World's peoples will judge Summit by changes in their daily lives, says Annan

The declaration that leaders at the World Summit will adopt tomorrow will point the way to closer international solidarity, but the world's peoples will judge the meeting's usefulness by the changes in their daily lives and the new perspectives that open before them, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.

In an address to La Francophonie, a community of 49 countries, four associate members and 10 observers in which French is at least a minority language, he said: "The declaration does not respond to all our hopes, but there are in it real advances in crucial areas, including development, human rights and democracy."

With regard to those areas, La Francophonie had shown undeniable progress in the past decade, especially in holding elections, separating powers and increasing the protection of individual liberties, all commitments that the countries had made in the framework of the Bamako Declaration, he said.

Some countries, however, had experienced reversals and failures, such as seizure of power by unconstitutional means, refusal to share power, amendment of fundamental laws, discrimination against a section of the population and serious violations of human rights, Mr. Annan said.

He congratulated the group on its decision last year that leaders of countries in which democratic institutions had been overturned would not be invited to its summits until the constitutional order had been restored.