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Press
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UNESCAP News Services
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Date 26
April 2004
Press Release No: L/20/2004
OPENING STATEMENT BY
THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF ESCAP
AT THE MINISTERIAL SEGMENT
SIXTIETH SESSION OF ESCAP
Shanghai, 26 April 2004
Mr. Chairman,
His Excellency the Vice President
of the People's Republic of China
Excellencies, Distinguished Representatives,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It gives me much pleasure to extend to all of
you a very warm welcome to the sixtieth session of the Commission.
I should like at the outset to express my deep
gratitude to His Excellency Mr. Zeng Qinghong, Vice President
of the People's Republic of China, for graciously consenting
to inaugurate the session, despite his many pressing duties
of state. I wish also to express our deep appreciation and thanks
to the Government of the People's Republic of China and to the
Shanghai Municipal People's Government for hosting this session.
The sixtieth session of ESCAP is marked by the
largest-ever gathering of government officials and leaders from
Asia and the Pacific during a week-long special commemorative
meeting. This session will be important for a number of historical
reasons.
It marks ESCAP's completion of a first cycle of
60 sessions, which in Asian culture signifies the completion
of a cycle of life. Furthermore, Shanghai, the site of this
commemorative session, is also the place where ESCAP was born
in 1947 under the name of ECAFE.
Moreover, the Asian and Pacific region is changing
rapidly in economic and social terms. The notion of the "Pacific
Century" is predicated on the assumption that the region
will be the centre of economic growth and technological innovation
in the twenty-first century. Its almost 4 billion people will
account for two thirds of the world's population, and their
growing needs translated into market demand, access to goods,
services, capital and technology, and equitable social development
will present with the world economy an unprecedented opportunity.
However, the region's enormous size and diversity will present
social challenges on a commensurate scale, notably in the form
of its 1 billion poor, vulnerable and neglected people.
Finally, the reforms undertaken by ESCAP prior
to the sixtieth commemorative session have prepared it to meet
these new challenges in a more balanced but focused and efficient
manner. Institutional reform is a process and never an end itself.
Nevertheless, in the aftermath of its sixtieth session, ESCAP
will be reborn as a new institution with rejuvenated structures
and deliberations at the substantive, managerial and organizational
levels. As it was in its programme of reform, ESCAP will be
a forerunner in the United Nations system, undertaking new initiatives
to continuously renew and revitalize its endeavours in order
to meet the needs of the region.
This Commission session has been prepared as part
of the process of reform, review and renewal of ESCAP undertaken
over the last three years by the secretariat and member States
for the historic path of Asian and Pacific development towards
2020. It has been prepared amid the far-reaching changes that
accompanied the beginning of a new century in which regional
cooperation and integration are recognized as necessary components
of the global quest for peace, parity and prosperity.
The secretariat will continue to respond to the
new economic challenges and new social requirements of Asia
and the Pacific. And we will count on you, your Governments
and your deliberations.
Thank you.
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