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For the first time, the U.N. Security Council has imposed mandatory
obligations on all U.N. members to cut off terrorists financing
and end safe havens for terrorists.
Those that finance terror, those that launder their money, those
that cover their tracks are every bit as guilty as the fanatic that
commits the final act.
And here in this country and in other nations around the world,
laws will be changed, not to deny basic liberties, but to prevent
their abuse and protect the most basic liberty of all, freedom from
terror.
New extradition laws will be introduced. New rules to ensure asylum
is not a front for terrorist entry; this country is proud of its
tradition in giving asylum to those fleeing tyranny -- we will always
do so -- but we have duty to protect the system from abuse. It must
be overhauled radically, so that from now on those who abide by
the rules, get help, and those that don't, can no longer play the
system to gain unfair advantage over others.
Around the world, the 11th of September is bringing government
and people to reflect, consider and change. And in this process,
amidst all the talk of war and action, there is another dimension
appearing. There is a coming together; the power of community is
asserting itself. We are realizing how fragile are our frontiers
in the face of the world's new challenges.
Today, conflicts rarely stay within national boundaries. Today,
a tremor in one financial market is repeated in the markets of the
world. Today, confidence is global, it's presence or its absence.
Today, the threat is chaos, because for people with work to do and
family life to balance and mortgages to pay and careers to further
pensions to provide, the yearning is for order and stability. And
if it doesn't exist elsewhere, it's unlikely to exist here.
I have long believed that this interdependence defines the new
world we live in.
You know, people say, "Well, we're only acting because it's
the USA that was attacked." "Double standards," they
say. But when Milosevic embarked on the ethnic cleansing of Muslims
in Kosovo, we acted. And the skeptics said it was pointless, that
we made matters worse, we made Milosevic stronger and look what
happened. We won. The refugees went home. The policies of ethnic
cleansing were reversed. And one of the great dictators of the last
century will finally see justice in this century.
And I tell you that if Rwanda happened as democratically elected
government and people, and we, as a country, should -- and I, as
a prime minister, do -- give thanks for the brilliance, dedication
and shear professionalism of the British Armed Forces.
We can't do it all, neither can the Americans. But, you know, the
power of the international community could, together, if it choose
to. It could, with our help, sort out the blight that is the continuing
conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where 3 million
people have died through war or famine in the last decade. A partnership
for Africa between the developed and the developing world based
around a new African initiative, it's there to be done if we find
the will.
On our side: provide more aid untied to trade, write off debt,
help with good governance and infrastructure, training to the soldiers
with U.N. blessing and conflict resolution, encouraging investment
and access to our markets so that we practice the free trade we're
so fond of preaching.
But it is a partnership. On the African side: true democracy, no
more excuses for dictatorship, abuses of human rights, no tolerance
of bad governments from the endemic corruption of some states, to
the activities of Mr. Mugabe's henchmen in Zimbabwe... proper commercial,
legal and financial systems, the will, with our help, to broker
agreements for peace and provide troops to police them. The state
of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world. But if the world,
as a community, focused on it, we could heal it. And if we don't,
that scar will become deeper and angrier still.
We could defeat climate change, if we chose to. Kyoto is right.
We will implement it and call upon all other nations to do so.
But it's only a start. With imagination, we could use or find the
technologies that create energy without destroying our planet, we
could provide work and trade without deforestation. If human kind
was able, finally, to make industrial progress without the factory
conditions of the 19th century, surely, we have the wit and will
to develop economically without despoiling the very environment
we depend upon.
And if we wanted to, we could breath new life into the Middle East
peace process, and we must.
The state of Israel must be given recognition by all; fear from
terror, know that it is accepted as a part of the future of the
Middle East not its very existence under threat.
And the Palestinians must have justice, the chance to prosper and
in their own land as equal partners with Israel...
We know that it is the only way. Just as we know that, in our own
peace process in Northern Ireland, there will be no unification
of Ireland except by consent. And there will be no return to the
days of Unionist or Protestant Supremacy because those days have
no place in the modern world.
So the Unionists must accept justice and equality, the Nationalists.
The Republicans must show that they have given up violence, not
just a cease-fire, but weapons put beyond use. And not only the
Republicans, but those people who call themselves Loyalists, who
do by acts of terrorism sully the very name of the United Kingdom.
We know this also: The values we believe in should shine through
what we do in Afghanistan. To the Afghan people, we make this commitment:
The conflict will not be the end. We will not walk away as the outside
world has done so many times before that. If the Taliban regime
changes, we will work with you to make sure its successor is one
that is broadbased, that unites all ethnic groups and that offers
some way out of the miserable poverty that is your present existence.
And more than ever before, with every bit as much thought and planning,
we will assemble a humanitarian coalition alongside the military
coalition so that, inside and outside Afghanistan, the refugees
-- 4.5 million in the move even before September 11 -- are given
shelter, food and help during the winter months.
The world community must show as much its capacity for compassion
as for force.
The critics will say, "But how can the world be a community,
nations act in their own self-interest." Of course, they do,
but what is the lesson of the financial markets, climate change,
international terrorism, nuclear proliferation or world trade? It
is that our self- interest and our mutual interest are today inextricably
woven together.
This is the politics of globalization. And I realize why people
protest against globalization. We watch aspects of it with trepidation,
we feel powerless as if we were pushed to and fro by forces far
beyond our control. But there is a risk. The political leaders,
faced with street demonstrations, pander to the argument rather
than answer it. The demonstrators are right to say, "There
is injustice, poverty, environmental degradation."
But globalization is a fact, and, by and large, it is driven by
people not just in finance, but in communication, in technology,
increasingly in culture and recreation, in the world of the Internet,
information technology, television. There's going to be globalization.
And in trade, frankly, the problem is not there's too much of it.
On the contrary, there's too little of it.
The issue is not how to stop globalization; the issue is how we
use the power of community to combine globalization with justice.
If globalization works only for the benefit of the few, then it
will fail and it will deserve to fail.
But if we follow the principles that have served us here so well
at home -- that power, wealth and opportunity must be in the hands
of the many, not the few -- if we make that our guiding light for
the global economy, then it will be a force for good and an international
movement we should take pride in leading.
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