英语经典美文诵读100篇：059.address to the millennium summit

[00:05.14]059.Address to the Millennium Summit [00:11.42]Madam President (of Finland), [00:14.07]Mr. President (of Namibia), [00:17.11]Excellencies, [00:18.54]Ladies and Gentelemen, [00:20.23]I am deeply honored to welcome you all. [00:23.79]Never before have the leaders of so many nations come together in a single Assembly. [00:30.30]This is a unique event. A unique opportunity. And therefore a unique responsibility. [00:38.98]You, ladies and gentlemen, are the leaders to whom the world’s peoples have entrusted their destiny. [00:46.79]They look to you to protect them from the great dangers of our time; [00:52.45]and too ensure that all of them can share in its great achievements. [00:58.17]In an age when human beings have learnt the code of human life, [01:03.22]and can transmit their knowledge in seconds from one continent to another, [01:09.05]no mother in the world can understand why her child should be left to die of malnutrition or preventable disease. [01:19.36]No one can understand why they should be driven from their home, or imprisoned or tortured for expressing their beliefs. [01:29.61]No one can understand why the soil their parents tilled has turned to desert, [01:35.69]or why their skills have become useless and their family is left hungry. [01:42.86]People know that these challenges cannot be met by one country alone, [01:48.24]or by one government alone. Change cannot be held back by frontiers. [01:55.53]Human progress has always come from individual and local initiatives, freely devised and then freely adapted elsewhere. [02:06.39]Your job, as political leaders, is to encourage such initiatives. [02:12.69]To make sure they are not stifled, and that all your peoples can benefit from them. [02:19.60]And to limit, or to compensate for, the adverse effects that change always has, on some people, somewhere. [02:29.93]Your peoples look to you for a common effort to solve their problems. [02:34.77]They expect you to work together, as governments. [02:38.51]And they expect you to work together with all the other institutions - profit or non profit, [02:45.38]public and private - where human beings join hands to promote their ideas and their interests. [02:54.64]People want to see this happen between neighboring countries, [02:58.43]and among all the countries of each region. [03:02.63]But since today’s biggest challenges are global, they expect above all that we will work together at the global level, [03:12.55]as the United Nations. [03:16.06]My friends, that is why we are here. We are here to strengthen and adapt this great institution, [03:26.30]forged 55 years ago in the crucible of war, [03:30.83]so that it can do what people expect of it in the new era - an era in which rule of law must prevail. [03:40.23]Last month I sent you a Report, produced by a panel of experts, [03:45.54]which makes detailed suggestions for strengthening the United Nations in the crucial area of peace and security - [03:55.91]the area where people look especially to the State, and where the world’s peoples look to the United Nations, [04:03.71]to save them “from the scourge of war”. Please consider that Report very seriously. [04:11.86]It is not only in that field, however, that the United Nations needs strengthening. [04:17.42]We must strengthen it across the whole range of our activities. [04:21.88]We need to decide our priorities. And we must adapt our United Nations, [04:27.59]so that in future those priorities are reflected in clear and prompt decisions, [04:33.30]leading to real change in people’s lives. [04:37.18]That, my friends, is what the peoples expect of us. Let us not disappoint them. [04:46.32]Thank you.

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