Annan to receive Roosevelt Institute's International Four Freedoms Medal

Secretary-General Kofi Annan will receive the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute's International Four Freedoms Medal this weekend in recognition of his leadership of the United Nations, the organization that the thirty-second President of the United States worked to establish.

With international developments demanding his personal attention, however, the Secretary-General has cancelled his attendance at Saturday's awards ceremony in Middelburg, the Netherlands, the UN said today. His wife, Nane, will accept the award in his stead.

Announcing the award last month, Roosevelt Institute Co-Chair William J. vanden Heuvel, said, the Secretary-General was being awarded the Medal "for his brilliant leadership of the United Nations, for his courage in sustaining the principles of collective action and for his moral strength in heeding the voices of the oppressed and the needy.

"The purposes and ideals for which FDR worked in creating the UN have found dramatic resonance in the work of Kofi Annan as Secretary-General."

Previous winners of the Four Freedoms Medal include former Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR, Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, Nelson Mandela of South Africa, the Dalai Lama and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

Winners of specific Freedom medals this year include former Estonian President Lennart Meri, author and film-maker, for Freedom of Speech and Expression; and President of East Jerusalem's Al Quds University, Sari Nusseibeh, for Freedom of Worship "for his inspiring and unrelenting efforts to end the spiral of violence between Israel and the Palestinians," the Roosevelt Institute said.

Marguerite Barankitse will be given the Freedom from Want award for helping 10,000 children of all ethnic backgrounds in strife-torn Burundi, and Max Kohnstamm the Freedom from Fear award for his tireless advocacy of European integration, it said.