Speeches by Statesmen

SPEECHES BY STATESMEN
26 March 2014

Welcoming Remarks

H.E. Dr. Heinz Fischer
Federal President of the Republic of Austria

Excellencies,
Distinguished participants in this Interfaith Dialogue!
Dear friends!

It is a great pleasure to welcome all of you here in Vienna and I would like to thank the Organizing Chairman Dr. Franz Vranitzky for inviting me to do so.
It is a particular pleasure to welcome Former Federal Chancellor of Germany Helmut Schmidt, the Honorary Chairman of the InterAction Council, and to thank him for having suggested to hold this meeting in Vienna. We all feel honoured that you, Chancellor Schmidt, came to Vienna to be present at this meeting.
And I am happy to greet all the other distinguished guests and participants at this meeting, dedicated to dialogue.

Ladies and Gentlemen!

The promotion of dialogue among different cultures and religions has been an Austrian priority for many years.
Austrian society can be described as pluralistic in culture, religion, tradition, and language. At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, Vienna was the capital of an Empire that comprised 15 nations reaching from Northern Italy until the Western Ukraine and from Czech Republic to parts of present Romania. Members of the Austrian Parliament of the year 1914 were personalities who became heads of 4 different states later on, namely de Gasperi in Italy, Mazaryk in Czech Republic, Pilsudski in Poland and Karl Renner in Austria. Living together and working together between different nations and religions was part of daily life - not always without tensions, but functioning.
In 1912 for instance Austria was the first country to recognise Islam by law as one of our official religions - a very progressive step.
Nowadays, 100 years later, demographics have changed a lot due to globalisation and migration.

Rising tensions between cultures and religions have marked the world in recent years. To offset such tendencies, Austria considers dialogue and exchange successful instruments for breaking down existing barriers and strengthening pluralism and co-existence.
In order to address on-going challenges of cross-cultural engagement and co-operation, we have actively responded with both bilateral and multilateral initiatives. Among other goals, these initiatives predominantly aim at identifying and stressing common values, namely that of peace, respect, and tolerance among different groups. This commitment can be described through some examples:
Firstly, the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations (UNAOC) constitutes a far-reaching initiative that provides a platform for intercultural exchange. As strong supporter of the UNAOC, Austria hosted the 5th Global Forum in February 2013 in Vienna under the theme of “Responsible Leadership in Diversity and Dialogue”; thus recognising the importance of responsible leadership in spearheading the concepts of dialogue and diversity.
Secondly, as a founding member, Austria supports the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID, the Dialogue Centre), which has established its headquarters in Vienna in late 2012.

Let me finally make a few remarks on the present Austria:
Our current Government is the result of parliamentary elections held on September 9th 2013. It is still a so-called grand coalition between Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, but since the time of Bruno Kreisky the two parties lost almost half of their votes. In 1975 Social Democrats and conservatives had together 123 of 183 seats (66.35 percent of the votes) and at that time only three parties were represented in Parliament. Today, Social Democrats and Christian Democrats represent 52 percent of the votes and we have six parties in Parliament.
The forecasts for the European elections in two months tell us, that three parties, namely Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and the Freedom Party have similar chances to reach between 23 and 25 percent of the votes.
The economic figures of Austria continue to be quite remarkable. The forecast for the growth rate in 2014 is around 1.5 percent and the unemployment rate of around 5 percent should remain the best in the European Union.
According to recent projections, in 2014 inflation in Austria will be below 2 percent (the current available projections range between 1.6 and 1.9 percent). In Austria GDP per capita was 37,007 Euro in 2013 (Germany: 33,350 Euro). The growth rate of our exports is around 5 percent. 56 Euro out of 100 Euro are earned by exports. Almost one third of our exports go to Germany. A little bit more than that, namely 38 percent, go to all other member countries of the European Union, 10 percent to Asia and 10 percent to North and South America.

Distinguished guests, I do not want to take more of your precious time but I want to say once again that I strongly agree with the underlying premise of this gathering: efforts geared towards intercultural and interreligious dialogue should reach beyond election cycles and individual administrations. Our respective endeavours should be viewed as continuous in nature and be embedded as a core priority of policy making. Only then we will succeed in promoting respect for and an understanding of others and start to arrive at a truly integrative and pluralistic society.
Thank you for your attention and welcome once again.

Laudation of Chancellor Schmidt

H.E. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing
Former President of France
City Hall of Vienna

Dear Mayor and Governor of Vienna, Mr Häupl, Dear Ministers,
Dear IAC Members,
Dear Religious and Theological Leaders, Excellencies,
Meine Damen und Herren,

I am happy to be here tonight, in this marvellous City Hall with all of you and I thank the Mayor and Governor of Vienna, Michael Häupl, for the invitation.
We discussed the interesting topic of ethics in decision-making, today. And the presence of prominent professors and experts on the subject made it a rich and fruitful debate.

But tonight, the issue we’ll fix our attention on is another one: Helmut Schmidt. And I am glad that among all of us, I have been granted with the status of expert to testimony our regards to you, my friend, Helmut.
To remain in the field of ethics, we could define the notion of ethical action as the one providing the most good while doing the least harm. I will try to respect this principle in my laudation on Helmut.
Of course, he deserves all our respect. He has indeed always shown courage and consistency in his action as the head of Germany.

It was when Helmut Schmidt was Chancellor of Germany that the country was able to restore its image that had been so terribly damaged by the horrors of war and the crimes that went with it and to find its place amongst the great nations once more. Of course, the recovery of Germany’s image was the result of some very hard work that started with the firm democratic management by Chancellor Adenauer who was voluntarily modest; this was continued by the remarkably courageous effort made by the German people in terms of in-depth self-criticism. But it was Helmut Schmidt who led the process to its conclusion. This was achieved thanks to his qualities that rallied competence, simplicity and sound judgment. The Germans returned to a state of happiness in this new definition of their nation.

And the international context at the time was all but favourable.
The first cracks in the Soviet system started to appear during the Polish crisis over which Brezhnev and his team hesitated not knowing which attitude to adopt. Helmut Schmidt helped to fend off the option of military intervention. At the same time, he criticised the adventurism of the Soviet forces’ intervention in Afghanistan, which ultimately were condemned to exhaust themselves in a war with no
positive outcome.
The stances he adopted led him to provide a new opinion on
the role to be played by the USA. Until then American leaders’ attitude towards Germany continued to be a culture of occupation: in a casual manner they still decided what the Germans had to do. Helmut Schmidt patiently sought to extricate his country from this simplistic constraint. He was forced to do this by the indecision of the Carter Administration, which, with regard to sensitive issues such as the manufacture of the neutron bomb or the non-participation in the Olympic Games in Moscow, demanded Germany’s support but then suddenly gave up its objectives without the slightest word of explanation.
This development convinced Helmut Schmidt that it was urgent for Europe - then the Europe of nine and then ten members - to have a strong political structure.
Also in this field, consistency - meaning absence of contradiction - has always guided his action. Helmut Schmidt was indeed a convinced European.
Could it be otherwise?

We had met at the end of the 1960s in a somewhat premonitory place: the house of Jean Monnet, who convened meetings with the members of his “Committee for the United States of Europe”.
Entering the first time the place, I saw a great cloud of smoke, and under it, Helmut Schmidt.
I remember that when, in 1972, we met again as ministers on a summit, one of us got the name cards changed on the table so that we could sit close to each other and comment the ongoing presentations.
There has always been a natural complicity between us, based on similar vision of things and total personal loyalty. Helmut was the embodiment of remarkable simplicity in his work. Everywhere he went, the crowd showed him the respect they had for what I would call his “authenticity”.

Back to 1972, he had just taken over from the flamboyant Economy Minister, Karl Schiller, the advocate of floating currencies and a broader opening of economic borders to the benefit of German companies that then had the wind in their sails. Thanks to his incredible capacity for work and his pragmatic intelligence, Helmut became one of the major players in the broad intellectual debate that went on from 1971 to 1974 on the scrapping of the Bretton Woods fixed rate system, and on the quest for a new type of international monetary organisation. This, I think, is when he discovered the need to establish a new kind of solidarity between European currencies that were disrupted by floating exchange rates.
We set to work with our colleagues to give shape to this new solidarity. The “monetary snake” had collapsed under the pressure of excessively different development trends. We tried to set down a stronger procedure. Our efforts finally gave rise in 1978-1979 to the European Monetary System and to the introduction of the Ecu, the forerunner of the Euro.

Helmut Schmidt deserves the greatest share of merit because he had to convince his countrymen, contrary to the explicit opinion of the Bundesbank, to link the Deutsche Mark to the other weaker European currencies. And as you know, for the German opinion the Deutsche Mark was the very symbol of the country’s economic recovery and a factor of security and pride. It took all of Helmut Schmidt’s powers of persuasion and his message of competence and impartiality to win the support of the German economic classes to agree to the creation of the European Monetary System.
I cannot think of any other person who could have achieved this result. This is why in contrast with those who wrongly seek to take the merit of having created the European currency an eminent place must be set aside for Helmut Schmidt.
When in 1986 we created the “Committee for the Monetary Union of Europe” whose report prefaced the texts that established the Euro, he confirmed, before the relative inertia of the leaders in power, his commitment to Europe.
Nowadays, all Europeans should be conscious about the fact that in the today’s crisis, without the Euro, we would have been struck by competitive devaluations that would have caused some very strong jolts in our system. The Euro has been an extraordinary shield of protection of the whole zone!

Other decisive progress has been done in Europe thanks to our reliable partnership at the time: without it, we would not have been able to create the European Council in 1974, and the members of the European Parliament would not be elected directly by the European citizens in May as they now are since 35 years.

But the most dramatic momentum of the political carrier of Helmut Schmidt was I think, the inner German autumn.
Helmut Schmidt then had to cope with the abominable terrorist actions of extremist who did not even fear death. When the employer and industry representative Martin Schleyer had been kidnapped, the Chancellor’s consistency was roughly put to the test: he had to weigh between life and national security, between the concrete loss of a citizen and higher abstract state interest.
Years later, Helmut Schmidt said that this had been his hardest choice to make in life. And we can only show respect to this courageous attitude.

It is in these moments that virtue shows its face.
As Confucius once said, “The man of virtue makes the difficulty
to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration” (Analects, bk. vi., c. xx.)
That is what you followed during your lifelong career, Helmut. And that is what made of you a real Statesman, and a very special friend to me!

Happy Birthday!

Ethics in Decision-Making

The Rt. Hon. Malcolm Fraser
Former Prime Minister of Australia and
Co-chairman of the Vienna Interfaith Dialogue

This special meeting is to honour Chancellor Schmidt on the occasion of his 95th birthday and the founders of the InterAction Council, especially former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, whose vision and inspiration was directly responsible for the foundation of the Council. Through his life, Helmut Schmidt has seen many changes. As a young Lieutenant, he was posted to the Russian front in 1941. He saw the lights of Moscow, but thankfully his unit was not involved in Stalingrad. If it had been, Europe may well have lost one of its greatest statesmen.
Chancellor Schmidt has worked tirelessly for the unity of Europe, to make sure that old enmities are put aside. In particular, he worked closely with President Giscard d’Estaing, whom I am delighted to see is also here to honour this occasion. What these two great people did provides a lesson and a model, not only for this Council, but for much of the world. France and Germany had been locked in intractable and longstanding enmity. They were perhaps the most important people in making sure that a different relationship was established, one of collaboration and cooperation. I was fortunate that their time in office overlapped with my own.
I would like to welcome Members of the Council. A special welcome to all religious leaders, who I hope will play a very active part in this meeting. Many have already contributed significantly, in preparing papers relevant to our discussion. Thank you for that. I also welcome our special guests.

The InterAction Council was founded in 1983, shortly after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Its purpose was to look at longer- term issues, the problems of a rapidly growing world population, the challenges created by practices that contribute to environmental degradation. How to establish a peaceful and prosperous world? How to abolish nuclear weapons? How to look at longer-term issues which governments often put aside? These issues were of particular interest to Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda.
Chancellor Schmidt and Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, in particular, sought to define and achieve a greater understanding of the common ethic, at the core of major religions. The first Interfaith Dialogue was held in 1987, leading 10 years later to the Draft Declaration of Human Responsibilities, which perhaps, for the first time, defined the common ethic acceptable to major religions.

There are many factors that make these longer-terms issues more important than ever before. One of them is the rapid growth in the world’s population. At the time of the 1st World War, the world population was 1.7 billion. At the end of the 2nd World War it was 2.3 billion. Today, it has reached 7.2 billion and is continuing to increase at a rapid rate. This increases pressure for resources. It will make it more urgent to use the resources of this planet wisely, and to pay proper attention to environmental issues.
These are not the only factors that make the longer-term issues more urgent. During the Cold War, the world was more stable. There was less danger of serious armed conflict, then, than is now the case. The fact, that there were two superpowers, led to a certain precarious balance. Each knew that they could not push the other too hard, and neither wanted a nuclear war, though they came frighteningly close on repeated occasions. That balance ended in 1991 with the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Since that time, despite the Non-Proliferation Treaty, more countries, currently nine, now possess nuclear weapons. The danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists is real. The possibility of a regional nuclear war cannot be dismissed as idle speculation. There are many who do not understand that such a regional conflict could have severe global consequences for climate, for the environment and for future security, with billions at risk of famine.

In 1990, the first Gulf War was undertaken. After the war, President George H.W. Bush made, what I regard as a great speech to Congress on 6 March 1991. He said, “To the aid of this small country (Kuwait) came nations from North America and Europe, from Asia and South America, from Africa and the Arab world, all united against aggression. Our uncommon coalition must now work in common purpose: to forge a future that should never again be held hostage to the darker side of human nature”. This was the voice we wanted to hear from the United States.
President Bush spoke of a new world. A new world order in which quoting Winston Churchill “the principles of justice and fair play protect the weak against the strong....”
It was then an optimistic period. The major rivalries between the darker forces of communism and the free world were over. There was no obvious enemy to freedom. Nations would have the capacity to work together, to advance humanity and decency throughout the world.

It was the second time, in my lifetime, that a period of optimism had engulfed the world. After World War II, when civilisation had so nearly destroyed itself, world leaders, victors and vanquished, knew that they had to do better. It was a period of emancipation, the ideals of the United Nations and the spirit of freedom and equality spread around the world. Nations would work for the betterment of humankind. Unfortunately, that optimism soon dissipated.
The Cold War endured for over 40 years. The older rules of power politics dominated relations between nations. There were dangerous rivalries. The opportunity to create a truly cooperative world amongst major states was lost.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the period of optimism soon passed, as the old rules governed by suspicion and fear dominated relations between states and new dangers arose, including the war on terrorism, which was always wrongly named because it was too easy for fundamentalists to interpret it as a war on Islam.
When trust between states has been broken, we should try and understand why. We should be able to look at matters objectively and in good faith. For example, NATO had achieved its purpose. The freedom of Western Europe had been secured. The battle had been won without firing a shot. Freedom was secured, including many countries formerly dominated by the Soviet Empire. It was time for generosity. It was a time for farsightedness, but narrow self-interest prevailed.
NATO was pushed to the boundaries of Russia, despite President Gorbachev believing he had an agreement that NATO would not march eastward. Russia would certainly regard that as an unfriendly act. Its empire had disintegrated. There were other ways of securing and guaranteeing the freedom of countries of Eastern Europe, but NATO did not see it that way. This was perhaps the most important and fatal mistake. In the view of many, it was and is a significant contributor to current problems in the Ukraine and Crimea.
Policy should have been conducted so that Russia would believe that others wanted her as a truly cooperative partner, in a new world. A world in which Russian views would also be given due space and taken into account. This one act of advancing NATO, destroyed that possibility. The development of new weapons systems in Eastern Europe only reinforced Russian concerns.
Why was it that the principles enunciated by President Bush in 1991, were so easily and hastily pushed aside? How is it, the great hopes that many experienced after that Gulf War came to naught? As a result, we have, in the years since, found ourselves in a more dangerous and precarious world.

The idea of American exceptionalism was present from the founding of the United States, but it is only in recent times, since America has indeed become the most powerful nation, that belief in American exceptionalism has come to be a major influence and factor in world affairs.
Morton Abramowitz, United States Ambassador for Turkey and Thailand, and one of the founders of the International Crisis Group, wrote in The National Interest, as recently as 2012, “How American Exceptionalism Dooms US Foreign Policy”. In part, Abramowitz wrote “This faith in our unique virtue causes us to believe that we have not only the capacity but also the inherent latitude for action that no other country possesses...our cause is invariably just, particularly when we use force. We can if necessary also override our own laws...” and so he goes on. It is worth reading that honest and open commentary on American affairs.
Even President Obama asserts a belief in American exceptionalism. In part he says “... when...we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act.” “That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional”. Indeed, is America the only country that would want to stop children being gassed?
America has more power than the rest of us, but to claim some unique virtue, does not contribute to the cause of peace. President Vladimir Putin was correct when he said in a New York Times op- ed “it is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional”. It is dangerous because it endows a nation with a sense of righteousness. A sense of conviction in its own view and, at the same time, blinds that nation from the capacity to understand the point of view of other people. None of this is conducive to working for peace.
Inability to see what the other person or another country may be able to accept often makes agreement and peace very difficult to obtain.
In any diplomatic initiative, it is important to understand the arguments on both sides of the equation, to be able to come to a quiet judgment about what is reasonable and what is not. If one wants accommodation one must not push beyond that point of reason. In a successful negotiation, one that will endure, people on both sides of an equation need to be able to walk away feeling they have achieved something worthwhile.

While this is certainly a problem between countries, it is also a problem between religions and within religions. In quite recent times, the Catholic-Protestant divide in Ireland led to acts of terrorism by both sides. It took decades of negotiations and pain to create the opportunity of a peaceful future for Ireland. Both sides had preached bigotry and hatred of the other. When such words are uttered, it is difficult to take them back. Religious hatreds are perhaps the hardest of all, to overcome.
I truly believe there is a common ethic running through all the world’s major religions. The basic values, the ethical standards, needed for a peaceful society, are shared. This became clear in the long discussions that led to the preparation of a “Draft Declaration of Human Responsibilities”. To write down the words, the principles of a common ethic, is one thing, to get people to act upon it and to live by it, is quite another. That is an outcome that has so far eluded this Council and most of the world.

There are now many in the West who will point to Islamic fundamentalism and to the voices of the jihadist clerics and say how can there be compromise. What they forget is that this is Islam at the extreme, condemned by the great majority of Muslims around the world.
If we, in the West, have the honesty to admit it, there are Christian fundamentalists in the evangelical churches. There are those who point to Islam as the fount of all danger, of all threats to a peaceful world. The point should be clear, there are fundamentalists in most religions, in Islam, in Christianity, in Judaism. How do we create a world in which their rhetoric, their exhortations can no longer attract new recruits. That is one of the great challenges for all of us. It is a challenge for those of us in the West, to make sure that our actions do not needlessly provide arguments that fundamentalists can use.
In the Middle East, some, perhaps many, have the view that western interference, from the overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh in 1953 to the invasion of Iraq, by the United States, Britain and Australia in the 2nd Gulf War, has caused many of the problems throughout the region. It certainly is difficult to see where western policies have been successful, and have contributed positively to peace and shared progress, in the region. The first Gulf War was a notable exception, but that was not merely Western policy. The United States had put together a coalition of over 30 nations, in marked contrast to the later invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The chaos throughout the region today would seem to be an endemic problem which is perhaps the greatest barrier to peaceful progress. The severe divisions, rivalries and hatreds between Islamic sects obviously have an extraordinary impact on a number of countries. The consequences of Al Qaeda itself, have been a major contributor to a worldwide concern and fear of Islam. As I have shown, however, the divisions within a religion are not unique to Muslims. They have been present and have exacted a terrible cost in Christian nations.

In recent times, the Middle East has been a major focus, but the Western Pacific is becoming a new area of tension and of assumed rivalries. Again, instead of adopting the principles President Bush enunciated in his speech of March 1991, Cold War principles of power, containment and military rivalry seem to be coming more and more to the fore.
There are, throughout the region, some remarkable examples of peaceful and effective progress. The development of ASEAN, now embracing 10 nations and encompassing within its membership countries which had been former enemies, has been quite remarkable. It has been achieved on the initiative of Thailand and Indonesia especially, without any Western involvement. These Asian countries have done it their way and they have been effective. There are still some problems, there are still rivalries over the South China Sea, but amongst ASEAN, the problems are contained and controlled. They all recognise that the greater purpose is served by peace and cooperation.
We should note that not all members are democracies, but this has not prevented necessary cooperation. Indeed, ASEAN has developed to such an extent that the association has taken tentative steps to mediate differences between members. The transformation of ASEAN provides an example to all of us. There is no real sign that Western states have learnt that lesson.

One of the problems we have to face are the rapid changes taking place in many parts of the world. For example, some find it difficult to come to terms with the growing power and strength, and the economic weight of China. China is not well understood in the West. Events in China are often reported adversely, with little understanding of its history, culture or cause. China does things differently from Europe, or from America, but so far they have been effective in maintaining balance and in continuing economic growth and development. This is critical to their plans for the advancement of living standards, in China itself.
This is a transformation that we must understand. In the lifetime of many of today’s leaders, China has been withdrawn and preoccupied with her own internal affairs, not interacting much with the wider world, beyond that which was regarded as immediately necessary.
China has now emerged from this withdrawn period in her history and is now the major trading partner of every country in the Western Pacific and her economy is still growing at over 7 percent a year. It is only to be expected, that as an ancient and proud nation, China’s views must be respected and given a place in the conduct of affairs throughout the Asian Pacific region. This should not be regarded as aggressive, a new assertion of power, but rather as a resumption of China’s traditional and historic interest. It has, however, led to some concerns, which sometimes have been much exaggerated. China has not been an imperial power, as European states, America and Japan have been. How this new balance in the Western Pacific is handled, how it evolves, will depend, not only on China’s own attitude, but in the way, especially, America and Japan conduct their affairs with China. In recent times, there has been no good progress between these nations. There is distrust between China and Japan, and a growing concern in America, and an uncertainty of what they should or should not do. America uncertain, mistakenly, seeks to strengthen military options.

I make these points because much of Europe and America’s attention has focused on the Middle East, on the difficulties of achieving peace and progress throughout this region, and on difficulties in the post- Soviet Era, but the problems the world faces are wider than that. The Western Pacific should receive more attention.

So far I have spoken of tension and difficulty, but what to do, what can this Council say. Can we draw attention to the need to unlock a greater sense of purpose and ethical government? Most of the people in this room are long past the stage of wielding or holding political power. Those currently in office, are not prone to listen to their predecessors. I believe, however, that we are standing at a crossroad. We either take decisions based on ethical government that will advance the prospect for peace and progress, or we can have a long slide to a third World War with the prospect that nuclear weapons would be used. Whether that starts over some dispute in the Middle East, or over a rock in the East China Sea, may be immaterial to the outcome.
These problems are much more urgent than in previous times, because now humankind has two quite separate means of destroying life on this planet. The inadequacy of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the failure of nuclear-armed states to disarm as the treaty obligates them to do, the widening capacity to produce fissile materials usable for nuclear weapons, the continuation of two thousand weapons being on high alert make the possibility of some nuclear conflict more likely than before. Even a limited nuclear war could lead to a wasteland. Secondly, failure to act on environmental issues, of human pollution of the atmosphere, could also destroy the planet. Those of us who lead comfortable lives might find it difficult to appreciate or understand the urgency, but the urgency grows as each year passes without effective and adequate action.

There are some things that should be pursued now.

1. The Non-Proliferation Treaty has been applied inequitably. Actions are permitted by those who are regarded as friends. Similar actions are denied to others. The Non-Proliferation Treaty requires urgent renewal. There is a considerable body of opinion, amongst former military and former secretaries of defence, led by George Schultz, former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, Bill Perry, former Secretary of Defense, and Sam Nunn, former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, that nuclear weapons are not necessary for the safety of any country, while endangering all. Therefore, they ought to be abolished. Their views are replicated in many countries, including nuclear armed states.
The situation is urgent because more than 40 countries have the capacity to build a nuclear bomb. There are a few countries that could have nuclear weapons on deliverable missiles within months. This makes the danger of nuclear conflict, or of terrorists gaining possession of a nuclear weapon, greater than ever before.
A binding international agreement to prohibit and eradicate nuclear weapons is needed, and all states have some capacity and bear responsibility to begin negotiations on such an agreement as a matter of urgent priority.

2. We also have the capacity to do grave and serious damage to the planet through global warming and through replication of the Western lifestyle of high consumerism. This is a new phenomenon in the history of the human race.
How do we find the way forward? How do we unlock the will and the conviction to take necessary action? These issues will not be tackled unless there is a change of attitude, where less emphasis is placed on self-interest and more emphasis is given to ethical, long-term decision-making by governments.

3. There are notable examples which can provide a pattern and an example to follow. The work of President Giscard d’Estaing and Chancellor Schmidt in the earlier post-war years, working to achieve cooperation between two former great enemies, is one example. Oscar Arias, a member of this Council for many years, is a Nobel Peace Laureate, for the work he has done in Central America. He has worked tirelessly for peaceful purposes.
Unfortunately, it is often the large, the powerful and, indeed, commercial interests, who make progress difficult. Too often the element of risk that must be undertaken in the search for peace and progress is enough to deter action and to encourage leaders to act in traditional and antipathetic ways.

4.There are lessons from South Africa. There were many who believed initially that the black majority, once it gained power, would want vengeance, retribution. Nelson Mandela understood, with total clarity, that South Africa had to become a rainbow nation, where all people were regarded as important. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission provides a pattern that could be relevant to difficulties within religions or between countries.

5.The United Nations must be taken seriously by all countries. We know the principles and ideals of that organisation. Too often the United Nations comes in for criticism, which should be directed at its members. The United Nations, especially, is the sum of its constituent parts. It is the governments that will make the United Nations work, or by pursuing self-interests, secure its failure.
While there are problems of reform, even within present structures, much more progress could be made. One single change, involving a variation of attitude, would make all the difference in the world. If the great and the powerful decided to abide by the rules of the United Nations, and not to break those rules when it suited them to do so, such a change would make progress possible.

6.Within the rules of the United Nations, we should pay more attention to progress made by ASEAN, which I earlier mentioned.

This meeting will not be able to resolve problems, that is not our purpose, but can we point to a process, can your collective wisdom suggest how governments may be motivated to act, in ways that will make the world a safer place? We can certainly underline the increasing urgency of the issues facing the world. We can emphasise the importance of effective action. We can emphasise the dangers that beset us all.
The acceptance of a common set of ethics, within and between religions and nation states, may well be a prerequisite for a more just and peaceful world.

I hope in the next two days’ deliberations, your valuable contributions will help point the way forward, so that there will be a motivation to put self-interests aside and have it replaced by ethical government. If we could achieve that, we will achieve much of what Takeo Fukuda and Helmut Schmidt wanted to achieve in the early days of this Council.

Welcome Address

H.E.Dr. Franz Vranitzky
Former Chancellor of Austria Co-chairman, InterAction Council and Organising Chairman of the Vienna Interfaith Dialogue

Sehr geehrter Herr Bundespräsident,
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

I feel greatly honoured in having this privilege of welcoming all of you to our wonderful city of Vienna but particularly to this special gathering on the occasion of the Interfaith Dialogue.

A little more than 30 years ago, Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda met here at this very place together with a group of former heads of state and government, of which only Malcolm Fraser and President Obasanjo are present here today, to found the InterAction Council. Would one of those present have been asked then, how long would they give this group to exist, I wonder what their replies would have been. Indeed, and thanks foremost to the Japanese government who, to a great extent, has financed over all these years - with contributions from other governments - the Council, and also thanks to the perseverance of some of its members, their power of perceptive analysis and intellectual foresight, we are still alive and our presence here today proves it.

I believe and I trust that we will be able to send out a message to the world how important and how promising it is to exchange views and to try to arrive at a mutual understanding over controversial topics.

Two hundred years ago, in 1814, the major powers in European politics and diplomacy assembled in Vienna to lay out a new political order for the continent in the post-Napoleon era. Peace was established, but did not last for very long.
This experience teaches us that peace-making and peacekeeping will stay with the world as a permanent challenge. Ever since it was founded the InterAction Council stood up to its basic idea to meet this challenge.

When in 1996, a high-level Expert Group under the chairmanship of our Honorary Chairman, Helmut Schmidt, met in Vienna - Helmut, noch einmal ein herzliches Willkommen - some of its conclusions were: As Aristotle taught us, “the human being is a social animal.
Because we must live in society - because we must live with each other in harmony - human beings need rules and constraints”. Ethics are the minimum standards that make a collective life possible. Without ethics and self-restraint humankind would revert to the jungle. Let us, therefore, begin with our deliberations embracing this spirit.

Remarks to the Opening Ceremony

The Rt. Hon. Jean Chrétien
Former Prime Minister of Canada and
Co-chairman, InterAction Council

Mr. Federal President,
Madame President,
Excellencies, distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen,

It is great to be back in Vienna, a beautiful city with a rich history.

Like Helmut Schmidt, I too recently celebrated a big birthday. I turned 80. And like Helmut - and others here whom I won’t single out - I haven’t slowed down. You know in Canada, the mayor of our sixth largest city will finally retire this year - she’s 93.

I say all of this because we former heads of state and government still have much to contribute. We have ideas. We are still concerned about global issues. Most importantly, we no longer are compelled to represent our individual nations but rather, at this point in our career, we have the opportunity to represent individuals of all nations. Although I am a relatively new member of the Council, I am grateful to our founding members for having the foresight to establish a forum where former leaders can apply their collective wisdom and tackle the world’s most intractable problems.

At the Council’s first meeting in Vienna, the founding members recognised that world peace was being threatened on two fronts – both political-military and economic - and agreed to attach high priority to two issues that remain at the heart of our work: the promotion of peace and disarmament, and the revitalisation of the world economy. As we begin this Interfaith Dialogue, we enter these discussions aware that war threatens peace and security in Eastern Europe and around the world inequity between rich and poor strains the relationship between individuals and among nations.

In 1987, the Council convened a meeting of religious leaders in Rome, the first dialogue of its kind in history, and so began our work on universal ethical standards, which remains as vitally important today as it did some 30 years ago. We have an impressive group of experts gathered with us here in Vienna, but the Council owes a particular debt of gratitude to Professor Hans Küng, the great theologian, who continues to be our guiding force and whose presence will be deeply missed this week.

(The Introduction by Mr. Chrétien of the Council members present at the dialogue is omitted here.)

Words of Appreciation

The Rt. Hon. Jean Chrétien
KAICIID

On behalf of the InterAction Council, I would like to thank Secretary-General Mr. Faisal Bin Muaammar and the King Abdullah International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue for hosting us this evening.

The beauty and the history of Vienna unite in spectacular fashion inside this Centre, housed in the refurbished Palais Sturany. We will all leave Vienna with lasting memories of the magnificent allegories painted on the ceiling by Gustav Klimpt.

As we have just heard, KAICIID’s vision is to be a catalyst for enlightened dialogue between followers of different religions and cultures around the world. In the short time since the Centre was inaugurated in November 2012, it has made remarkable progress, having hosted eight regional gatherings and two high-profile global forums.

In this time of tension and conflict in so many parts of the world, we applaud the Founding State’s commitment in establishing an independent, international organisation to help foster peace.

The InterAction Council knows well the commitment of King Abdullah to religious dialogue. Through His Majesty’s vision, this Centre was created. In 2009, the King welcomed us to Saudi Arabia with “Bridging the Divide” as the major theme. The papers of the Council on this theme were collected in a book, whose publication was supported by Mr. Suleiman Al-Herbish through the OPEC Fund. So to all of these supporters of enhanced dialogue, we give our thanks.

Thank you once again to Secretary-General Muaammar and KAICIID for hosting us this evening. I wish you all “Bon Appetit” and a pleasant evening.

ENGLISH Ver.