The UN General Assembly on Wednesday opened a two-day conference on religion and peace, with its president launching yet another attack against rich countries for morally bankrupting the rest of the world. Kings, presidents and delegations from 70 countries attended the debate on how to use the values of religions and cultures to bridge misunderstandings, mostly between east and west, in order to help solve political and armed conflicts.
Assembly president Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a former Maryknoll Catholic priest and foreign minister during the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s, minced no words in accusing rich countries for the current economic and social problems.
"It is a time of numerous bankruptcies, but the worst is the moral bankruptcy of humankind's self-proclaimed 'more advanced societies,' which has spread throughout the world," he said. "It is not only Wall Street that needs to be bailed out," he said. "We need to bail out all of humankind from its social insensitivity."
Since assuming the leadership of the 192-nation assembly earlier this year, d'Escoto Brockmann has been railing at rich governments and defending the rights of the poor. He admitted he does not shy from using his priestly background to set the tone of UNdebate and call for the democratisation of the UN.
The UN has criticised rich governments for failing to provide 0.7 per cent of their gross national products for development in poor countries. Except for Nordic and Scandinavian countries, no other governments have reached that target. Currently rich countries gave annually 50 billion dollars for development. But the UN has asked that the aid be tripled.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon used more subtle words to describe the current problems, saying that fault lines have emerged in the globalisation phenomenon. "Communal strife is intensifying," Ban said. "Extremist ideologies are on the rise and societies are more polarised." "Sometimes it seems as if none of history's awful lesson have been learned," he said, citing continued anti-Semitism and fears of Islam.
Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al- Sabah and Jordan's King Abdullah, Israeli President Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni attended the debate on religion and culture.
The title of the two-day session is "promotion of inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue, understanding and co-operation of peace." The UN prefers the short title "Culture of Peace."
In addition the presidents of the United States, the Philippines, Israel, Finland, Pakistan and Lebanon, and the prime ministers of Britain, Qatar, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Djibouti and Egypt were to attend. Delegations from other governments will be headed by foreign ministers or ambassadors.
US President George W Bush will attend meetings on Thursday. He delivered his last address as US president to the UN General Assembly in September. The Vatican sent Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Inter- religious Dialogue Council to the debate.
The UN has invited all 192 UN member countries to attend the debate on religion and peace, issues that do not attract great attendance. The list of attendees lacked important representatives of Buddhism and Hinduism.
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