[00:11.42]Madam President (of Finland),
[00:14.07]Mr. President (of Namibia),
[00:17.11]Excellencies,
[00:18.54]Ladies and Gentelemen,
[00:20.23]I am deeply honored to welcome you all.
[00:23.79]Never before have the leaders of so many nations come together in a single Assembly.
[00:30.30]This is a unique event. A unique opportunity. And therefore a unique responsibility.
[00:38.98]You, ladies and gentlemen, are the leaders to whom the world’s peoples have entrusted their destiny.
[00:46.79]They look to you to protect them from the great dangers of our time;
[00:52.45]and too ensure that all of them can share in its great achievements.
[00:58.17]In an age when human beings have learnt the code of human life,
[01:03.22]and can transmit their knowledge in seconds from one continent to another,
[01:09.05]no mother in the world can understand why her child should be left to die of malnutrition or preventable disease.
[01:19.36]No one can understand why they should be driven from their home, or imprisoned or tortured for expressing their beliefs.
[01:29.61]No one can understand why the soil their parents tilled has turned to desert,
[01:35.69]or why their skills have become useless and their family is left hungry.
[01:42.86]People know that these challenges cannot be met by one country alone,
[01:48.24]or by one government alone. Change cannot be held back by frontiers.
[01:55.53]Human progress has always come from individual and local initiatives, freely devised and then freely adapted elsewhere.
[02:06.39]Your job, as political leaders, is to encourage such initiatives.
[02:12.69]To make sure they are not stifled, and that all your peoples can benefit from them.
[02:19.60]And to limit, or to compensate for, the adverse effects that change always has, on some people, somewhere.
[02:29.93]Your peoples look to you for a common effort to solve their problems.
[02:34.77]They expect you to work together, as governments.
[02:38.51]And they expect you to work together with all the other institutions - profit or non profit,
[02:45.38]public and private - where human beings join hands to promote their ideas and their interests.
[02:54.64]People want to see this happen between neighboring countries,
[02:58.43]and among all the countries of each region.
[03:02.63]But since today’s biggest challenges are global, they expect above all that we will work together at the global level,
[03:12.55]as the United Nations.
[03:16.06]My friends, that is why we are here. We are here to strengthen and adapt this great institution,
[03:26.30]forged 55 years ago in the crucible of war,
[03:30.83]so that it can do what people expect of it in the new era - an era in which rule of law must prevail.
[03:40.23]Last month I sent you a Report, produced by a panel of experts,
[03:45.54]which makes detailed suggestions for strengthening the United Nations in the crucial area of peace and security -
[03:55.91]the area where people look especially to the State, and where the world’s peoples look to the United Nations,
[04:03.71]to save them “from the scourge of war”. Please consider that Report very seriously.
[04:11.86]It is not only in that field, however, that the United Nations needs strengthening.
[04:17.42]We must strengthen it across the whole range of our activities.
[04:21.88]We need to decide our priorities. And we must adapt our United Nations,
[04:27.59]so that in future those priorities are reflected in clear and prompt decisions,
[04:33.30]leading to real change in people’s lives.
[04:37.18]That, my friends, is what the peoples expect of us. Let us not disappoint them.
[04:46.32]Thank you.
