General Assembly Session 60 meeting 1

The President

It is a great honour for me to assume the presidency of the General Assembly at its sixtieth session. I thank all members for the trust they have placed in me.

It is no less an honour for me to succeed President Jean Ping, who has carried a heavy burden of responsibility with grace, warmth and humour over the past year. I want to thank him in particular for his tireless efforts over the past few weeks, which have brought us together not only in work, but also in friendship. I also want to pay tribute to the Secretary-General, who has responded with calm and determination to the difficulties facing the Organization while maintaining a longer-term perspective and a sense of vision, as we saw in his report "In larger freedom" (A/59/2005). I thank them both, on behalf of all of us assembled here today.

It is almost 60 years since the first session of the General Assembly opened. When I read the words of Mr. Zuleta Angel of Colombia -- the opening speaker on that occasion -- I was struck by their relevance today. He said "the whole world now waits upon our decisions, and rightly -- yet with understandable anxiety -- looks to us now to show ourselves capable of mastering our problems" (Official Records of the General Assembly, First part of first session, Plenary Meetings, 1st meeting).

That was in 1946. Mr. Zuleta Angel spoke of anxiety in the world outside. Today, we know that, 60 years later, we also have reason to feel anxiety and uncertainty about the future.

Members have all worked long and hard, particularly over recent weeks. The process of working on the High-level Meeting outcome document has been intense and all-consuming. The reform programme we have been considering has been the most ambitious and wide-ranging since the formation of the United Nations. Expectations around the world have -- again, as in 1946 -- been exceptionally high. Our discussions have not always been easy. The issues have been difficult and have, for many members, touched upon important national interests.

As a result of that process, we have now received from the General Assembly at its fifty-ninth session a comprehensive draft High-level Meeting outcome document. I welcome it as a strong basis for the process of reform which we will take forward in the sixtieth session.

Tomorrow, we begin that process. I expect that, at the High-level Meeting, our leaders will add political momentum and set the waymarks for the road ahead. We will need to listen carefully to them and to the expectations of their people. On Friday, as our leaders are invited to adopt the outcome document, we should take stock of what we have heard.

And on Saturday, when we know the mandate our leaders have given us, we should start the urgent task of translating their words into action. I shall revert to that when we open the general debate. I am confident that the debate, which will focus on follow-up and implementation of the High-level Meeting, will provide further concrete ideas and proposals for our work ahead.

At the end of the general debate, I intend to reflect further on the situation and present to the Assembly an outline of work for the year ahead. That goes both for the regular work of the General Assembly, including revitalization, and for keeping up the momentum of the reform process.

When we go into that work, we should be reminded of two important realities: one, the expectations and dreams of our peoples for this Organization, our United Nations; the other, the sombre realities in this world, which we must also feel in these halls.

The people we serve have expected a lot of us. That is, in part, a tribute to civil society and to the many commissions, panels and projects that have done much to build momentum for progress on development, peace and security and human rights.

It also reflects the fact that we are clearly not making fast enough progress with regard to many of the commitments we have already made -- not least, in the case of development, the Millennium Development Goals. I believe it is also because the peoples of the world can see that a reinvigorated United Nations and a renewed commitment to multilateralism are in all of their interests. And they can see that we have to act now to get it right.

Why do they see international cooperation as important? Perhaps because it is now so apparent that the world's problems -- the realities that I spoke of -- are so complex and interlinked. As Dag Hammarskjöld once said, the nerve signals from a wound in the world are felt at once through the body of mankind.

The tsunami in Asia had a devastating impact on people in the region, but the effects were also felt -- in different ways -- around the world. The recent disaster on the Gulf coast of the United States has further reminded us that no nation -- no nation -- is immune from natural disasters and environmental threats. And the terrorist attack on New York four years ago this week, and the number of abhorrent terrorist attacks all over the world in recent years, remind us that no nation -- again, no nation -- can be immune to threats to its security in today's world.

It is also increasingly clear that we need a renewed multilateralism to tackle the many silent tsunamis of disease and poverty which are killing hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings. As an anti-poverty campaign reminded us this year, a child dies somewhere in the world as a result of preventable -- I repeat: preventable -- poverty every three seconds. That is unacceptable.

Meanwhile, although the number of active conflicts in the world is in decline, there remain too many people whose lives are ravaged by war or who live in countries which are struggling to recover from conflicts. To help those people build peace must be our common cause.

The world also needs to deal with the global challenges of disarmament and non-proliferation and to prevent and resolve conflict. We need to get better at detecting the early signs of human rights abuses and coming together to address them. And we need to reflect on why an Organization which was set up to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war -- as the beautiful Charter puts it -- has been unable to prevent ethnic cleansing, mass killings and even genocide. It is time for us all to stop saying "Never again".

To deal with all these realities, we must reform the way this Organization functions. That will be an ongoing endeavour, but also an urgent one. We owe it to those we serve to ensure that our management, oversight and accountability systems are of the highest possible calibre.

I believe that all of these issues give us, the General Assembly, real reasons and impetus to rally together. Tackling global poverty, addressing climate change, fighting terrorism and protecting human rights: these are not issues that only one group or one region has an interest in resolving. They are issues that each and every one of us has a duty to resolve together, in the spirit of the best traditions of the United Nations: transparency, civility and mutual respect. At the same time, we need to strive for efficiency and a sense of purpose.

So, in closing, we have all worked exceptionally hard. Some of us will have, for the first time in a long while, a full night's sleep -- unless our leaders keep us busy. The world's expectations are high. We will go into the High-level Meeting and await our leaders' direction and vision. Recognizing the responsibility history has placed on us to shape the future for all our peoples, we must all move forward, together, with renewed energy and with renewed determination.

Let us not underestimate what we can do. The world's poorest, the world's least secure, the world's most oppressed demand change. Let us show them what we can do.