The President of the fifty-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly -- the Millennium Assembly -- brings to the office a wealth of political experience, as well as a reputation as a skilled mediator and consensus-builder. Mr. Harri Holkeri was Finland's Prime Minister from 1987 to 1991, heading a coalition government of conservatives and social democrats. The most renowned and prestigious conservative political figure in Finland over the last few decades, he has served his country and the international community in several political and economic posts. From 1995 to 1998, as a member of The International Body -- a group set up by the Governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland overseeing the decommissioning of illegal weapons in Northern Ireland -- Mr. Holkeri was one of the three independent chairmen of the multi-party peace negotiations and contributed to furthering the peace process. Born in 1937 and raised in the small town of Toijala where his father was a police officer, Mr. Holkeri holds a Master of Political Science degree from the University of Helsinki and was a member of the Finnish delegation to the General Assembly from 1963 to 1965. His political philosophy -- "You cannot make easy decisions unless you first commit yourself to hard solutions" -- has guided his entire political life. Horst Rutsch, Inga Eggers and Sven T. Siefken of the UN Chronicle spoke with Mr. Holkeri on 5 July.

I really do hope that the Millennium Summit gives new impetus to the work of the United Nations, especially to the fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly. In light of the Secretary-General's Millennium Report, I had very high expectations of the Summit. And I hope the Millennium Assembly will see to the implementation of the ideas contained in the Summit Declaration.

Of course, I already know there are some problems I have to face. For instance, if we take the budgetary questions, especially the scale of assessments, this is a sensitive issue which nevertheless must be decided before the new year. And then there are big issues like the reform of the Security Council -- these kinds of questions are something the President of the General Assembly must at least keep his eye on. It remains to be seen which are the real problems, but there are many challenges, there are many obstacles; let us try to change the obstacles to advantages for the Organization.

We Finns represent a very transparent and open-minded way of reaching political decisions. I think I can regard myself as a political decision-maker.

Serving as a Chairman here or elsewhere, what is the main challenge in chairing a meeting?

It is not the discussion -- discussion is just a tool. You have to aim; the final goal must be a decision. And your personal view on the subject is not always so important, even though it may be important to you as a person or as an individual. But in order to get a decision, you sometimes have to forget your own ideas, your own views.

When I was involved in Finnish domestic problems, that is what I used to do as well -- bring people together and make them work together instead of fighting against each other. And there are certain rules that are very important in political negotiations. The first rule is to create more trust and confidence between the parties. Normally, in international or national crises, there are always questions of lack of confidence. You have to change the minds of the people in order to get results. This sounds ideal -- and it is -- but you have to make it absolutely clear that without trust, without building and rebuilding the confidence between the parties, you will never succeed.

Confidence-building is one side of the equation, the other is the question of political will.

Exactly, I think the same way. We have the tools, but we have to learn how to use them -- that is my political philosophy. Sometimes it starts with the venue. For instance, I served the British and Irish Governments in the Northern Ireland peace process. I always told the people there, as well as the other Chairmen, that my opinion on "who's wrong or who's right" has nothing to do with the fact that we have to bring together these people who are against each other, to transform antagonism into cooperation -- and to a certain degree we succeeded. At first, in Northern Ireland the opposing parties didn't want to be in the same room with each other, but we finally succeeded in getting them around the same table. They didn't talk to each other; they only talked to the Chairmen, but finally they were speaking to each other. Then after that, they found out that maybe there was something they could accept from the person on the other side of the table. That is where consensus-building begins -- with the idea that you have your own truth, but that the negotiator on the other side of the table has his own truth as well. And without accepting the other person's thinking, you cannot further your own interest. You need the other's help to get results, and this is very much up to you. Of course, the process is not that simple, but this is the way it works. If you come to a negotiation table saying that you have the final truth, that you know nothing but the truth and that is final, if you are not willing to accept anything, you will get nothing.

The conflict in Northern Ireland, in other words, is an illustration of political antagonism in general?

Northern Ireland is a case in itself, but it is not unique. This antagonism between the unionists and the nationalists, or as they call it the Protestants and Catholics, is at least 800 years old. When it started, it was not a question of protestantism or catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict. But in every European nation, including my own, there have been problems in history when the society was too divided. Finland had a civil war less than a 100 years ago, just like in Ireland. If you look at the history of newly independent nations, unfortunately, civil war is almost every time present, even in the United States. It didn't break out immediately, but civil war in this country was something similar to that in my country or in Ireland. If we go back in the history of different nations, you will find that violence and the use of force, and quite often civil wars, are part of their heritage. These are the traditions of mankind. In Finland, we learned quite a lot from our own civil war. The wounds were visible when I was a boy, when we had the reds and the whites, but my generation went into the Second World War and it united the Finnish nation, so now I do not see any more wounds.

Since Finland joined the United Nations in 1955, it has been involved in peacekeeping operations all over the world.

We Finns have been involved in peacekeeping operations in the Suez, in Cyprus and in quite a number of other places, so we can regard ourselves as a big power in peacekeeping. But besides traditional peacekeeping, we now have other kinds of problems which do not necessarily follow the established lines of peacekeeping. There is peace enforcement, for instance, and that is a much more difficult kind of operation.

Finland was the first country to grant women full political rights, and today your President and the Speaker of Parliament are women.

The current President of the Republic of Finland, Mrs. Tarja Halonen, used to be a Minister in my Cabinet. She was first Minister of Welfare and after that she became Minister of Justice -- and she is a very capable person. She is a good example of the fact that in Finland we have equal political rights for women and men. We do not regard ourselves according to sex, and that is reflected in the Finnish language. We do not have separate words; we only have one word for "he" and "she". So that it is inherited; it is our basic way of thinking. We have some problems in the area of women's rights, but they are of minor importance if you look at our system and our situation as a whole. Of course, men and women have roles of their own in families and everyday business. Their roles are different, but their rights are equal.

Can the General Assembly play a major role in advancing the equality of rights?

I think the General Assembly offers a forum where these questions can be put forward and discussed. In my opinion, one of the biggest development issues in the world with which most of the other problems are linked is the education of girls. We know from our own experience that this is the most essential issue, but unfortunately this is not the case in many countries. In the United States and Europe, it has largely been accepted, but not in Africa and the developing countries. If there is something I would like to do as President of the General Assembly, it is to place more emphasis on the issue of education.

That ties in with another core concern of the United Nations, namely the eradication of poverty, which is to a large extent a "female" poverty in developing countries.

Exactly. It is education which enables a better life for women and for everybody else. I do not want to speak about overpopulation or birth control, but I think that education is the way to give some new impetus to the poverty question. And human rights questions, in general, start with education.

Your international career has been connected with the United Nations since the early sixties.

I had just finished my studies at the University when I got the opportunity to come and work here. Of course, my work was controlled by the real experts, but I was assigned to the Fifth Committee, for instance. I was there alone. And it was not always so easy to be there (laughs). I was there as a Finnish representative. The Ambassador at that time, Mr. Ralph Enckell, who is a famous figure in Finnish diplomacy, said to me afterwards, "I put you there because I wanted that you would learn something". And I think I did, at least a little.

What is the most striking difference between your experience then and your sense of the United Nations today?

I recently reread an article of mine written in 1964, and I think it is still valid, so there is not much difference. When I was here for the first time as a member of the Finnish delegation to the General Assembly sessions in the beginning of the sixties, most of the basic questions on the agenda were the same as today. Many of the items on the agenda 37 years ago are still there. But they are questions that must be there, such as development issues and human rights matters. Of course, the list has been extended remarkably, but they are still the same basic concerns. As far as I can remember, there are only two or three things which have been dropped: the trusteeship questions for instance, and those on divided countries like Germany and Korea, and apartheid -- but apartheid came later. As an organization, the United Nations is much bigger today; I think at that time there were about 111 Member States, now there are 189. Discussions in the General Assembly are now even more strongly focused on the development issues. Of course they were already on the agenda at that time, but I think human rights issues and development questions have a bigger role today.

I am very familiar with the financial situation of the United Nations. In 1964, I was appointed to be a member of the Finnish delegation as well, but we never came to New York because the General Assembly was practically cancelled due to the financial crisis of the Organization. Now, we are discussing similar problems, not this serious; still, the lack of funds for this Organization has always been with us.

You have six grandchildren. What kind of world do you expect they will face when they are your age?

That is a very important question. I remember when my first child, my son, was born in 1962, I wrote a letter to my grandfather telling him how happy I was but how concerned at the same time. I was concerned because there were so many visions which were not very good. I now have these six wonderful grandchildren, between ages 9 and 2 1/2. Last Sunday, I met three of them and we had a nice Sunday picnic together, and we discussed the problems of the world. The eldest, who is 9 years old, was asking me questions like you: "Grandpa, what do you think I will be when I grow up?" I said, "I can't give you any advice. What do you want?" He said, "I don't know. But one thing that I have decided is not to be an engineer (his father is an aviation engineer), and not to be a politician." I asked, "Why?" "Because my father is always away from home and you have so much to do that you are always travelling. I want to be something else" (laughs). He said that he wanted to be a doctor, because they help other people. I said, "Boy, then become a doctor."

I think we have grave problems. I am very much concerned about environmental questions, even though in Finnish society, we are not facing the most urgent problems. To take one example, the Baltic Sea is becoming more and more polluted due to the fact that not everybody living near the shore of the Baltic Sea is protecting it. It is the water of life for countries like Finland and the other Baltic Sea States like Sweden; it has always been the connecting link in the north of Europe. And now I am very much concerned about what is going to happen with that water if the pollution continues. That is only one example, but it is a very serious one in my mind and to the people who will live in Finland after me, including my grandchildren. What we can do as individuals may not be very much on the global scale, but we have to start the change in this regard by living as we are teaching -- that is the way I feel.