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After summit and speeches, U.N. must now turn words into action

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  • After summit and speeches, U.N. must now turn words into action

    After summit and speeches, U.N. must now turn words into action

    By EDITH M. LEDERER
    .c The Associated Press


    UNITED NATIONS (AP) - After the world's largest-ever gathering of
    world leaders and a week of follow-up ministerial speeches, the 191
    U.N. member states now have the tough job of turning words into action
    to reduce poverty, fight terrorism and start reforming the United
    Nations to meet 21st century challenges.

    Speaker after speaker in the General Assembly, where all nations have
    a voice, said their people would be watching to see whether the
    leaders deliver on their promises in a 35-page document approved at
    the end of their three-day summit last week.

    In his speech before banging the gavel Friday evening to end the
    week-long ministerial debate, General Assembly President Jan Eliasson
    said the world body must move quickly on follow-up and implementation
    so ``the political energy'' generated during the negotiations, summit,
    and ministerial session isn't lost.

    ``The world will be watching us closely,'' Eliasson said. ``The extent
    to which we - all of us in this assembly - can muster a spirit of
    urgency and common purpose in the coming days and weeks will
    ultimately determine whether the World Summit goes down in history as
    a missed opportunity for the United Nations, or - as I hope - as the
    start of the most substantial reform program in the history of the
    organization.''

    He said he plans to make proposals on follow-up and implementation by
    the end of next week and to start work quickly after consultations.

    For the majority of the world's nations, the final document's 16-page
    section on achieving U.N. Millennium Development Goals is crucial.

    Some were pessimistic about meeting the goals which include cutting
    extreme poverty by half, achieving universal primary education, and
    stemming the AIDS pandemic, all by 2015.

    ``The 2005 World Summit has clearly demonstrated that, in five years,
    we have not given poverty eradication the highest priority in our
    international agenda,'' Belize's Foreign Minister Godfrey Smith told
    the assembly on Friday. ``In too many countries, it is clear that the
    Millennium Development Goals will not be realized; in some, the
    situation is worse than five years ago.''

    Smith argued that ``the most effective and consuming terrorism of our
    age is the terrorism of abject poverty'' and there will be no security
    unless it is tackled. ``Global security cannot be built on a minefield
    of poverty and disease,'' he warned.

    The only way to assure the marginalized people of the world that its
    leaders are serious about achieving the Millenium Development Goals is
    ``by showing them there is a global political will'' to use the
    35-page blueprint ``as a platform for action.''

    Ethiopia's Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin said those suffering from
    extreme poverty need increased international aid, debt relief and
    improved trading prospects if the goals are to be met - and meeting
    them ``is critical to all, and not just to those directly affected.''

    The final document was continuously watered down during intense
    negotiations to win support from all 191 U.N. member states,
    eliminating a call for all rich nations earmark 0.7 percent of their
    GNP to development aid because of U.S. opposition.

    Its major achievements were the creation of a Peacebuilding Commission
    to help countries emerging from conflict, and agreement that there is
    a collective responsibility to protect people from genocide, war
    crimes and ethnic cleansing.

    But the document failed to give Secretary-General Kofi Annan the
    authority to move jobs and make management changes that the United
    States, the European Union and others sought. It didn't define
    terrorism, and it dropped the entire section on disarmament and
    nonproliferation.

    While it resolved to create a Human Rights Council to replace the
    discredited Human Rights Commission, it left the details to the deeply
    divided General Assembly.

    Annan, speaking in Washington on Friday, said leaders didn't deliver
    everything he hoped for but he said the gains in the final document
    ``are significant enough to say that the glass is at least half full,
    perhaps more.''

    The European Union was the strongest supporter of Annan's original,
    ambitious proposal to make the world body more relevant in the new
    millennium.

    France's European Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna said at a
    briefing Friday that the final document could be seen as ``a
    half-empty bottle or half full, and we decided that we'll say that
    it's half full.''

    ``It is a first result, and the key question is, can we keep the
    momentum?,'' she said. ``How can we manage to keep filling in the
    bottle so it becomes a full bottle - and not a half-full bottle?''

    ``Everyone must have the political will to do so, every big country in
    the U.N., and every group. Europe has it. We want to go on and play an
    active role. I think we can do it. We have to find partners,'' Colonna
    said.



    09/23/05 20:27 EDT
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