Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Terens Quick participated in the 72nd UN General Assembly’s High-Level Meeting on Peace and Security.In his speech, he stressed the following:“Today we discussed peace and how we can sustain it throughout the world. Peace is interwoven with Democracy and Dialogue. Dialogue is the most important tool for exercising the policy of diplomacy. Greece has every right to ask that everyone respect these two words, Democracy and Dialogue. They are both Greek words.Since this morning, I have heard everyone refer to peace and to the need to build it wherever there is fighting, wars, tensions. Hundreds of times, I heard about the need to build peace. I saw a lot of tears shed. I would stress to all parties involved in the most critical and sensitive regions of the planet, like ours in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, to embrace the importance of peacebuilding, serving those principles of the UN, avoiding violation of the obligations deriving from international law, treaties and agreements.Let us transform the word peace – which was spoken so many times – and the tears we saw shed into work and action. We have to increase the reach of the United Nations, first to avert the outbreak of crises and, mainly, to seek the root causes of conflict. A simple intervention or mention is not enough. The UN must stay on top of the problem until the roots of the problem have been eradicated and the roots of peace can spread. It has to be established that the member states should trust and back the United Nations operationally, politically and financially.World peace should concern all of us, and apart from anything else, it cannot be achieved without improvement of the UN in humanitarian actions, without safeguarding human rights, the right to freedom, and placing special importance on the fact that poverty and economic collapse are fundamental root causes of conflict.Greece believes that in building and sustaining peace we must bear young people and women seriously in mind, because they are a vulnerable population and perhaps the first to bear the repercussions and the suffering where there is conflict and war.”On the margins of the 72nd UN General Assembly, Mr. Quick had interesting meetings and discussions with the Foreign Ministers of Turkey, Albania, Qatar and Georgia, with the President of Ireland, the President of the UN General Assembly, and the Deputy Foreign Ministers of France and Bulgaria.
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