UN General Assembly
2004

I am pleased to welcome and congratulate you, Sir, and the Republic of Gabon through you, for allowing us to share your experience and expertise on the occasion of the fifty- ninth session of the General Assembly. I must convey to Mr. Julian Hunte, Foreign Minister of Saint Lucia, my country’s gratitude for his hard work and memorable contribution to this Organization over the past year. The Government of Saint Kitts and Nevis reaffirms its strong support for and commitment to the praiseworthy, attainable Millennium Development Goals. Their stated objectives are fundamental and have long been incorporated into my country’s national human development agenda. For decades, before the Millennium Development Goals were agreed upon, Saint Kitts and Nevis had instituted compulsory primary and secondary education, which may explain our achievement of a literacy rate of 97.8 per cent. We in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are very proud of our achievements in the field of education. We owe much of that success to our coherent system of education and also to the University of the West Indies, whose