UN General Assembly
1997

This week the Security Council will hold an unprecedented ministerial meeting on African security, which our Secretary of State is proud to chair, and which President Mugabe, Chairman of the Organization of African Unity, will address. It will highlight the role the United Nations can and should play in preventing conflict on a continent where amazing progress towards democracy and development is occurring alongside still too much discord, disease and distress. In the twenty-first century our security will be challenged increasingly by interconnected groups that traffic in terror, organized crime and drug smuggling. Already, these international crime and drug syndicates drain up to $750 billion a year from legitimate economies. That sum that exceeds the combined gross national product of more than half the nations in this Hall. These groups threaten to undermine confidence in the fragile new democracies and market economies that so many of you are working so hard to see endure. Two years ago I called upon all the members of this Assembly to join in the fight against these forces. I applaud