UN General Assembly
2001

﻿Let me begin by congratulating Your Excellency, Mr. Han Seung-soo, on your election as President of the General Assembly. I am especially gratified to be addressing the Assembly when a distinguished Asian is again at its helm. I congratulate as well His Excellency Mr. Kofi Annan on the Nobel Prize that he, together with the United Nations, has received. That prize constitutes recognition by the international community of the indispensable role of the United Nations and of the necessary work it has done on the Secretary-General’s watch towards world peace and justice. At the most elemental level, we feel most deeply the sad and tragic impact of the recent inhuman acts of terrorism: the lost lives, the orphaned children, the widowed spouses, the parents struck with the unimaginable grief of outliving their children and, worse yet, of watching them die. As we watched the horror unfold, we felt as though it were happening to us — as indeed it was, for the United Nations is in a sense one family. The blow that was struck at this