英語范文背誦精華 28.4 Address to the Millennium Summit
Madam President (fo Finalnd),
Mr. President (of Namibia),
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am deeply honored to welcome you all.
Never before have the leaders of so many nations come together in a single Assembly. This is a unique event. A unique opportunity. And therefore a unique responsibility. You, ladies and gentlemen, are the leaders to whom the worlds peoples have entrusted their destiny.
They look to you to protect them from the great dangers of our time; and to ensure that all of them can share in its great achievements.
In an age when human beings have learnt the code of human life, and can transmit their knowledge in seconds from one continent to another, no mother in the world can understand why her child should be left to die, of malnutrition or preventable disease.
No one can understand why they should be driven from their home, or imprisoned or tortured for expressing their beliefs.
No one can understand why the soil their parents tilled has turned to desert, or why their skills have become useless and their family is left hungry.
People know that these challenges cannot be met by one country alone, or by government alone. Change cannot be held back by frontiers. Human progress has always come from individual and local initiatives, freely devised and then freely adapted elsewhere.
Your job, as political leaders, is to encourage such initiatives. To make sure they are not stifled, and that all your peoples can benefit from them. And to limit, or to compensate for, the adverse effects that change always has, on some people, somewhere.
Your peoples look to you for a common effort to solve their problems. They expect you to work together, as governments. And they expect you to work together with all the other institutions -- profit and non-profit, public and private -- where human beings join hands to promote their ideas and their interests.
People want to see this happen between neighbouring countries, and among all the countries of each region. But since today's biggest challenges are global, they expect above all that we will work together at the global level, as the United Nations.
