I think we have grave problems. I am very much concerned about environmental questions, even though in Finnish society, we are not facing the most urgent problems.

We Finns represent a very transparent and open-minded way of reaching political decisions.

One of the biggest development issues in the world is the education of girls. In the United States and Europe, it has been accepted, but not in Africa and the developing countries.

The Baltic Sea is becoming more and more polluted. Not everybody living near the shore of the Baltic Sea is protecting it. It is the water of life for countries like Finland and Sweden.

When the problems in Northern Ireland started, it was not a question of Protestantism or Catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict.

There are many challenges, there are many obstacles; let us try to change the obstacles to advantages.

My opinion on who's wrong or who's right has nothing to do with the fact that we have to bring together people who are against each other, to transform antagonism into cooperation.

We have the tools, but we have to learn how to use them. That is my political philosophy.

There are big issues, like the reform of the Security Council. These kinds of questions are something the President of the General Assembly must keep his eye on.

Finland had a civil war less than 100 years ago, just like in Ireland. If you look at the history of newly independent nations, civil war is almost every time present, even in the United States.

In Finland we have equal political rights for women and men. We do not regard ourselves according to sex.

I really do hope that the Millennium Summit gives new impetus to the work of the United Nations.

I think I can regard myself as a political decision-maker.

In international or national crises, there are always questions of lack of confidence. You have to change the minds of the people in order to get results.

I do not want to speak about overpopulation or birth control, but I think education is the way to give new impetus to the poverty question.

Peace enforcement is a much more difficult kind of operation than peacekeeping.

When my first child was born in 1962, I wrote a letter to my grandfather telling him how happy I was but how concerned; concerned because there were so many visions which were not very good.

If there is something I would like to do as President of the General Assembly, it is to place more emphasis on the issue of education, which enables a better life for women.

In Finland, we learned quite a lot from our own civil war. The wounds were visible when I was a boy, but my generation went into the Second World War and it united the Finnish nation, so I do not see any more wounds.

I recently reread an article of mine written in 1964, and I think it is still valid. There is not much difference. Many of the items on the agenda 37 years ago are still there.

Discussion is just a tool. You have to aim; the final goal must be a decision.

If you come to a negotiation table saying you have the final truth, that you know nothing but the truth and that is final, you will get nothing.

You cannot make easy decisions unless you first commit yourself to hard solutions.

If we go back in the history of different nations, violence and the use of force are part of their heritage. These are the traditions of mankind.

In every European nation, there have been problems in history when the society was too divided.

Men and women have roles - their roles are different, but their rights are equal.

I think we have grave problems. I am very much concerned about environmental questions, even though in Finnish society, we are not facing the most urgent problems.

Without accepting the other person's thinking, you cannot further your own interest. You need the other's help to get results.

Without rebuilding the confidence between parties, you will never succeed.

That is where consensus-building begins-with the idea that you have your own truth, but that the negotiator on the other side of the table has his own truth as well.

What we can do as individuals may not be very much on the global scale, but we have to start the change by living as we are teaching.

I don't see this planet being... they're talking about how they're turning around the environmental problems here, but I think it's already too late.

There are nuclear weapons in China, Iran, Korea and Pakistan. It wouldn't take much to send a couple of warheads off on this planet somewhere that would cause a lot of environmental damage, then if you have got someone who wants to retaliate you have real problems.

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.

There are a tremendous amount of environmental issues that are on the table.

I wanted to help raise awareness, so I created an environmental foundation called Just Within Reach.

Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment.

The position I took at the time was that we hadn't really examined any of the potential environmental consequences of introducing genetically modified organisms.

But my point is that you design something in the end that precludes any unhealthy trading practices that are not going to serve your environmental or your economic objectives but now is not the time to do it.

Pushing production out of America to nations without our environmental standards increases global environmental risks.

This Bush administration has a growing credibility gap, maybe even a credibility chasm, on environmental policy. The President has lost the trust of the American people when it comes to the environment.

I assume we will have figured out a way to efficiently utilize solar energy and tied that to an efficient way to use nuclear energy in such a way that it doesn't pose a serious environmental issue.

Let me start by emphasizing that I am open to efforts to expedite environmental procedures for true emergencies or in other clear cases where current laws are needlessly burdensome.

One of the responsibilities faced by the Environmental Genome Project is to provide the science base upon which society can make better informed risk management decisions.

Complexity is one of the great problems in environmental design.

I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes.

There should be more attention paid to scientific research in the ecology area, and I think that such attention to proper environmental concerns would make the public feel much better about it.

The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.

And I know that the younger generation is doing things that are so ingenious. And for them it's not a matter of a political belief or an environmental stance. It's really just common sense.