Excellencies, you are the United Nations. The staff who were killed and injured in the attack on our Baghdad headquarters were your staff. You had given them a mandate to assist the suffering Iraqi people, and to help Iraq recover its national sovereignty.
(46. In future, not only in Iraq but also wherever the United Nations is engaged, we must take more effective measures to protect the security of our staff.) I count on your full support - legal, political and financial.
Subject to security considerations, the United Nations system is prepared to play its full part in working for a satisfactory outcome in Iraq, and to do so as part of an effort by the whole international community, pulling together on the basis of a sound and viable policy. (47. If it takes extra time and patience to make a policy that is collective, coherent and workable, then I for one would regard that time as well spent. )Indeed, this is how we must approach all the many pressing crises that confront us today.
Three years ago, when you came here for the Millennium Summit, we had a shared vision of global solidarity and collective security, expressed in the Millennium Declaration. But recent events have called that consensus in question.
(48. All of us know“ there are new threats that must be faced—or, perhaps, old threats in new and dangerous combinations: new forms of terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.) But, while some consider these threats as self-evidently the main challenge to world peace and security, others feel more immediately threatened by small arms employed in civil conflict, or by so-called “soft threats” such as the persistence of extreme poverty, the disparity of income between and within societies, the spread of infectious diseases, or climate change and environmental degradation.
In truth, we do not have to choose. The United Nations must confront all these threats and challenges—new and old, “hard” and “soft”. It must be fully engaged in the struggle for development and poverty eradication, starting with the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals; in the struggle to protect our common environment and in the struggle for human rights; democracy and good governance. In fact, all these struggles are linked. We now see, with chilling clarity, that a world where many millions of people endure brutal oppression and extreme misery will never be fully secure, even for its most privileged inhabitants.
(49. Yet the “hard” threats, such as terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, are real, and cannot be ignored. Terrorism is not a problem only to rich countries.) Weapons of mass destruction do not threaten only the western or northern world. Where we disagree, it seems, is on how we respond to these threats.
(50. Since this Organization was founded, States have generally sought to deal with threats to the peace through containment and deterrence, by a system based on collective security and the United Nations Charter.)
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