[President Vicente Fox made an opening statement in Spanish welcoming the Secretary-General]

SG: Mr. President, let me first start by thanking you and the Mexican people for receiving us so warmly, and for organizing this huge Conference, the Conference that is so important to millions and millions of people around the world, because it is their welfare and their future that we are here to discuss. As the President said, lots of preparation and lots of thinking has gone into this Conference.

It was barely 18 months ago when the leaders of the world met in New York at the Millennium Summit and passed a Millennium Declaration which had the fight against poverty on top of the agenda.

Here in Monterrey we will have a chance to demonstrate concretely that we are no longer going to do business as usual. We had a chance in Doha during the WTO meeting to demonstrate that we are going to have another round, and I hope that round would be a truly development round, opening the markets to the developing world, making the world trading system really fare and just.

Here we will have the chance to talk about financing for development and, as the President has indicated, it will touch on issues of debt relief, on the question of increased development assistance, and I think, on that score, given the announcement that President Bush has made and the European Union has communicated, I think we are winning the debate, the argument that we do need additional development assistance to give the developing countries a hand up for them to come out of their poverty.

We will talk about the issue of debt relief and the management of the global economy; and the role and the voice of the Third World in decisions affecting the management of the global economy. Of course, the issue of governance, transparent governments, and of course some discussions on corruption.

But let me conclude by telling you how happy we all are to be here and Mr. President to thank you and applaud your leadership and the dynamism that you brought to this exercise.

Q: [translated from the Spanish] My name is Arturo Tornel, a reporter from TV Azteca. I wish to pose two questions, the first to the Secretary-General: Is the elimination of debt from Third World countries considered to be part of this programme for development? And to President Fox: a few hours before the summit begins, do you know if Commander Fidel Castro will be attending the meeting?

SG: I think the question of debt relief has been on the agenda for a long time. We already have a HPIC arrangement to assist the least developed countries which are highly indebted. What we hope to do in Monterrey is to discuss further the question of debt relief and try and come up with mechanisms that will make the servicing of debt by the poorer countries sustainable, and to try to get them as much relief as we can. And I think the fact that so many leaders are coming, through the efforts of President Fox, indicates the importance we all attach to the issues of the agenda, including the question of debt.

Q: [Translated from Spanish] I want to ask the Secretary- General, what has to be done to avoid that the efforts in Monterrey end up in a complex catalogue of good intentions? What has to be done to do ensure that the eradication of poverty becomes a tangible fact, particularly after the United States has expressed it is against the proposal to provide part of its Gross Domestic Product to assist the countries that need it the most? What are the expectations of the Summit considering this statement which shows they are not fully open to the hope of eradicating poverty? I also have a question for President Fox. Besides hosting the conference, what is the exact agenda and the position of the Mexican Government will be presenting at the conference?

SG: I think, obviously, we will not expect to achieve all our objectives in one day. But what is important is that we are here as an international community, to recognize that we cannot live in a world which is so unequal. We don't live in two worlds, we don't have two worlds. We have only one world. And we cannot have a situation where you have immense [wealth] and extreme poverty living side by side and not try to do anything about it, and expect that it would be sustainable over the long run. Yes, today we are all concerned about terrorism. But fighting terrorism also means we have to try and eliminate the situations which are sometimes exploited by perpetrators of terrorism to justify their acts.

And that means the issue of poverty and misery around the world is everybody's business. And I think that idea, that concept, I believe, is being generally accepted, not just by political leaders but by ordinary citizens. At the time of the Millennium Summit I got 21 million signatures from ordinary citizens saying, do something about debt. In May we are going to have a Summit on Children, welfare of children, for children, their education and health. We have 50 million signatures from around the world saying let's help children. So there is a movement, there is an awareness.

And I hope we leave Monterrey with what I will call "The Spirit of Monterrey", where everybody, Governments, private sector, citizens, all of us, agree that we need to fight poverty. Yes, the money that we would want, and we think we would need, to meet the Millennium Goals by the year 2015 would be about 50 billion dollars a year. We don't have it all today but there is movement, there is progress. There is a realization that resources are needed--human resources, material resources and financial resources. And I hope that we will walk away with the understanding that the developed world would help the poor, and the developing countries would do enough to get their own home in order and strengthen their institutions and create policies that would attract both domestic and international investments.

[The President then answered his question in Spanish.]

Q: Two quick questions. The first one is, if the West was serious about helping the Third World, would it not be feasible to forgive debt all together for the Third World, completely. And just wipe out negotiations about it all together and do it in just one stroke. Second question being, Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize winner, was here just a couple of weeks ago and he mentioned, concerning the Middle East, that perhaps it would be an idea to bring young children from the Palestinian state and Israel state together at a very young age to try and get some sort of link between them before it was too late. Is this is something the United Nations could help support because it seem that by the age of thirteen or fourteen on both sides it's way too late.

SG:. On your first one, I think all the heavily indebted countries would be extremely happy if one could wipe out their debt. There has been lots of discussion going on, on eliminating debt, reducing debt, giving debt relief to make it manageable, to avoid situations where countries spend more money on debt relief than on health than on education of their people. But we are not there yet. We've made some progress. I cannot say that we have achieved an ideal solution. But the discussion goes on. The fact that it is on the agenda here in Monterrey is an important signal that we do realize we have a problem. We don't have a solution yet but we are continuing the search for a solution.

On your second question, I would say that I think it is important to educate children, to educate people, not just to them, but if you catch them early and you teach them tolerance, and you teach them to respect diversity, you teach them to respect what is sacred to others, you teach them to understand that there is more that unites us than divides us, as they grow older they will realize that they live in a world where they have to respect each other and their neighbor, regardless of their religion, their creed or their race.

But your proposal would imply that until you have a situation where you can have that sort of general education you will only be able to move small groups of children away and give them that education. But there are other ideas where people suggest, for example, instead of having the two textbooks, where the Palestinian text book is very harsh on the Israelis and then the Israelis have their own textbooks. You should expose the children to both textbooks, and explain what the real world is like and get them to draw their own lessons, and teach them lessons. And as they grow up they will really have a balanced view of society. So there are lots of ideas that people are beginning to look at. Thank you.*****