United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged world leaders today to switch their attention away from Iraq and the war on terrorism towards fighting poverty, hunger and disease.
"In the daily lives of most people in the world today, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are remote and hypothetical threats," Mr Annan said, in a speech in the German city of Baden-Baden where he was to receive a media award.
"The fears that stalk most people are those of poverty, starvation, unemployment and deadly disease," he said. "I hope the world will not allow its attention to be monopolised by Iraq in 2004, as it was in 2003."
Mr Annan's comments contrasted with yesterday's State of the Union address by USPresident George W. Bush, who focused on the global war on terror as he urged Americans to stick with his leadership when they vote in this year's presidential election.
"We can go forward with confidence and resolve, or we can turn back to the dangerous illusion that terrorists are not plotting and outlaw regimes are no threat to us," Mr Bush said.
Mr Annan reminded UN leaders of eight pledges they made at a Millenium Summit just over three years ago. The pledges, which should achieve measurable results by 2015, included cutting the number of people living in extreme poverty and hunger by half; achieving universal private education; reducing child mortality by two thirds; and to halt, and begin to reverse, the spread of HIV/AIDS.
"Those pledges should be engraved on the heart, or at least the desk of every political leader in every country," Mr Annan said. "Indeed, they should be known throughout every society, so that in each country the people can monitor performance."
He said that in 2003, world leaders allowed themselves to be distracted from the eight pledges and were "rightly" concerned with issues of peace and security.
"But there will be no peace and no security, even for the most privileged amongst us, in a world that remains divided between extremes of wealth and poverty, health and disease, knowledge and ignorance, freedom and oppression," he said. "Surely we should have learnt that by now."