This summit is meeting under the star of globalization. This is a reality,not an option. The choice is in allowing it to develop in an unregulated manner,leading to social exclusion and a deterioration of injustices at the global level, or, on
the other hand, in placing it under control so that its potential will be at the service of all.

The turn of a millennium is a time usually inclined towards visions of great utopias. The great utopia of our time would be a world in peace, with full respect for the rights of human beings, international relations based on justice and fairness, without hunger and without poverty, and in a sustainable symbiosis between humanity and nature. A world politically structured, multi-polar and balanced.
 
Unfortunately, this is not our universe and even to draw a picture of this utopia seems childishly naive.
 
In the face of the impossibility of great utopias, it is important, nevertheless, to mobilize the international community to build many small utopias, to enact the possible reforms of the architecture of international relations towards greater justice
among individuals, peoples and generations.
 
To regulate the globalization of economies and markets, improve world governance and reestablish the primacy of political ethics over interests: these are the core objectives of the international community at the turn of the millennium.
 
An international agenda must be taken up an agenda of concrete reforms. 
 
 1) to reform the Bretton Woods system, turning it into the great regulator of the global economic and financial system, moving it more means to intervene and a  more humanized perspective, which would combine the guarantee of financial  solidity and the principles of good governance with a new emphasis on the social  needs of peoples, resolving once and for all the debt problem of the poorest  countries,
 
2)  to create codes of conduct and effective forms of super-vision of financial flows,  helping these to become more stable and predictable,

3)  to bring in to the WTO, with care, social and environmental questions,
 
4)  to mobilize the energies of societies and institutions to combat infectious  diseases - such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria - and to prevent  infoexclusion", the so-called "digital divide", that threatens the new knowledge-  based economy
 
5)  to convert to firm commitments, at the global level, the directions being progressively defined in world  for a on the environment and sustainabledevelopment;

6) to perfect international law and the means for its implementation, in order to protect, evermore effectively, the sovereignty of the individual and to frame properly the right of humanitarian intervention. No aggressor should be able to count on the complacency of the international community, nor on the cynical invocation of the inviolability of its borders, as a sanctuary to escape the consequences of its acts.
 
In the implementation of this agenda, due to their dimension and legitimacy, theUnited Nations and its agencies have a fundamental role to play.
 
The preparatory report to this Summit tells us that, today, humanity is united as much by the desire for peace as by the tragedy of war; as much by the spectacle of the most opulent wealth as by the most abject poverty; as much by the most creative freedom of expression as by the most brutal repression of belief, as much by the Internet as by HIV/AIDS.
 
The United Nations and its specialized agencies can and should function as the principal catalyst for international initiatives on the promotion of peace and human rights, but also of health, education, the protection of the environment, equity in the
international circulation and distribution of wealth and of access to information.
 
The reform and the strengthening of the United Nations itself is, therefore, a key matter to our collective future, including, in my view, a profound effort to rationalize structures and means, the reorganization and expansion of the Security Council
itself and the creation of an Economic Security Council, as a catalyst for fairness, sustainable development and employment in the world economy. But all must take seriously their responsibility in funding the UN. There must be an end to the hypocrisy of asking the United Nations to do what it has no means to achieve. It is important to demand efficiency of the UN but the resources necessary for it to act must also be made available.
 
The decisive importance of the United Nations has a living and eloquent symbol in East Timor.

 The victory of the Timorese cause constitutes a triumph of the rule of law over force and of international solidarity over "realpolitik" and indifference.
 
At the same time, East Timor is the place where, with expected success, one of the most ambitious and comprehensive operations in the history of the United Nations is being carried out.
 
It is a good example of the importance of improving the mechanisms for the activities of the United Nations.
 
Here, I would like to take the opportunity to express the support of my Government for the conclusions of the recently published Brahimi Panel Report on peace operations, and express the hope that there will be a constructive debate on the
implementation of its recommendations.
 
As the Secretary-General states in his report, the values on which the twenty-first century should be based are: freedom, solidarity, tolerance, nonviolence, respect for the environment and natural resources, and shared responsibility.
 
Without those values - and without the role which only the United Nations is in a position to play - East Timor could not have begun to emerge as a free, democratic and independent state.
 
Without those values, the international community, which we represent here today, cannot move forward to a future of fulfilled dignity and prosperity for each and every one of its members.