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This Lebanese practice of "joining hands" consists of leveraging skills and human resources for the purpose of development and peace. In Lebanon, where we have 18 extremely distinct religious communities, the spirit of Awneh has cemented them all together, whether Christians, Muslims or Jews.
Until the North Korean nomenclature are given clear-cut guarantees of their personal safety and certain level of well-being, they would be cautious about implementing any reforms and moving towards denuclearization and re-unification. Pyongyang also expects that Beijing would continue to treat the DPRK as an important buffer state separating China from the U.S. forward deployment forces in East Asia.The economic situation and primarily the food problem remains a major challenge for the regime.
Always be aware that your life on this earth is temporary. After we complete our physical life, we will ascend to the spiritual world. In that place we are not measured by our wealth or power. We are measured simply by our capacity for true love and the extent to which we lived our lives on earth in service to God and humanity.
We must all commit ourselves to the quest for peace in the world. We must commit ourselves so that peace reigns in our families and in our communities. We must sow peace, cultivate peace, and persist so we can reap peace, security and development.
China has a new posture [towards North Korea], and South Korea, the U.S. and Japan cooperate with it. That could be the one and only strategy to ease the North Korean problem. Japan should cooperate and contribute as much as she can. But having said that, we, the majority of Japanese, have a most unsettled feeling. We wonder, are others willing to let Japan make a cooperative contribution?
In the case of the Korean peninsula, a small spark has the potential to ignite a devastating world war that would bring in its wake, unspeakable suffering for the people of this nation and region. We cannot rely exclusively on governments to resolve this crisis. Civil society has an important role to play in global affairs, and has unique capacities to initiate “soft power” approaches to conflict resolution and peace.
Women have the potential power to change both their government policies and the wasteful lifestyle. It is essential to promote women’s awareness of the nature of global crisis, and to activate their potential to lead the paradigm shift towards a sustainable world.
The United States government and China are expecting too much from South Korea. The South Korean government should play a more active and creative role, of course. The South Korean government should realize that it would be the greatest victim in the eventuality of North Korea developing nuclear weapons. So we should make proposals that may be accepted by not just North Korea but also the United States and China. That includes the guarantee of security for North Korea so that they can renounce any plan for developing nuclear weapons.
Moldovans are people with a good spiritual culture with rich traditions and customs which they love and respect. The institution of the family is something we care about very much. Children and young people are the future of our country; therefore, we need to invest as much as possible in their education and development.
The best way to weaken Islamist extremists in Geneva 2 is to add women to the opposition delegations. It is an efficient way to succeed in weakening from inside the Islamist front demands and to implement a UN principle of equality (almost) in a country where everything will need to be rebuilt in the new vision of the state after Geneva 2. The UPF forum in Geneva will be also a great opportunity to listen to some women involved in the social and civil life in Syria, if they are able to come to Geneva to speak.
If our support of the oppositions against their dictators during the Arab Spring had been more vigorously conditioned on a firm respect for the rights of women, they would not today be forced once again to fight to defend what had already been achieved after so much historic struggle. We would also be helping women who are struggling to win them for the first time.
Each religion has within itself an essential core consisting of truth and love that can lead us beyond conflict toward mutual love and cooperation. The goal is not a facile syncretism, but rather a unity in diversity and a unity in love, under one God. We are all members of one family under one God.