United Kingdom, 2009

I stand here to

reaffirm the Charter of the United Nations, not to tear

it up. I call on every nation to support its universal

principles.

A year ago, we met on the brink of a global crisis

and, as national leaders spoke in turn at this rostrum,

the full scale of the danger was becoming clear — a

threat not just to jobs, businesses and life savings but,

with the imminent risk of failure of the world’s

banking system, the prospect of entire countries failing

as nations across Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin

America struggled to access credit.

That crisis demanded global action. As never

before, the fate of every country rested on the actions

of all. And as the fear of the unthinkable took hold, we

reached a clear choice: to fail separately or to succeed

together.

At the G-20 meetings in Washington and again in

London, we made our choice. Governments came

together to begin the fight back against the global

recession. We acted in concert, recognizing that

national interests could be protected only by serving

the common interest, and that in this new global

economy, the economy is indivisible and recession

anywhere can threaten prosperity everywhere. We

reckoned also that, if growth is to be sustained, it has

to be shared. Global problems can be mastered only

through global solutions.

So I think that today we can draw strength from

the unprecedented unity that has defined the past year.

But we cannot be complacent. For while it may seem

strange to say so after a time of such intense global

cooperation, our world is now entering a six-month

period which may prove even more testing for

international cooperation together.

I believe that we face five urgent challenges that

demand momentous decisions — decisions that I

would argue are epoch-making — on climate change,

terrorism, nuclear proliferation, shared prosperity and

eradicating poverty.

Once again, we are at a point of no return. And

just as the collapse of the banks focused our minds a

year ago, so we must grasp this next set of challenges

immediately.

If we do not reach a climate change deal at

Copenhagen, if we miss this great opportunity to agree

together to protect our planet, we cannot hope for an

easy second chance some time in the future. There will

be no retrospective global agreement to undo the

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damage that we have caused. This is the moment now

to limit and reverse the climate change we are

inflicting on future generations — not later, not at

another conference, not in a later decade, after we have

already lost 10 years to inaction and delay.

And if, in Afghanistan, we give way to the

insurgency and Al-Qaida , other terrorist groups and

Al-Qaida will return and, from that sanctuary once

again plot, train for and launch attacks on the rest of

the world.

There can be no chance, either, of a nuclear-free

world if we allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons and,

in doing so, set off a new arms race.

There can be no global compact for jobs and

growth if we choke off recovery by failing to act

together to follow through on the coordinated global

fiscal expansion we agreed and have now put in place.

And if we do not act together to prevent

avoidable illness, there can be no plan to save

tomorrow the 12,000 children who are dying in Africa

today and every day.

So I say we do need world agreement on urgent

challenges.

Now let me elaborate first on climate change.

Despite the promises we have made, the road to a

successful outcome in Copenhagen is not assured. Why

is that? It is so because, above all, a robust and long-

term deal on climate change requires money. If the

poorest and most vulnerable are going to be able to

adapt; if the emerging economies are going to embark

on low-carbon development paths; and if the forest

nations are going to slow and stop deforestation, then I

know that the richer countries must contribute

financially.

That is why I have proposed a new approach to

financing our action against climate change. It will

provide substantially increased additional and

predictable flows. They will be flows of capital from

both public and private sectors. They would be worth

around $100 billion a year by 2020. In the coming

days, we must make progress.

A post-2012 agreement on climate change at

Copenhagen is the next great test of our global

cooperation. Each of us has a duty of leadership to

make sure that it happens. We must build on the

discussions at Secretary-General Ban’s meeting this

week. I have said that I will go to Copenhagen to

conclude the deal because I believe that it is too

important an agreement — for the global economy, and

for the future of every nation represented here —

simply to leave it to chance. So I urge my fellow

leaders to commit themselves to backing up our official

negotiators by going to Copenhagen too.

I believe that a safer Afghanistan means a safer

world. But none of us can be safe if we walk away

from that country or from our common mission and

resolve. NATO and its partners, from Australia to Japan

to other countries, must agree new ways to implement

our strategy. I believe that we must ensure that

“Afghanization” takes place — that the army, people

and the people of Afghanistan assume greater

responsibility for the security of their own country.

So, too, must we unite against terror and injustice

wherever they are to be found in our world. I believe

that it shames us all that the people of Somalia and the

Sudan are still subject to the most terrible of violence;

that Israel and Palestine have still not found a way to

live side by side in security and peace; and that, for the

people of Burma, their elected leader is subjected to a

show trial and decades of imprisonment. There is more

that we can do and more that we must do. And we must

carry forward our efforts to make a coherent, strategic

and more effective approach to peacekeeping and

peacebuilding around the world.

Once there were five nuclear-armed Powers. Now

there are nine. The real and present danger is that more

will soon follow. And the risk is not just State

aggression, but the acquisition of nuclear weapons by

terrorists. So we must accept that we are at a moment

of danger when decades of preventing proliferation

could be overturned by a damaging rise in

proliferation. If we are serious about the ambition of a

nuclear-free world, we will need statesmanship, not

brinksmanship.

Tomorrow’s Security Council resolution will be

vital, in my view, as we move forward towards next

year’s global nuclear security summit in April and the

Review Conference in May. Our proposal is a grand

global bargain between nuclear-weapon and

non-nuclear-weapon States. There are three elements to

it, where careful and sober international leadership is

essential and in which Britain will play its part: the

responsibilities of non-nuclear States, the rights of

53 09-52179

non-nuclear States and, of course, the responsibilities

of nuclear weapon States.

First, let there be no ambiguity: Iran and North

Korea must now know that the world will be even

tougher on proliferation. We are ready to consider

further sanctions. Britain will insist in future that the

onus on non-nuclear States is that in the years ahead it

is for them to prove that they are not developing

nuclear weapons.

Secondly, Britain will offer civil nuclear power to

non-nuclear States who are ready to renounce any

plans for nuclear weapons, helping non-nuclear States

acquire what President Eisenhower so memorably

called “atoms for peace”. With others, we will be

prepared to sponsor a uranium bank outside those

countries to help them access civil nuclear power. And

Britain is ready to launch a new nuclear centre of

excellence to help develop an economic low-carbon

proliferation-resistant nuclear fuel cycle.

My third point is that all nuclear-weapon States

must reciprocally play their part in reducing nuclear

weapons as part of an agreement by non-nuclear States

to renounce them. This is exactly what the

Non-Proliferation Treaty intended, and in line with

maintaining our nuclear deterrent I have asked our

National Security Committee to report to me on the

potential future reduction of our nuclear weapon

submarines from four to three.

While economic cooperation has stabilized the

international banking system and forged the foundation

for the resumption of economic growth, recovery is

neither entrenched nor irreversible. The great lesson of

the past year is that only the bold and global action that

we took prevented a recession becoming a depression.

We have delivered a coordinated monetary and fiscal

response that the International Labour Organization

estimates has saved 7 million to 11 million jobs across

the world.

So at Pittsburgh, when the Group of 20 (G-20)

meets tomorrow, we must cement a global compact for

jobs and growth — a compact to bring unemployment

down and bring rising prosperity across the globe. We

must maximize the impact of the stimulus measures we

have agreed. There must be proper planning of exit

strategies together to make sure the recovery does not

falter. We do not and must not turn off the life support

for our economy prematurely. We must also facilitate

agreement setting clear objectives on how each of us

can contribute to worldwide growth in the future, and

we must ensure that such future growth is balanced and

sustainable.

I believe we need stronger economic cooperation

now as we navigate the uncertainties of recovery. I

therefore propose we launch the compact by agreeing

that we are committed to high levels of growth on a

sustainable and balanced basis. This must be backed up

by comprehensive reform of the financial sector. It

must include international principles on bonuses. We

must strengthen our targeting of tax havens. From next

month, real sanctions must be meted out against those

jurisdictions that fail to meet global standards.

The voice of Africa will have to be heard and

heeded to bring recovery in areas devastated by the

events of the past year and to assure that for all

developing countries, inside and outside Africa, we do

not put the Millennium Development Goals beyond

reach as a result of a wider failure of global

responsibility.

In London, the G-20 agreed on measures worth

$50 billion for poor countries to help them weather the

crisis. Because of London, the International Monetary

Fund can lend $8 billion instead of $2 billion over this

year and next. This is already helping Kenya and

Tanzania to increase Government spending in response

to the crisis.

Amid all these challenges, we must remember a

fundamental promise we made 10 years ago. And this

is my fifth and final imperative: to achieve a vision for

2015 that we are in danger of betraying, because on

present trends it will not take five years — as we

pledged — and not even 50 years; it will take more

than 100 years to deliver on some of our Millennium

Development Goals. And 100 years is too long for the

peoples of our countries to wait for the justice that has

been promised.

As President Obama has said, we need a global

plan to make the Millennium Development Goals a

reality. The unyielding, grinding, soul-destroying, so

often lethal poverty I saw in Africa and other

developing countries has convinced me that unless

empowerment through trade justice is matched by

empowerment through free education and free health

care, then this generation in sub-Saharan Africa will

not have the opportunity they deserve to rise out of

poverty and will never be fully free.

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I believe the greatest of injustice demands the

boldest of actions. Today at this United Nations

General Assembly, we will see history being made with

the beginnings of universal free health care in Africa

and Asia as Burundi, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Nepal,

Liberia and Ghana all make major announcements,

which I applaud, that extend free health care and

abolish user fees. As a result of those actions, more

than 10 million additional people in Africa and Asia

will now have access to free health services —

10 million people who will now for the first time get

the treatment they need without being turned away or

fearing how they will pay. I urge you all to match the

leadership of these countries with your own support,

and I commit the United Kingdom to giving that

support.

Let us remember how in 1945, as the United

Nations was being created, countries faced a

multiplicity of challenges but summoned up the energy

and vision not just to rebuild from the ruin and rubble

of a war, but to establish a new international order for

shared security and progress. I believe that these same

principles must now inspire new and better, more

representative and more effective ways of cooperating

globally together.

And as we learn from the experience of turning

common purpose into common action in this our

shared global society, so we must forge a progressive

multilateralism for this era, one that depends upon us

finding within ourselves and together the qualities of

moral courage and leadership that for our time and for

our generation can make this world anew. I believe that

if we take the right decisions and work together, we are

in the business of creating for the first time in human

history a truly global society. It is a name to be wished

for and an aim to be fought for by all of us.