UN General Assembly
2005

and tolerance across the globe, the United Nations has a central role to play. According to a well-known saying, there is only one thing we cannot tolerate, and that is intolerance. Indeed, the struggle to protect tolerance from intolerance is one of the great challenges of our time. It is in the interest of all States to take up the fight against radical ideologies that turn people into terrorists. Terrorism, as we all know, is a cross-border threat. People of all persuasions and beliefs are its innocent victims. And so we must respond collectively, both to terrorism and to the radical ideologies that feed and breed it. Rwanda and the wars in the former Yugoslavia are sharp reminders of how the political use of intolerant and racist rhetoric can even lead to genocide or ethnic cleansing. Still, I do not believe there is or will be a clash of civilizations. But there is a clash between the tolerant and the intolerant within and across our societies, within and across our civilizations.