SECRETARY-GENERAL'S ACTIVITIES IN SWITZERLAND, 24 TO 26 JUNE
The Secretary-General flew from the Middle East to Europe on Friday, 24 June, arriving in Basel, Switzerland, in the evening.
On Saturday, Basel was hosting the Children's World Festival, in which families of the region where Switzerland, France and Germany come together hosted some 2,000 children aged 13 to 14 from over 80 countries. The Secretary-General was welcomed at a ceremony attended by officials of the three countries and the private sponsors of the event. The President of the Swiss Confederation, Adolf Ogi, raised the issue of Switzerland not being a full member of the United Nations. "This has to change", he said. "This will change."
The Secretary-General then addressed the closing session of the Conference, urging the young people to take risks for peace. "You'll be amazed how much you can achieve by acting with others", he said. "All of us, as individuals and groups, can make a difference." The Conference closed with thousands of young people waving lighters in the darkened hall, singing "Give Peace a Chance". (See Press Release SG/SM/7463.)
The Secretary-General then flew to Geneva, where his last appointment of the day was with his Special Representative for East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
On Sunday morning the Secretary-General attended an inter-religious service at Saint Peter's Cathedral. In the afternoon, he addressed the opening of the Geneva 2000 Forum, which is the gathering of non-governmental organizations meeting in parallel with the General Assembly special session on Social Development, which opened the following day, 26 June. "You and I will be delivering very similar messages to the official delegations", he said. "We will be reminding them that economic growth is not mainly about numbers but also about people -- their health, their education and their security". (See Press Release SG/SM/7465.)
On Monday, the Secretary-General formally opened the special session of the General Assembly on Social Development, called to review progress on the agenda adopted at the First Social Summit in Copenhagen five years ago. He called on both rich and poor countries to do their parts. He asked the rich to further open their markets, provide deeper and faster debt relief and give more and better focussed development aid, because they cannot be "indifferent to the social conditions in which so many people in poor countries live". (See Press Release SG/SM/7464)
He then had a series of bilateral meetings, starting with the Deputy Prime Minister of China, Wen Jiabao, with whom he discussed the Social Summit and other issues. He also met with the Speaker of the Parliament of Iraq, Saadoun Hammadi, who raised with him issues related to the sanctions regime against Iraq. He also met privately with the President of Zambia, Frederick Chiluba.
At midday he co-hosted, with the President of the special session, Theo-Ben Gurirab of Namibia, a luncheon for the Heads of State and Governments attending the session.
In the afternoon he met with Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the Prime Minister of Denmark, which hosted the first Social Summit. They discussed issues related to the special session, and how it would relate to the Millennium Summit in September.
He then had a private meeting with the Foreign Minister of Libya, Abdurrahmam Shalghem.
After that he participated in a press conference to launch a new report, "A Better World for All", which claims that world poverty can be significantly decreased by the year 2015 if both developed and developing countries make good on their commitments to attack the roots of poverty. The report was co-authored by the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an unprecedented collaborative effort. In his opening statement, the Secretary-General said that this report, originally requested by the G-8 countries, produced a common understanding -- "a scorecard and policy road map with which to measure progress in banishing extreme poverty from our world and in achieving the targets set by the world conferences of the past decade". (See Press Release SG/SM/7466.)
Before leaving Geneva for Warsaw, the Secretary-General, for the first time ever, participated by teleconference in informal consultations of the Security Council taking place in New York on the subject of Lebanon. He briefed Council members on his recent trip to the region and fielded a number of questions from them.