestions for strengthening the United Nations in the crucial area of peace and security the area where people look especially to the State, and where the world’s peoples look to the United Nations,to save them “from the scourge of war”.Please consider that Report very seriously.
It is not only in that field, however, that the United Nations needs strengthening.We must strengthen it across the whole range of our activities.
We need to decide our priorities. And we must adapt our United Nations,so that in future those priorities are reflected in clear and prompt decisions,leading to real change in people’s lives.
That, my friends, is what the peoples expect of us. Let us not disappoint them.
Thank you.
