At the Millennium Summit of the United Nations

Distinguished Mr. President,
Mr. Secretary General,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

A number of speakers of this historic event have already made a number of concrete and valuable proposals on the ways how to adapt the United Nations to the challenges of the 21^st century. I hope the final document of the Summit will enhance this process by setting up concrete objectives for the Organisation.

We can not anticipate that the process of renewal the United Nations and increasing role of the Organisation- will proceed on an easy and fast track. There might be a lot of disappointment. The most important fact, however, is that the process is continuous.

The United Nations can not solve all the problems and the challenges. The success in readapting ourselves to the new reality mostly depends on the involvement of the states and the regions. The member states should also play an active role in finding the ways to address the needs of today.

The United Nations will enhance its influence when some member states will take more shared responsibilities through increasingly contributing to the Organisation. On our behalf I would like to announce that Lithuania is increasing its contribution to United Nations peacekeeping operations.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The development of our region demonstrates that the progress of countries directly depends on how much effort was put to achieve it. Our own experience during ten years of our independence shows that liberal democracy, market economy, open society and respect for human rights are basic preconditions necessary for reaching the progress in a short period of time. Only a very few countries, for example with extensive natural resources, might ignore these principle but, as a history shows, not for long.

I believe that in face of the globalised tomorrow, the United Nations will increase the scope of its human dimension activities. Human rights should become a cornerstone of the emerging world structure. The United Nations should advance in search for new and more effective instruments to fend off the challengers of human rights.

Globalisation will continue to question the limits of human rights applicability. For my region, it is of particular interest how the international community can promote the rights of people coping with post-communist transition.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Ten years of profound transformation have endowed Central and Eastern European nations with invaluable experience. Good-neighbor relations have become an earmark of the region. For instance, despite existed serious disagreements in the past, the strategic partnership that has evolved between Lithuania and its neighbor Poland is a remarkable example.

Cases of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have shown that integration works for the benefit of all participating countries and their neighbors. Lithuania's part in the Euro-Atlantic enlargement is working, and will work, in the same direction.

Yet, Central and Eastern Europe have to solve numerous issues, which I refer to as 'divorce legacies'. In the process of disintegration of one dominant power and one ideology, thousands, if not millions, of people are waiting to be compensated for lost lives, health, or property. They are looking for justice which is perceived as a compensation for their losses in the past.

The United Nations could play a more important role in addressing expectations of such people.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

A number of speakers in this forum underlined an importance of the principal of equality among the nations. That is an essential principle of international relations.

The leading nations in multi-polar environment, however, should also increase their role and take on more responsibilities. The right leadership might help to find the way out of dead-locked situation. In this light, we see the progress in the reform of the Security Council.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The United Nations has a commendable record of reconciling the differences, which stem from our different backgrounds.

2001 has been proclaimed the United Nations Year of Dialogue, among Civilizations. It is a great honor for Lithuania to host, next April, the International Conference on the Dialogue among Civilizations, which Mr. Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of the UNESCO, has kindly agreed to co-chair.

Over the last decades, the concept of civilization has outgrown its traditional cultural limits. Today it also involves social and economic values. The global community realigns according to this new blueprint.

But the challenge is greater than that. Cultural richness that history has bestowed upon us must go hand in hand with progress that globalisation promotes. We must build a dialogue in a language acceptable to many. The language, I believe, based on the principles enshrined in the key United Nations' instruments, first of all the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This is the real challenge that we face now.

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