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Otumfuo Osei Tutu II,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen and Dear Friends,

It's indeed a special honour for me to have been chosen for this prestigious award here in my own country. I'm glad to see Ghanaians recognizing and promoting excellence. The search for excellence is an ongoing process, and I hope what we have seen today will encourage others to pursue that search. I think it is wonderful that this award recognizes excellence in such a vast range of fields--development, women's issues, humanitarian work and so on. I think it is important to underscore that whoever we are, whatever we do, our role is important and if each and everyone of us were to focus on what we have to do and excel in it, we will indeed create a wonderful country.

While today is an honour for me and it is me that you honour, I do want to mention all my colleagues of the United Nations who support and further the cause of the organization. I think through me you honour them and their work too.

On this very day, 19th August, two years ago, the United Nations Headquarters in Baghdad was struck by a terrorist bomb. I think we saw it on the clip. We lost some of our best colleagues and personally some of my best friends, people who have worked with me for over 25 years. It was a very painful and difficult period. These were men and women who were in the prime of their lives. They had gone to Iraq to help the Iraqi people deal with the aftermath of the war. I have my fallen and injured colleagues and their families foremost in my mind on this day. And I hope ! all of you will spare a moment to think of them. We should all be thankful that so many people are prepared to take great risks for the cause of peace.

Thank you very much for this honour.

QUESTION AND ANSWER

Kojo Yankah: (inaudible) … from Iraq to Sudan to Niger and to the Middle East, sometimes across the Atlantic. Do you find time to rest?

Secretary-General: Yes, I do rest. (Inaudible) …when I heard you list all the crisis areas that we deal with, one wonders if there is any hope or any promise. I believe there are lots of positive things also happening in the world, particularly on the economic front. We are out to fight poverty. We are out to reduce the number of people living in abject poverty by 50 per cent by 2015, ensure everyone has clean water, boys and girls are in school. In fact, India and China have lifted millions out of poverty and I think we on this continent have quite a lot to do, but we can do it with hard work. I think one of the things I would want to see is to see an African agricultural r! evival. We are the only continent that has not gone through a green revolution. We need to take agriculture seriously. I would love to see the day when Africa can at least feed itself. I saw the lady who won the Agricultural Award. I was very impressed by her and I hope we will have many more like her so that in future we will be able to tackle our economic development very seriously.

The other hopeful signs are that people are becoming very engaged and active in their own societies. We see development of civil societies, we see people understanding their rights, pressing for human rights, holding governments to account and the African governments themselves becoming very engaged in resolving some of the conflicts and difficulties on the continent. We have tended to sit back and maintain that this is an internal affair of the neighbour and we need not get involved. But these conflicts as we have discovered do not remain internal for long. What starts as internal in relatively no time creates major difficulties for the neighbours, creates refugees, creates a psychological atmosphere which scares away investors and has a m! ajor impact on the whole region and therefore it is our problem. I am really, really encouraged by what ECOWAS is doing –our own President Kufuor has been very active in helping resolve some of the conflicts of this region –and the African Union has also been very active and we at the United Nations are extremely happy to be cooperating with the African Union, ECOWAS and other sub-regional organizations.

Kojo Yankah: Your Excellency, I realize that even in your rest you are thinking of solving problems. For the past 43 years you have been in the UN system and all being well, by the end of next year you will be ending your term. How do you foresee this world in the next ten years with all the troubles that are creeping up day in, day out?

Secretary-General: I think there are many problems, but there is also hope and promise. I think through scientific progress, I hope we will be able to find an answer to diseases such as AIDS and other diseases that are taking away millions on our continent. I would want to see a vaccine –we are working on it and I am sure we will get it. With information technology, I am sure more and more people on our continent are going to get empowered and I have also noticed that as I travel around Africa, women are doing much more in some of these countries and I often say to the leaders: you have such talent in these women, why don't you use them? Any natio! n that refuses to use 50 per cent of its talent is bound to lose out and we have very energetic women on this continent and I hope we will empower them and get them to play their role. And also if I may add, the question of education and health services, many African countries and countries around the world are improving educational systems. We believe that the 130 million children, boys and girls, who are out of school should all be in school as part of the Millennium Development Goals project. Most of them are girls but they deserve to be in school. A nation cannot have active workers unless they are educated and healthy. And I hope we will focus on education and health and this is why we are so keen to see each country achieve the Millennium Development Goals and in aiming to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, we also are not alone. We ar! e working in partnership with the developed countries. It is a partnership that was struck at the Monterrey Conference, where the developing countries were to improve governance, create transparent government, fight corruption and the donor community was to increase development assistance, offer debt relief and work with us on trade reform. When you look at the proposals before the United Nations this year for reform, we are making progress. Today, 18 African countries have been given debt relief; Official Development Assistance will increase by $25 billion. We would want to see it double, by an additional $50 billion and I think we are working on it. So there is hope, all is not hopeless.

Kojo Yankah: Finally, Your Excellency, come December 2006 you will probably be leaving office. You started without grey hairs, you have greyed. May we be privileged to know what your plans are after 2006?

Secretary-General: 2007. In 2006, I will still be in this job. Let me say that first of all I like my grey hair. The ladies tell me it is distinguished. When I leave this job, I hope that I will engage in an activity that will give me a certain balance. For the past 15 years I have been in high profile and highly charged assignments, first as Head of UN Peacekeeping Operations for 4, 5 years and of course as Secretary-General for 10 years and it's all been very, very intense. So when I leave the job, I hope I will engage in an activity that will give me the balance between reflection and action and give me some time for myself. I often say that I w! ould want to go and sit on a farm and become a farmer and now I have a role model –the lady who won the award and I hope she will help me.

Kojo Yankah: Thank you very much, Your Excellency.

Secretary-General: Thank you very much.