国际英语新闻：UN conference on culture of peace kicks off

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The two-day UN conference on culture of peace kicked off at the United Nations headquarters Wednesday, with President of the UN General Assembly Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann calling for morals and ethics in all human activity.

    "Our world is experiencing an extremely difficult period, the worst since the founding of the United Nations," said d'Escoto in his opening remarks. "It is a time of numerous bankruptcies, but the worst is the moral bankruptcy of humankind's self-proclaimed 'more advanced societies,' which has spread throughout the world."

"It is not only Wall Street that needs to be bailed out. We need to bail out all of humankind from its social insensitivity," he added.

    UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that globalization can be a great force of progress, adding that as economies merge, as cultural boundaries disappear, as new media bring human societies closer together than ever before, "new fault lines can emerge."

    "One of the great challenges of our time must now surely be to ensure that our rich cultural diversity makes us more secure -- not less," he said. "For peace to endure, individuals, groups and nations must come to respect and understand each other."

    The secretary-general also commended the various interfaith initiatives including the World Conference on Dialogue held in Madrid this past July at the invitation of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who asked the UN General Assembly to hold Wednesday's conference as a follow-up to the July meeting.

The U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (1st, L) attends the UN conference on culture of peace at the United Nations headquarters on Nov. 12, 2008

Speaking at the conference, King Abdullah said that throughout history, preoccupation with differences between the followers of religions and cultures has engendered intolerance, causing devastating wars and considerable bloodshed without any sound logical or ideological justification.

    "Every tragedy suffered in today's world is ultimately a result of the abandonment of the paramount principle enunciated by all religions and cultures: the roots of all global crises can be found in human denial of the eternal principle of justice," the king said.

    The Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Amir of the State of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Israeli President Shimon Peres, King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa of the Kingdom of Bahrain, King Abdullah II bin Al Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the President of Finland Tarja Halonen, Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, Afghan President HamidKarzai, and other heads of state and high-level officials also spoke at the meeting.

    U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to attend the meeting on Thursday.