ACTIVITIES OF SECRETARY-GENERAL IN PENNSYLVANIA, 15 - 16 MAY

On Sunday afternoon, 15 May, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, accompanied by his wife Nane, travelled to Philadelphia, where he would deliver the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania the following morning.  He would also receive an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University.

That evening, at a dinner hosted by the University’s President, Amy Gutmann, the Secretary-General spoke briefly, and reminisced that, when he went to college in Minnesota, his ears nearly froze because he did not want to wear earmuffs.  He said, “I walked away with a lesson:  that you don't walk into a situation and believe you know better than the natives.  You better listen to them and watch what they do.”

In the commencement address on Monday, the Secretary-General told the students that he is far from complacent about the United Nations today.

The United Nations, he said, is a work in progress, and it must move with the times.  That is why, he is saying, he has put before the Member States the blueprint of the "In Larger Freedom" report, so that the world body can be overhauled to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.

His commencement addresses spelled out the meaning of "larger freedom", and how the people who work for the United Nations are in the front lines of the effort to win larger freedom -- whether through elections in Iraq, peace efforts in Haiti and Sudan, or efforts to take care of those suffering from AIDS.  (See Press Release SG/SM/9876.)

The Secretary-General returned to his office in New York on Monday afternoon, 16 May.