President Halonen: UN Summit´s outcome document a step forward
President of the Republic Tarja Halonen is currently participating in the largest UN World Summit in history in New York. The 60th Session of the UN General Assembly was opened on Wednesday morning. An agreement about the Summit’s draft outcome document was not reached before late Tuesday evening. "The negotiation situations were genuinely difficult. I am more satisfied now than a week ago," Halonen told the Finnish reporters in a press conference held on Wednesday 14 September.
Halonen said that she sees many positive things in the outcome document. As positive development can be considered the establishment of Human Rights Commission and Peacebuilding Commission, designed to assist countries recovering from conflict. "Still, we have to make sure that women will be sufficiently represented in these bodies," Halonen added.
As a positive aspect President Halonen considered also the fact that the globalisation theme, which is close to Finland’s interests, was now, for the first time, included in the UN outcome document. However, Halonen said that she was disappointed that the disarmament issue could not be included in the outcome document.
President Tarja Halonen reminded that the UN reforms will require a lot of work in the future. "We have a lot of hard work ahead of us. In sports terms, this is a long-distance run. Now we need to pick up some speed, all together," Halonen described the situation.
President Halonen
Annan appealed to world leaders
On the opening day of the UN World Summit, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appealed to the world leaders so that they would take bolder steps in fight against poverty. Annan admitted that the negotiations did not reach all the goals they were aiming at. Annan regarded it as disgraceful that non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and disarmament are missing from the outcome document.
The President of the United States George W. Bush addressed the Summit on Wednesday morning. In his speech, Bush emphasised the measures aiming at liberalisation of trade. Bush said that he would be prepared to eliminate the obstacles of trade, if other countries did the same. He also promised that the United States would commit itself to the goal set at the turn of the Millennium to halve the number of people living under the poverty line by the year 2015.
President Halonen commented Bush’s speech by saying that it was a return to the common negotiating table.
One of the UN reform projects to be postponed to the future is the expansion of the UN Security Council. Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, who is also participating in the Summit, said in the press conference that one reason why the reform package fell flat during the summer was lack of visionary leadership. "Short-sighted national interests started to run it down from different directions. The performance of African states was also a sad thing to see. I believe that most of the African countries would have wanted to see the reforms come through, but their own internal situation made a few countries put on the brakes on this issue", Tuomioja pointed out.
President Tarja Halonen made the address to the UN World Summit on behalf of Finland late Wednesday evening Finnish time.