UN General Assembly
1994

It is a great honour for me, as President of Colombia, to speak in the General Assembly, which, as the Organization reaches the fiftieth anniversary of its establishment, remains the principal forum for the discussion of topics of concern to mankind and for the search for peaceful solutions to its distressing problems. Fifty years ago, when the United Nations system was created, the world hoped that the spectre of war was finally being laid to rest. But lack of understanding between nations, ideological fanaticism and the politics of force led to the world’s polarization into two antagonistic blocs. For many years, the cold war put on ice the hopes held at the beginning for developing a world-wide system of coexistence. Such coexistence reappears today when we see a black person at the helm of South Africa; when we see Palestinians and Jews discussing fruit groves in the hills of the Golan; and when we see all Berliners drinking good Colombian coffee on the spot where the wall of infamy once stood.