UNITEDNATION, Nov 10 (Reuters) Declaring poverty, disease, environmental degradation and warfare the enemies of the 21st century, U.N.
Secretary-general Kofi Annan appealed to world leaders not to let terrorism overshadow all else.
"One is tempted to say that we must now focus all our energies on the struggle against terrorism, and on directly related issues," he told the U.N.
General assembly.
"Yet if we did so we should give the terrorists a kind of victory," Annan said in prepared remarks for the opening of the week-long high-level assembly session today.
The annual parade of world leaders had been scheduled in September but was postponed after the attacks on New York and Washington in which more than 4,500 people were killed.
"We meet nearly seven weeks later than we intended and we all know why," Annan said, adding that the revolution, sorrow, pain and grief had not gone away.
"When a family is under attack, it is in their common house that its members gather, to decide what to do," he said.
But Annan said that since Sept.
11 the number of people living on less than 1 a day in the world had not decreased.
Nor had the many dying of Aids, Malaria, Tuberculosis and other preventable diseases.
"In short, my friends, the agenda of peace, development and human rights set for US in the millennium declaration is no less pressing," Annan said.
"if anything, it has taken on new urgency."