We have to knock on the head the idea that this is a "northern" issue, which is somehow competing with development - which unfortunately too many southern governments seem to believe. Actually, like almost everything else in this world, the degradation of the global environment hurts the poor much more immediately and directly than the rich. It is poor people who are being driven off their lands by desertification. It is poor people who are dying because they don't have access to clean water. And the vast majority of people who are in danger of losing their homes if the level of the ocean rises as a result of global warming are also living in poor developing countries. We have to rediscover our sense of urgency on these issues and adopt - if I may again borrow the language which I am delighted to see got through from the Secretary-General's report into the Millennium Declaration - "a new ethic of conservation and stewardship".

Construction company UAE So what about the United Nations itself? You have noted I have said very little about conflict, about peace and security, which most people think of as the main object of the United Nations. Wasn't it after all created to save the coming generations from the scourge of war? Yes, indeed. Conflict remains the major scourge in many parts of the world, once again, mainly the poorest parts, and it is actually one of the things that is getting in the way of development. There is a terrible vicious circle there. Poor countries are more prone to conflict, and countries that are threatened by conflict find it hard to attract investment.

The world still looks to the United Nations to do peace-keeping, and increasingly to do the broader tasks that we lump together as "peace-building". That is essentially not just a question of putting troops on a line to separate combatants and then leave them there, but trying to help a society put itself together again and develop in a normal way, which is a very broad agenda indeed.

The report submitted last August, by a panel chaired by Lakhdar Brahimi, a brilliant Algerian diplomat, made some very practical recommendations about how the UN's capacity to undertake these tasks could be strengthened. It does involve a small increase in resources for the Secretariat. It is very unusual that we ask for that. We have accepted very meekly in the past six years a ceiling imposed by the rich countries, and in particular the United States, of zero percent nominal growth in the regular UN budget. In the peacekeeping budget of course there is an appropriation for each one of the peace-keeping operations, but even when it expands - as they did very rapidly in 1999 when we were suddenly given Kosovo, East Timor and Sierra Leone - the headquarters capacity remains tiny. It is frankly such, that no national government sending its troops into any area of conflict would dream of trying to run them with such minuscule capacity at headquarters.

I think these recommendations do deserve support. Of course they are only a partial answer to the issue of protecting civilians from the effects of armed conflict. This is an area where the United Nations was perceived, rightly I'm afraid, to fail - particularly in Rwanda in 1994 when nearly a million people were massacred in the only, I think, incontrovertible case of genocide that there has been since 1945, and also in Bosnia, especially in Srebrenica in 1995, when thousands of men and boys were disarmed (many did not have arms in the first place) and were taken away and shot. They were rounded up and taken away in the presence of UN peace-keepers.

Now those peace-keepers were perhaps not mandated or equipped to actually take on the people who were doing that and fight them. Itís a controversial point. As a general rule Member-States don't equip peace-keeping forces to fight wars, and the Security Council does not authorize them to do so. It may well be that the United Nations is not an appropriate body to run a war. But some form of action does sometimes need to be taken. That's why in 1999 the Secretary-General raised the issue which has become known as "humanitarian intervention". What it means, is military action taken by Member-States to save large numbers of people from imminent destruction. It is a very controversial issue because it is obviously so open to abuse. One person's humanitarian intervention can be another's invasion for self-interested purposes, even with the view some times to dismembering the country. It is an extreme measure only to be used in extreme cases.

There are many things that can and should be done to prevent things getting to the point where that question even arises. These will be the subject of further reports by the Secretary-General in the course of this year, notably on the protection of civilians and on conflict prevention.

The UN has to be strengthened not only in the area of peace and security but in general. As I say, itís not going to be a world government, and the tasks that it can undertake are limited, and it will seek to do them in partnership with others. But it needs to be adapted to work in that way. It needs to be able to manage its human resources more efficiently, to attract and motivate the most talented people. It needs to be able to provide better security to its staff, some of whom have really been left to fend for themselves and often, I regret to say, massacred in cold blood in various parts of the world. It needs itself to make better use of information technology. It is no good us preaching the virtues of that to the rest of the world if we can't actually do it in our own operations. I think most people would say it needs to be more democratic, although there might be different views of what exactly that would mean. It certainly needs to be transparent. It needs to be able to work in partnerships. It needs to be open to ideas and contributions from outside.

I think that in all these respects the Secretary-General is giving a lead. But all of them, to one degree or other, require decisions to be taken by Member-States. And that's why I consider it a very good opportunity to come and talk to an audience like this, to people in a Member-State, who are interested in international affairs, are interested in the United Nations, and can presumably have some influence on their government - the way it votes in the General Assembly and in the various committees which actually control the Secretariat at the UN.

I very much thank you for coming and listening to me.