Following is the full text of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's remarks addressed to the General Assembly:
ANNAN: Mr. President, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, it is good to see so many countries represented here at such high level. I know this reflects your understanding that in these difficult times, the United Nations is, as you stated four years ago in the Millennium Declaration, the common and indispensable house of the human family.
Indeed, today, more than ever the world needs an effective mechanism through which to seek common solutions to common problems. That is what this organization was created for. Let's not imagine that if we fail to make good use of it, we will find any more effective instrument.
This time next year, you will be meeting to review progress in the implementation of the Millennium Declaration. By then, I hope you will be ready to take bold decisions together on the full range of issues covered in the Millennium Declaration held by the report of the eminent panel on Press, Challenges and Change, which will be available before you by the end of this year.
As I said a year ago, we have reached a fork in the road. If you, the political leaders of the world, cannot agree or reach agreement on the way forward, history will take the decisions for you, and the interests of your people may go by default.
Today I will not seek to prejudge those decisions, but to remind you of the all-important framework in which they should be taken, namely the rule of law at home and in the world.
The vision of a government of laws, not of men, is almost as old as civilization itself. In the hallway not far from this podium is a replica of the code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi more than 3,000 years ago in the land we now call Iraq.
Much of Hammurabi's Code now seems impossibly harsh. But etched into his tablets are principles of justice that have been recognized, if seldom fully implemented, by almost every human society since his time: legal protection for the poor, restraints on the strong so that they cannot oppress the weak, laws publicly enacted and known to all.
That code was a landmark in mankind's struggle to build an order where instead of might making right, right would make might.
Many nations represented in this chamber can proudly point to founding documents of their own that embody that simple concept. And this organization, your United Nations, is founded on the same simple principle.
Yet today the rule of law is at risk around the world. Again and again we see laws shamelessly disregarded: those that ordain respect for innocent life for civilians, for the vulnerable, especially children.
ANNAN: To mention only a few flagrant and topical examples. In Iraq we see civilians massacred in cold blood, while relief workers, journalists and other noncombatants are taken hostage and put to death in the most barbarous fashion. At the same time we have seen Iraqi prisoners disgracefully abused.
In Darfur, we see whole populations displaced and their homes destroyed while rape is used as a deliberate strategy. In northern Uganda we have seen children mutilated and forced to take part in acts of unspeakable cruelty. In Beslan we have seen children taken hostage and brutally massacred.
In Israel, we see civilians, including children, deliberately targeted by Palestinian suicide bombers. And in Palestine, we see homes destroyed, lands seized and needless civilian casualties caused by Israel's excessive use of force.
