UN General Assembly
2001

Today we remember with sorrow the sacrifices that earlier generations made. We remember with pride the brave decisions that they took to build a better world for us, and we salute the reconciliation and recovery that followed. My hope is that our children and our grandchildren will look back on this period with no less pride, and that future generations will be able to say that we here faced up to a great evil; we did not duck the decisions we had to take; we established peace in Afghanistan, constructive coexistence in the Middle East and sustained development in Africa. We made the necessary endeavour in the finest tradition of the United Nations. The United Nations stands for everything the terrorist seeks to destroy. My hope is that our successors will look back on this era and say that we saved succeeding generations from the scourge of terrorism as well as from the scourge of war.