With the Winter Olympics opening on Friday in Italy, the President of the United Nations General Assembly today appealed to all countries to revive the ancient Greek tradition of a two-week period of peace surrounding the athletic competition.
President Jan Eliasson of Sweden, who is also a member of the Board of the International Truce Foundation, issued a statement calling for “measures to ensure a peaceful global environment for the 2006 Winter Olympic Games.”
He noted that in 1998, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), decided to fly the UN flag at all its competition sites, while the UN was expanding its collaboration with the IOC through the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The General Assembly has urged Member States to observe the Olympic Truce from the seventh day before the opening to the seventh day after the closing of each Olympic Games.
That observance should come during the XX Olympic Winter Games, to be held in Turin from 10 to 26 February, and the Paralympic Winter Games, also in Turin, from 10 to 19 March, the Assembly said.
In making his appeal today, the Assembly President echoed a call by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who on 25 January urged all warring factions to lay down their arms during the Games. He said the Olympics offer a long enough “for the protagonists and people who are destroying their own countries and killing each other to pause for a moment, look around them and see what damage they are doing.”
He added: “And hopefully some of them will not pick up the weapons again and will realize there is another way.”