United Kingdom, 2005

Let me begin, Sir,

by paying tribute to your predecessor, Jean Ping, for

his extraordinary work — above all on the world

summit, but also throughout his year as President —

and by offering my congratulations to you on

beginning your year in office.

I should also like to express, on behalf of the

European Union and all its member States, our deepest

sympathy and solidarity to the people of the United

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States, particularly those in the Gulf states, in their

hour of need.

In early July, my first duty in the presidency of

the European Union was to go to Srebrenica to mark

the tenth anniversary of the massacre there, the worst

in Europe since the end of the Second World War.

More than 8,000 people, mainly Muslim, were taken

away and killed as the international community just

stood to one side. To be sure, we had shown the right

convictions in words, but shamefully, we had failed to

act. The lesson of that massacre — and of the even

greater horror of Rwanda a year before — was that we

all needed better means to turn our collective will into

decisive action. I think that we in the European Union

have learned in the intervening period. Today, the

Union is on the ground as a military, police or civilian

presence in Bosnia, in Aceh, in Iraq, in the Democratic

Republic of the Congo and, with the African Union, in

Darfur.

I also think that the United Nations has learned

the lessons of the past decade. At the summit this

week, we agreed on the further steps that we need to

take for the Organization to be even more effective. Of

all that was agreed at the summit, I believe it will be

the agreement on our “responsibility to protect” that

will be seen in the future as having the greatest

significance of all. If we follow through on the

responsibility to protect, then never again will

genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against

humanity be allowed to take place under our noses

with nothing done.

The responsibility to protect is, of course, a

reflection of our common morality. But it is also a

recognition that the world in which we now live is too

small for us to be unaffected by, or indifferent to, the

innocent victims of murder and oppression. This

shrinking of the world has been as sudden as it has

been profound. When the Berlin wall fell, a generation

of ideological certainties was swept away. People could

suddenly see partners where before they had only

glimpsed adversaries. And as that very visible barrier

was noisily being breached, a revolution in information

technology was quietly erasing the barriers of distance

and time. Continents and cultures are now cabled

together and bound by trade and services in a way that

was unimaginable even a decade ago.

In this new world, we can no longer safely

tolerate the general threat that can come from a

particular human tragedy, wherever it takes place. To a

greater extent than ever before, we share the same

world: the same threats and responsibilities, the same

opportunities and interests. And precisely because the

boundaries of our world have contracted, the

horizons — the ambitions — of many people around

the globe have infinitely expanded. For the first time in

our history, mankind has the ability to realize the

potential of individuals in societies of all kinds and in

every region through an open exchange of goods,

investment, technology and, above all, ideas.

Not least in all of this, it is the rise of India and

of China that is reordering the world economy.

Hundreds of millions there and elsewhere have been

lifted out of poverty. A new global market has been

created that ignores the divide — which seemed so

fundamental for so many decades — between East and

West.

Currently, not everyone has the chance to share in

all of that. Much of sub-Saharan Africa remains

blighted by poverty, disease and conflict. The

European Union has now set a clear timetable to

achieve the 0.7 per cent target for aid. Debt relief, trade

reform and development aid are all vital, but none of

them can work alone. Fundamental to making poverty

history are the Governments of the developing world

themselves. And where Governments fail, their own

peoples are the victims, as United Nations Special

Envoy Anna Tibaijuka’s damning assessment of the

situation in Zimbabwe only too graphically shows.

Sub-Saharan Africa is not alone in having yet to

achieve its potential. The American author Thomas

Friedman, in his recent book The World Is Flat,

highlights an extraordinary anomaly: it was the Arab

peoples whose forebears devised algebra and the

algorithms upon which our entire digital age is based,

but those peoples are now right at the rear of today’s

technological revolution, with, for example, fewer than

2 per cent of those populations having Internet access.

Three United Nations Development Programme Arab

Human Development Reports have now set out clearly

how limited economic prospects and stunted political

freedoms have led young and talented people towards

alienation and disillusionment.

The answer, however, does not lie in easy

stereotypes about some clash of civilizations. It is only

the terrorists and the preachers of hate who want us to

believe that Islam and the West are fundamentally

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different. Theirs is a philosophy of mistrust and

despair, and we reject it utterly. Indonesia and

Turkey — to name just two — are both striking

examples of how countries with predominantly Muslim

populations can embrace democracy and modernity.

We in the European Union have seen the vibrant

Muslim communities in our own countries, and from

that experience have seen how Islamic and Western

cultures can be partners in a global society.

Everyone knows that the Arab peoples want

prosperity, freedom and democracy every bit as much

as anyone in Europe or America. So the fact that the

Arab world has the lowest scores in regional

measurements of democratic practices, civil freedoms

and good governance is not some cultural inevitability,

but a temporary failure of human will. In that regard,

the international community has a clear responsibility

to encourage regionally led political, social and

economic reform. The European Union strongly

supports such reform and will continue to do so.

Equally, it has been our active foreign policy that has

placed us in the lead with regard to Iran, especially on

the nuclear dossier.

With our High Representative Javier Solana and

my French and German Foreign Minister colleagues,

we have made detailed proposals for the relationship

between the European Union and Iran to be based on

cooperation and respect for international norms and

treaties.

Our proposals envisage a high-level, long-term

political and security framework between the European

Union and Iran, in which we would work together in

political, economic, scientific and technological areas,

including the civil nuclear field, in return for Iran

providing guarantees about its intentions and

capabilities concerning nuclear weapons. So, we will

listen very carefully to and reflect on this afternoon’s

speech by the new President of the Islamic Republic of

Iran, Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

On Iraq, the European Union now has a

comprehensive programme of engagement and has put

behind it divisions over the military action two and a

half years ago. We are supporting the goal of a

peaceful, prosperous, democratic and stable nation.

We are also giving very active support to the

Quartet’s efforts to secure a just and lasting peace

between Israel and the Palestinians, with two States

living side by side. We salute Prime Minister Sharon’s

brave decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, and

we salute President Mahmoud Abbas’s work to build

the first stage of an effective, viable State of Palestine.

In July, the European Union again suffered the

horror of a major terrorist atrocity. This time the target

was my country, the United Kingdom: its capital,

London. But none of us is safe from the threat of terror.

International terrorism requires an international

response; otherwise, we all pay the price for each

other’s vulnerabilities. The ratification of a

comprehensive treaty on terrorism is, therefore, at the

highest priority.

But the threat from terrorists and the political

instability they bring is made worse by the easy

availability of weapons in what has become an

anarchic, unregulated international trade. These same

weapons fuelled the killings in Rwanda and in Bosnia a

decade ago and are fuelling the conflicts in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Darfur today.

We already have international instruments to regulate

chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. We in the

European Union have a comprehensive arms control

regime. But I suggest to the General Assembly that the

time has now come for this Organization to embrace

the idea of an international arms trade treaty, which

would build on and strengthen existing initiatives.

It was in the killing fields of Europe, in two

successive wars, that the twin ideas of the United

Nations and of the European Union became imperative.

Today, the European Union’s commitment to the

United Nations is profound; it has never been stronger.

And it is reflected in what we give in voluntary

donations and to the regular budget and peacekeeping

operations.

The fundamental purpose of the United Nations

remains today what it was at its foundation: to remove

the scourge of war, to reaffirm the worth of the human

person and to promote social progress and better

standards of life. In this changed and changing world,

it is the responsibility of us all to ensure that this

Organization has the powers and the resources to

achieve all these aims.