Nelson Mandela marked his 89th birthday on Wednesday by launching an international group of elder statesmen, including fellow Nobel peace laureates Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter, to tackle the world's problems.
As birthday tributes poured in, Mandela said the group of "elders" would use almost 1,000 years of collective experience to dream up solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems like climate change, HIV/AIDS and poverty.
The leaders, who include former Irish President Mary Robinson and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, would also use their political independence to help resolve some of the world's most intractable conflicts.
"Using their collective experience, their moral courage and their ability to rise above nation, race and creed, they can make our planet a more peaceful and equitable place to live," said Mandela, wearing his trademark silk African-style shirt.
The leaders heaped praise on Mandela, South Africa's best-loved citizen and global icon for justice and reconciliation, and guests at the launch sang Happy Birthday to "Madiba" - the clan name by which he is affectionately known.
"How God must love South Africa to have given us such a priceless gift," Mandela's friend and one-time fellow activist Tutu said of the country's former president.
British entrepreneur Richard Branson and singer Peter Gabriel - who performed an a capella version of his anti-apartheid protest song 'Biko' at the launch - came up with idea of launching a braintrust of world leaders seven years ago. They asked Mandela, who has officially retired from public life and will not play a major role, to launch the group and select its members.
The group did not give specific details on the problems the group will seek to address and how. When asked about the political crisis in South Africa's neighbour Zimbabwe, Tutu said the group may achieve more by working behind the scenes.
Former US President Jimmy Carter said governments had frequently failed to tackle the world's big issues and conflicts because they were beholden to voters, inhibited by their own political agenda and beset with domestic problems.
"We will be able to risk failure ... and we will not need to claim credit for any success," he said. Aides say Mandela is in good physical health for his age, and that he is spending his retirement quietly devoting time to his large family and wife Graca Machel, whom he married on his 80th birthday in 1998.
Mandela's birthday was also to be marked in Cape Town on Wednesday with a special soccer game between African football stars and a selection of great world players.
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