SECRETARY-GENERAL PRAISES EFFORTS TO ADVANCE UN CAUSE IN UNITED STATES IN REMARKS TO ANNUAL UN AMBASSADORS DINNER

Press Release
SG/SM/7132

SECRETARY-GENERAL PRAISES EFFORTS TO ADVANCE UN CAUSE IN UNITED STATES IN REMARKS TO ANNUAL UN AMBASSADORS DINNER

Following are the remarks of Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the United Nations Ambassadors Dinner hosted by the United Nations Association of the United States (UNA-USA) and the Business Council for the United Nations (BCUN)in New York on 14 September:

I am so glad to be with you all again this evening. This event always offers a glittering show of support for the United Nations, and I must congratulate the organizers for managing yet again to serve up such a special blend of new glamour and old friends.

This year, you have raised the level of excitement even further by honouring Senator John Glenn. Senator, you are an ideal choice for this year’s Global Leadership Award. Whether out there in orbit or down here on earth, you have become an expert at breaking records -- including your own. Your example inspires all of us. In this International Year of Older Persons, when young and old alike are working towards the United Nations goal of "a society for all ages", the award to you is particularly well timed.

And now let me turn to my old friends. For more than half a century, UNA- USA's steadfast friendship and passionate support has advanced the cause of the United Nations in the United States. This year, we have even more to be thankful for. We have seen two long-standing friends -- BCUN and UNA -– come together in a single organization. And we have seen the leadership baton passed from my good friends John Whitehead and Dick Voel to another good friend, Ambassador Bill Luers.

The union between BCUN and UNA is especially welcome at a time when we in the United Nations are stepping up our efforts to build a genuine partnership with the private sector, and to foster corporate citizenship worldwide. In these efforts, we rely very much on BCUN’s support.

And UNA, as always, deserves our deepest gratitude for the support its members across the country give to the work of the United Nations in so many different areas. I think especially of your highly successful “adopt-a-minefield” programme, in which local American communities come to the aid of communities in war-torn countries to help rid them of the terrible scourge of landmines. We continue to rely on your clear, consistent and principled advocacy of the United Nations Charter, and your commitment to the common obligations it implies –- including, of course, financial obligations.

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When I spoke to this audience a year ago, I paid tribute to my friend Dick Holbrooke and said how much I looked forward to working with him at the United Nations -- sooner, I hoped, rather than later.

Well, I am pleased that "sooner" has now arrived -- even if it’s a bit later than we might have hoped. And I know that our partnership with Ambassador Holbrooke will be fruitful and stimulating enough to have been worth the wait. After all, as Senator Glenn has shown us, it is never too late to make a difference.

My friends, in this last year of the twentieth century, you too can take heart from that thought. And you can take pride in what the United Nations has achieved, thus far. For its achievements are your achievements too. In sickness and in strength, the United Nations has been able to count on your loyalty. I know that you will keep on informing your communities about our work. And I know you will keep telling them to think of the United Nations, whether they praise or criticize it, as “us” and not as “them”.

For the truth is that the United Nations can only ever do what its Member States and their peoples want it to do. And it depends, above all, on the support of the United States and of the American people. And so, on behalf of the United Nations, let me offer you my heartfelt gratitude tonight for a partnership maintained so faithfully over so many years. I have no doubt that it will continue to prosper, far into the new millennium.

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