GA president sees opportunity from current world financial crisis

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UNITED NATIONS, June 24 (Xinhua) -- The current financial and economic crisis, which has spread all over the world and negatively affected all countries, also provides an opportunity for the world to locate the problems and hammer out strategies for sustainable development, the president of the UN General Assembly said here on Wednesday.

Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, the president of the 63rd session of the General Assembly, made the statement as he was addressing the opening of the high-level UN conference on financial and economic crisis and its impact on development.

"Crisis purifies us and forces us to grow and find ways to survive that are acceptable for the whole community of life, human being and the Earth," he said.

"The pain we now feel is not the death of a dying man, but the pain of a new birth," he said.

"So far, we have fully exploited material capital, which is finite, and now have to work with spiritual capital, which is infinite," he said.

The president said it is time to work out "the global vision and global ethics" for sound strategies to promote sustainable development to protect our "Mother Earth."

"At this critical moment, we must all join our efforts to prevent the global crisis, with is myriad from turning into a social, environmental and humanitarian tragedy," he said.

"The challenges of the various crises are all interconnected and oblige us all, as representatives of the peoples of the Earth, to declare our responsibility one to another, and that together, with great hope, we will seek inclusive solutions," he said.

In order to fight the global crisis, the GA president put forward the proposals, which include the responsible and sustainable use of limited natural resources, putting the economy back in its proper place in society as a whole by abandoning the reductionist vision, and strengthening a spiritual vision of the world that does justice to man's search for a transcendent meaning of life.

"All these challenges cannot be adequately addressed unless we change our minds and our hearts and create space for the emergence and development of other essential aspects of the human being," he said.

Respect, care, compassion, collective responsibility and cooperation are fundamental principles in the global fight against the global crisis, he added.