Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

We in the Department of Foreign Affairs are so happy that you can join us this afternoon in our observance of the 55th Anniversary of the Founding of the United Nations.

Our convocation today is significant for two reasons: one, because it is the first we are holding in the new millennium.  And, two, because less than two months ago, we, the peoples of the United Nations, managed to turn this accident of the calendar into a real event for optimism.

One September 8, 2000, the greatest assembly ever of world leaders reaffirmed our common faith in the Organization and its Charter as the indispensable foundation for a more peaceful. prosperous and just world.  The 189 UN member states were one in the resolve to turn the United Nations into the true "common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our common aspirations for peace, cooperation and development."

For some, optimism may be too strong a word to associate with the United Nations.  Born fifty-five years ago with the express mandate to rid the world of the scourge of war, the UN is still mired in some 40 intractable lives to war.  And in the midst of all these, more than a billion souls suffered, as they still do, the violence of poverty, the torture of ignorance, and the cruel wounds of despair.  To these people, the words of the UN Millennium Declaration will always ring hallow.  That is, unless and until they are free of want and of fear.  Or unless and until we, and the governments and organizations we represent, translate those words into action.

For the Philippines, turning the Millennium Declaration into our Millennium Achievement requires that we bridge three divides, namely, those of the past and the future, of experience and vision, and of promise and fulfillment.

Bridging the Past and the Future

In 1945, our organization was born amid the ashes of war.  Some founding member states were just then recently freed from centuries of colonial rule.  All were busy rebuilding lives shattered by the Great War.  The foundations for the walls and curtains that defined an era were just being laid.

For the average person then a global community was no more than an ideal, remote and all but removed from the everyday lives of mostly pastoral populations.

Now, we are all part of the global village.  Interdependence is a fact of daily live.  Globalization is the buzzword scorned by some and championed by others, but discerned by all as the wave of the future.

Above all else, this future belongs to all the world's people, to both the high-born and the lowly, to both the strong and the weak.  With everyone's direct involvement in charting our common destiny, we open the door to the fullest flowering of humanity's potential.  We also affirm human dignity.

"Wiring" the world's cities onto the information grid of the 21st century is one wise investment we should be making today.  But if anyone were left out, if the "digital divide" were but to echo social injustice on the global scale, we would not have moved too far from where we started.  The past would simply repeat itself.

To empower people is to build our bridge to the future.  The world's leaders were therefore on the mark when they enshrined freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility as the fundamental, people empowering values for the 21st century.  Now, the task is ours to employ those values and take steps to achieve the specific objectives set for people empowerment.

Let us buckle down to work and ensure that, by 2015, all children will be able to complete primary schooling, and beyond that date, that they have the opportunities to pursue higher levels of education.  For education is the best tools for protecting human rights, for promoting democracy and for advancing good governance.

But because a sound mind will work better in a sound body, let us win the battle against disease, including HIV/AIDS that lays to waste millions in the world's poorest regions.  Let us take action to drastically reduce maternal and under-five child mortality from their horrendous current rates, and to achieve the lofty goals of the "Cities Without Slums" initiative.

Let us invest in humanity.  We need nothing short of a Marshall Plan for the world's people.  Let us build this human bridge to our future.

Bridging Experience and Vision

The UN has both the experience and the vision needed for success. We know how to do it.

To sustain the UN's capacity to carry out its tasks, deep institutional reforms must now take place.  A pro-active General Assembly and a truly representative and transparent Security council must now emerge.  We need to pay our dues to the Organization in full and on time.  For we cannot fairly ask the Un to perform all the immense tasks we add to its manifold mandates if we do not provide the financial stability it needs.

For the new covenant on peace to prosper, the UN must remain, without equivocation or doubt, the first and last peacemaker and peacekeeper of the world.  It should also be the vanguard that champions rule of law in international as in internal affairs.

Preventive diplomacy must be our principal tool in warding off conflict.  We must reduce the use of force.  But where we need to use it, as in self-defense or under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, we should be guided by clearly defined legal norm and practice.

UN peacekeeping operations should be prosecuted with clear and well defined mandates, adequate resources and strong international support, wherever they take place.  The report of the Brahimi Panel on UN Peace Operations deserves the urgent and careful consideration by all our governments.

More than ever, the UN must now gather together the political will of all nations to bring about the final stage of disarmament and the much-awaited arrival of a nuclear weapon-free world.  Toward this end, we must support the  Secretary General's call to convene the conference on nuclear dangers, actively participate in he 2001 small arms conference, negotiate a comprehensive convention against terrorism, and progressively improve weapons and arms budget transparency measures.

The central role of the United Nations does not and should not stop at matters of international peace and security.  It should also be a the heart of our effort to promote prosperity for all.  It should lead the charge against poverty and the efforts to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people in absolute poverty.

Along with the Bretton Woods institutions and other forums, the UN is well placed to make important contributions to the reform of the global economic and financial systems.  Our goal is not only to have a borderless world for unfettered trade and investment.  We want an global economic regime that builds productive capacities, not income gaps; that promoted openness, not corruption; that rewards enterprise, not greed.

In all these, partnership with the private sector and with civil society are indispensable.  Every man, woman and child in our co-stakeholder and partner.

For what we are trying to build is a new order where human security is greater than mere military security; where law upholds human dignity and both people and state uphold the law; and where political pluralism and cultural diversity aid attainment of common human objectives.

In other words, peace and prosperity must rest more on human cooperation than on anything else.  For in this global village, cooperation is the only tenable way to bridge experience and vision.

Bridging Promise and Fulfillment

The United Nations Millennium Declaration embodies our collective hope: the promise of a true community of nations working together for a more peaceful, prosperous and just world.  We know that between this promise and its fulfillment lies a tortuous road; yet, we must tread along.

In this journey, the first and most important step we should take is to stanch the greatest source of danger and discord, that is, underdevelopment.  For if one is not free of want, he cannot be free of fear.

In the developing world, the toll from decades of turmoil and underdevelopment has been so debilitating that only international relief can help some of us back to our feet.  What we need is a new deal for the poor countries.

Development is particularly difficult for  countries saddled by mountains of crippling debt.  Some 1.6 trillion dollars is now owed by developing countries.  Some of these countries have to use up to 95 percent of their hard currency revenues to service debt.

In the meantime, development assistance is declining.  This year, grants to developing countries may total 40 billion dollars -- a mere half of what it was a quarter century ago.

As earnest for our collective future, we should have meaningful debt relief for the world's heavily indebted poor countries immediately.  Let us also see the fulfillment of the ODA promises made three decades ago.

Further steps must be taken at the Third UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries next year.  We must ensure its success, to help our brothers and sisters in Africa, in landlocked developing countries, in nations particularly vulnerable to natural disasters and in LDCs in all regions of the world.

We must also redeem the pledge of  our leaders to make every effort to ensure the success of the High-level International and Intergovernmental Event on Financing for Development in 2001.  We must invest this event with the active participation, goodwill and expertise of all stakeholders, including the private sector.  Its success may achieve for the world what several UN Development Decades had not.

The Philippines takes heart in the boldness of spirit and resolve our leaders expressed in the United Millennium Declaration.  It is reassuring that we intend to take the world into the future as partners and not as adversaries.

Now, it is time for concrete action.  Let us rise to the challenge and build the bridges to peace and prosperity for all the united nations.

Thank you.