UN General Assembly
2002

upcoming addition of Timor-Leste. With these new Members we take an important step forward towards achieving the universality to which the Organization aspires. The events of the last year, some auspicious, others discouraging, have given us resounding proof of the role of the United Nations and the fact that the Organization's reform is now, more than ever before, a pressing and urgent challenge. I am thinking of the need for a thorough reform of its organs and structure, as well as of its functions, and of changes that would equip this Organization to respond more effectively to the fresh challenges that are emerging with unexpected speed on the international scene. Who would have thought, when this Organization was founded more than 50 years ago, that at this current General Assembly session we would be extending a welcome in the United Nations to two new Member States: Switzerland, a State that has always held its place and played its role in history and on the international scene; and Timor-Leste, whose birth we