arri Holkeri, president of the 55th session of the United Nations General Assembly, gave a lecture February 22, on campus. The focus of his speech was on restructuring the Assembly to become more effective and to acknowledge the use for such a body, as it has come under increasing fire from the international community for being too slow and doing too little.

Holkeri, the president of the so-called Millennium Assembly of the UN, served as Prime Minister of Finland from 1987 to 1991 and has been in domestic and international politics for over 40 years. He was given an honorary British knighthood, Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, in 1999 for his involvement and achievements in the Northern Ireland peace process. He succeeded Theo-Ben Gurirab, the former president of the General Assembly, who visited the University last year.

Holkeri underlined the necessity to "open the United Nations to civil society at large and to have continued and enhanced dialogue with academic communities."

He affirmed that "the United Nations system needs to be strengthened and reformed to carry out the tasks entrusted to it." He sees the need to develop the core strengths of the agencies as part of his legacy.

Echoing an earlier statement issued by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Holkeri said that "the United Nations has made a couple of mistakes - big ones. We can start with Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina. But we have had some successes like East Timor." The former Indonesia-occupied island was reclaimed with the help of the UN Security Forces almost 25 years after troubles began.

Holkeri believes that the Millennium Assembly must spearhead the obvious need to adapt by establishing new priorities as a body, and this, he said, "requires compromise from all parties at member level." There are currently 189 member countries of the UN, and he anticipates before this year's end that East Timor will be welcomed as the 190th.

The Millennium Summit and the Millennium Charter that resulted from the summit, Holkeri said, is the third-most important document in the UN, after the Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights. The Summit called for a "comprehensive reform of the Security Council in all aspects" and for it to be "more representative of the contributing members and more legitimate."