United Nations Millennium Summit

Mr President,

Mr Secretary-General,
Your Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates.

We must invest in the United Nations.
We must give it the strength and resources it needs to accomplish the tasks we have assigned it.
We owe it to our forefathers, who made it the object of their highest hopes and aspirations.
We owe it to our children and grandchildren, whose future has been placed in our hands.
We owe it to ourselves, because our generation has been entrusted with the knowledge to make the right decisions and the means to carry them out.

The United Nations rose from the ashes of World War II. From the recognition that our powers of destruction had reached the point where peace was the only option. The advent of nuclear weapons reinforced this realization.

Yet the bloodletting, devastation, and misery of armed conflict are still very much a reality in Europe, in the Americas, in Asia and in Africa.

The United Nations should be empowered to deal effectively with the changing nature of conflict,
to detect the seeds of conflict at an early stage,
to manage conflict where it cannot be prevented,
to mandate and equip UN peace operations that can deal with the complex nature of modern conflict.

The United Nations should be empowered
to provide post-conflict rehabilitation,
to alleviate the suffering and protect the rights of innocent civilians, of innocent women and children,
to punish genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It is essential to eliminate the causes of armed conflict. Most of them are closely linked with poverty, underdevelopment, and to the violation of human rights. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has long recognized these linkages by awarding the Nobel Peace Prize not only to the United Nations Peace-keeping Forces, but also to the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and twice to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The fight to eliminate poverty is the overriding challenge of the international community at the turn of the millenium.

The Secretary-General is advancing
not only the cause of development, education and health,
not only the cause of peace,
not only the cause of human rights and empowerment, but all three. They are inextricably linked and mutually reinforcing.

We have all agreed on the goals for international development.
We have the knowledge to achieve them, and
we have the resources to achieve them.
We live in an age of unparalleled promise and prosperity.
We will not be forgiven, and we should not be forgiven if we fail to fulfil this promise, if we fail to share this prosperity with the neediest among us.

The elimination of poverty is not only a bridge to peace and development, not only a bridge to human rights and individual dignity, but also a bridge to the preservation of the environment for future generations. For we shall never be able to cooperate effectively on how to husband the scarce resources of our planet, how to prevent the degradation of the environment, as long as so many are trapped in hopeless poverty.

So let us respond to the Secretary-General’s call for a strengthened and revitalized United Nations, not with indifference or pessimism, but with the resolve and determination it merits. I pledge that my country will do so. Together we will succeed.

Thank you.