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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
We Finns represent a very transparent and open-minded way of reaching political decisions.
In Finland we have equal political rights for women and men. We do not regard ourselves according to sex.
