Madame Co-Chairperson,

Mr. Secretary-General,

Excellencies, Heads of State and Government,

Distinguished Heads of Delegation,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have come to the close of this historic Millennium Summit of the United Nations. Over the past three days an unprecedented number of Heads of State and Government have gathered here and reaffirmed their faith in and commitment to the United Nations for world peace, development and human security in the Twenty-first Century.

I want to thank all of you, dear colleagues, for the thoughtful and constructive contributions in the Plenary and also the fruitful exchanges you have carried out in the interactive Roundtables. This was a good innovation at the UN and it has passed the test.

I also extend my deepest gratitude to my colleague and Co-Chairperson, Her Excellency Ms. Tarja Halonen, President of the Republic of Finland for her leadership and cooperation. The Chairmen of the four interactive Roundtables did such outstanding work and I also want to extend my deepest appreciation to all of them. They are Mr. Goh Chok Tong, Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr. Aleksander Kwasniewski, President of Poland, Mr. Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias, President of Venezuela and Mr. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President of Algeria. Their summaries presented here highlighted the range of challenges and problems facing the UN and the whole world. The Secretary-General’s report and the Millennium Declaration have given us proposals and ideas for action.

In addition, our illustrious Secretary-General has initiated many outstanding tasks, especially his report, "We the Peoples" which provided an excellent basis for our discussions. I encourage him to continue his courageous efforts. We all owe a debt of gratitude and appreciation to the outgoing President of the Fifty-fourth Session of the General Assembly for a job well-done and specifically for the concise, politically authoratative and visionary United Nations Millennium Declaration, produced under his able leadership. In this context, I congratulate the newly-elected President of the Fifty-fifth Session of the General Assembly and call upon him to ensure the implementation of the Millennium Declaration, and in particular to pay attention to paragraph 31 thereof.

In our various interventions, we have placed people and their legitimate interests at the centre of our common pursuits. We have agreed to take constructive and additional steps to address the special needs of Africa and to assist the people themselves in their struggle for lasting peace, poverty eradication and sustainable social development.

We have spoken eloquently about the recognised need and the effective means to comprehensively strengthen the United Nations. Many speakers have reaffirmed the centrality of the General Assembly as the chief deliberative, policy-making and representative organ of the United Nations. They have further reiterated the urgency of the reform and enlargement of the Security Council in all respects to make it more representative, transparent, democratic and legitimate. At the end of it all, we have adopted a historic Declaration with a vision for the future and far-reaching implications for the peoples of the world.

But the peoples of the world want to know, what next after this unique Summit. The Declaration in itself will not put bread on their tables, heal the sick, arrest the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, stop the wars, erase poverty and burden of debt, enhance respect for human rights and guarantee their right to development. We can, therefore, not afford to go back home from here and continue business as usual.

We, as Heads of State and Government, have the mandate and the responsibility, individually and collectively, to undertake bold steps to help the people to help themselves. We must act now by translating our commitments into action. It is time to combine our vision and our renewed commitment with increased resources for the United Nations in a purposeful manner for it to go forward. We must fulfil our promises of a better, more peaceful, more prosperous, and more just world for all. And the time to act is now!

Lastly, I thank you once again for the opportunity to Co-chair this historic Millennium Summit and for your kind cooperation, for a united world freed at last of all social scourges and human sufferings.

I Thank You.