UN General Assembly
1999

I extend my congratulations to Mr. Gurirab on his election and my warmest respects to his predecessor, Mr. Didier Opertti. My very best wishes go to them both and to our fellow Members, together with my great appreciation to Secretary-General Annan for all his work on behalf of the General Assembly during the past year. I would like to offer a special welcome to our new Members, the Kingdom of Tonga and the Republics of Kiribati and Nauru. They join us at a time when all of us, big and small, are feeling what we might call the “cutting edge” of certain problems. These problems cut very deeply indeed into the lives of the people we all represent. They are the ones the United Nations will be increasingly called upon to address in the coming decades. I refer to a host of challenges facing us on the eve of the new millennium, problems touching on all aspects of human affairs: overpopulation, migration and diminishing resources; economic and financial problems; social and cultural ones; far-reaching environmental ones;