Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annanis a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the United Nations were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world." He is the founder and the Chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as being the chairman of The Elders, a group founded by Nelson Mandela...
NationalityGhanaian
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth8 April 1938
CityKumasi, Ghana
CountryGhana
The issue is not the acceptance, but the performance on the ground,
Their deaths are a terrible tragedy that cannot be justified.
The inquiry committee has ripped away the curtain, and shone a harsh light into the most unsightly corners of the organization,
The fact that you have not reached agreement on these and other issues does not render them any less urgent,
the fall-out from the Oil-for-Food scandal has dogged all our lives for the last year, often gave us the feeling that we were on an inexorable downward slope.
I recognize that there are no simple solutions to the debt problem, ... But where there is agreement in principle that debt relief is essential and when delays have a profoundly negative impact of the lives of poor people, clearly more must be done.
In the short term, the most pressing issue is the continued existence of predatory armed groups, ... Although there is no easy military solution to this dangerous phenomenon, those guilty of the worst atrocities and human rights abuses -- and especially those guilty of genocide -- must not be allowed to escape unpunished.
I hope John Bolton will take up the challenge of Henry Kissinger. I would love to read the title, 'Bolton brings peace to the world.'
I hope it's not too late to get the Yugoslav government to change its position,
I hope he will be able to convince the Iranian partners to come back to the table.
I have quite a lot of work to do and I'm carrying on with my work, ... We have a major agenda next year and the year ahead, trying to reform this organization, so we'll carry on.
I have tried to put together a team with considerable experience, a team familiar with humanitarian issues,
I really hope we don't get to that stage, ... I don't even want to contemplate the possibility of a failure.
If member states are going to get a meaningful outcome, there will need to be more give and take.