Ladies and gentlemen,

 

It is an honor for me to appear before this unique, truly extraordinary gathering of leaders from all around the world, converging on the United Arab Emirates as an emerging center of economic, political and intellectual innovation. 

 

Blessed by resource and unlimited opportunity, it is significant that it is here in the UAE, where I have chosen to live and raise my children.

 

Here I pay tribute to the late President Shaikh Zayed.

 

He was a father to his people, to the larger Arab world and he was also like a father to me.

 

I shall always remember him in my heart for allowing me a home away from home, here in the UAE and for his contributions to Pakistan’s development.

 

And I will never forget the warmness of your welcome, the openness of your hospitality and the humanity of your people. 

 

To all of you, Salaam Aleichem, May Peace Be With You. 

 

I am asked to share my life story with you and to speak on leadership.

 

I am a daughter of the desert sands of Sindh in Pakistan. It is an ancient land, a land of saints, Sufis and mystics.

 

I grew up in the shadow of Moen Jo Daro, the 5000 year old civilization which once traded with Baghdad and Bukhara and through them with Europe and the Far East.

 

My father would tell me fascinating historical tales of conquest and victory.

 

I learnt of how the Greek Conqueror Alexander the Great was bitten by a mosquito in Sindh developing a fever that killed him in Babylon.

 

I learnt of how the mighty can be brought down by the weakest. I learnt that in the greatest adventures one must never forget the smallest details.

 

Islam first came to South Asia through Sindh. An Arab conqueror by the name of Mohammad Bin Qasim landed on the shores by sea bringing the message of equality that would spread far and  wide in the year 712 A.D.

 

Some of my family claimed to have come with Mohammad Bin Qasim and to have settled in Sindh. Others claimed we were locals who were amongst the first converts to Islam.

 

There was a great emphasis on roots and on the values of courage, integrity loyalty, knowledge, honour, duty, responsibility and pride passed on from generation to generation.

 

Sindh was largely a tribal society when I was child. Identity lay in the family, in the tribe, in the soil and in religion. One’s duty was to uphold the good name of the whole, of which we as individuals were a part of.

 

I heard that I was an heir to the greatness of Islam which proclaimed equality between the rich and the poor, between the male and female, between the strong and the weak.

 

I read and re-read how the powerful conqueror of Sindh Mohammad Bin Qasim was sentenced to death in the cause of justice. He had failed to protect the dignity of a woman and was punished losing his life.

 

It showed me the importance of the rights of women and it underlined the importance of justice in Islam for building a truly civilized society. That example, seared into the memory of a young child, become a part of my life and my struggle.

 

There was much poverty in those days in my country. There were few roads, drinking water was scarce, people were so poor that they were often shirtless and shoeless. Little children ran naked in the dusty, dirty village lanes with open sewerage gutters. Cow dung was used for cooking and as fertilizer. It would be scooped up, shaped into patties and dried on the mud walls of houses.

 

A midst this squalor and deprivation, there were a few large families with enormous land holdings and industrial wealth.

 

My father told me it was wrong that so many should be so poor when so few were so rich. He told me that the Islamic law of inheritance ensured the distribution of wealth rather than its concentration. He imbibed in me the spirit of social reform and the principle of social equality—goals that he fought for and which became mine.

 

I came from a political family. My grandfather formed the first political party in Sindh and brought out its first newspaper. He led the movement to separate Muslim Sindh from Hindu Bombay in the thirties which culminated in the demand for Pakistan in the forties -- A separate homeland for Muslims of South Asia.

 

My father was the youngest Cabinet Minister in South Asia and went on to become its youngest Prime Minister when he was elected.

 

I grew up as a pampered child of privileged family with political and social dominance. 

 

From the young age of 5, I was under public scrutiny, the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

 

Because of that public scrutiny, I was taught to always be on guard, on watch, not to make a slip, to keep my head high, to hide my emotions, to perform my duty, to smile and walk on because “when you smile, the world smiles with you” and “when you cry, you cry alone”.

 

I was shy and led an insulated life. Except for my cousins and a few close friends, I did not mix much with other children. We feared that fame brings fair weather friends and kept to ourselves. We learnt that the price of fame can be loneliness – to avoid gossip we kept our distance, always protected, shadowed, chaperoned.

 

Obedience to parents, to teachers, to God were the hallmarks of my young life.

 

Moral duty was drilled into us; “To whom God gives much, much is expected.”

 

When war between India and Pakistan broke out in 1965, my mother took me with her to the Red Crescent Center to help the relief effort.

 

In 1966, in our ancestral home in Larkana, when I turned 13, my Mother made me wear a Burqa, the all enveloping black cloth covering the body from head to toe. As the veil billowed over my body and covered my eyes, I felt hot, constrained and the world looked grey through the mists of the veil.

 

For centuries women in my family had worn the veil. For centuries women had either married cousins or, if they were unavailable, remained unmarried. This ensured that the property women inherited under Islam did not leave the family.

 

But now my life was to change. My father was an emancipated man, a reformer who broke the bastions of tradition and changed the direction of his family, his country and our region.

 

He took one look at me in the Burqa as I arrived home and said, “ I don’t want my daughter wearing the veil.” He told me that Muslims believe that the best veil is the veil in the eyes of a person.

 

It was a man, a very special man, my father, who set me on the road to modernity.

 

When I turned sixteen, my father decided to send me abroad for education.

 

My female relatives opposed my father’s decision. They begged him to change his mind. The destiny of a young woman in those days was to make a good marriage, a good home and raise good children. 

 

Before I left for Harvard, my father took me to our lands in Larkana.

 

Here the peasants sweated under the sun taking care of the fields of wheat and cotton.

 

My father said, “see how hard these men work. You must seek knowledge abroad and then return to serve your own people. Do not be so dazzled by the bright lights as to forget your roots and the land that gave you birth.”

 

Then he took me to our family graveyard where for generations our ancestors lay. “Whenever you go in the world” he said “this is where you will ultimately return. You are part of this dust and this dust is part of you.”

 

As a farewell present, my father gave me the Holy Book of the Muslims inlaid with precious mother of Pearl. He hugged me and kissed me. He often joked that I was too argumentative. His parting words of advice to me were “Don’t argue with Immigration Officers or taxi drivers.”

 

And so at 16 I left with my mother and my Afghan Pashmina coat for Cambridge Massachusetts—to a new world. 

 

For the first time I met people who did not know who I was, or where my country was.

 

“Pakistan: where’s that?” they’d ask.

 

While I was a student at Harvard, A separatist movement in present day Bangladesh had torn my country apart. I refused to believe Pakistani troops could commit genocide in then East Pakistan. I got into furious arguments with those I found criticizing my country.

 

Patriotism burned deep in my heart.

 

As a Muslim I was seen as the spokesperson of the Arab world when discussions about the Middle East arose.

 

At 17 I addressed the Asia Society and wrote a letter to Life Magazine defending the Egyptian President Nasser’s decision to built the Aswan Dam.

 

As a child of my age, I was influenced by the social ferment around me. It was a time of student power. 

 

It was a time of war. American forces were engaged in Vietnam. There was an anti-war movement on campus. As an Asian at Harvard, I felt strongly about the war in Vietnam.

 

I joined other students to protest it. 

 

It was a time of white minority rule in parts of Africa. The fight against apartheid shaped my commitment to stand up for the principle of equality between men irrespective of race or colour.

 

The women’s movement had began and with it the debate about women’s role in society.

 

As a Muslim women I felt strongly about gender rights. The Prophet of Islam (PBUH) had married a working woman, a business woman. He had stopped violence against women prohibiting the burial of the girl child. Islam proclaimed that paradise lay beneath the feet of the mother and that on the day of judgment we’d be called by our mother’s names.

 

The movement for women’s rights empowered and emboldened me.

 

It was a time when Martin Luther King defended the rights of the African American and Robert Kennedy spoke for the underprivileged of America. It was an era of civil rights and morality where values, rather than force, shaped the destiny of society and of humanity.

 

These important steps helped shape my outlook on life, helped me focus on fighting injustice, promoting freedom, safeguarding the rights of the discriminated and dispossessed.

 

I was in America during the impeachment proceedings that brought down it’s President Nixon.

 

I saw the awesome power of the people to change policies, to change leaders and to change history.

 

I marveled at the power of a people to bring down a government. I lived in a dictatorship. Those criticizing the President ended up in prison or faced assassination attempts.

 

From Harvard I went to Oxford University in London.

 

Brought up with the Muslim belief that all people are equal, irrespective of race, religion, colour, caste or creed, I was shocked to see racism rear its ugly head.

 

The British Politician Enoch Powell was threatening to throw all Asians into the sea.

 

I loved Oxford with its cobbled streets and college spires. I walked the streets my father had once walked. I learnt to punt on the river and attend strawberry and cream picnics.

 

While I was at Oxford the Conservative Party chose a women, Margaret Thatcher, as leader of the opposition. The idea of the first female British Prime Minister became an intense topic of discussion amongst students.

 

There were many who believed that the Conservative Party could never win an election because it was led by a woman.

 

My father, who had become Prime Minister by now, thought otherwise.

 

He invited Mrs. Thatcher to Pakistan as his guest during the summer, to ensure that I would be there. I attended his dinner for Mrs. Thatcher. Later Mrs. Thatcher invited me to the British House of Parliament, the House of Commons the seat of the mother of all democracies. I was introduced to the world of politics.

 

My interest in international affairs was growing but I still did not want to enter politics.

 

My father would regale me with stories about Joan of Arc, Mrs. Bandarnaike the world’s first woman Prime Minister and Mrs. Gandhi of India. Moreover, Mrs. Golda Meir had been Prime Minister of Israel during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. All the civilizations of the world had  women Prime Ministers except for the Islamic civilization. Yet it was Islam which had given the clarion call for gender equality. My father believed that I was the one who would right the historic balance.

 

Despite my reluctance, he clearly saw a political role for me. He groomed me for politics and motivated me with role models.

 

I joined the Oxford Union Students Debating Society because my father wanted me too. Many British Prime Ministers had started their political careers as Presidents of the Oxford Union. Even though he did not say it, I felt my father wanted me to run for office there too. So I did.

 

At Oxford I was the first female foreigner to be elected as President of the Oxford Union.

 

It is said that the Oxford Union is the training ground for British politics. The entry and exit doors have “Push” and “Pull” written on them. We joked that politics was all about pushing and pulling up the greasy ladder of success.

 

It was there that I first learnt to debate. 

 

I returned to Pakistan in the summer of 1977 planning to join the foreign service. 

 

Within a week of my return to Pakistan, my life changed dramatically.

 

A military coup took place. Army tanks had surrounded the Prime Minister’s house. Our life and family was never to be the same again. 

 

My  father was taken away. I ran to the door as he walked out of the house. I watched the car leave the drive way taking my father to an unknown destination, with the sun glowing off the car’s metal plate with the Prime Minister Seal.

 

As Prime Minister of Pakistan, I declined to return to live in the Prime Minister's House. It held too many painful memories for me.

 

My father was later released and greeted by hundreds of thousands of people. They swarmed around him pouring out their love and affection.

 

This show of popular strength struck fear into the heart of the military. 

 

Shortly there after I was woken in the night with armed men barging into my room waving guns and jumping over the place. They were all over the house. My father was arrested again and taken away.

 

He was released, re-arrested, and finally hanged amidst international outrage at the age of fifty.

 

I was then half his age. His Highness President Shaikh Zayed was one of the leading world figures who tried to save my father’s life and sent my family a condolence message. His support meant a great deal to us and to the people of Pakistan.

 

A few hours before my Father’s murder, my Mother and I went to see him in the squalid death cell where the military tyrants had kept him. We went to bid him farewell. His courage in the face of death remains with me.

 

It was then, in that final meeting that I decided come what may, I would continue his mission and his work for a democratic Pakistan with equal rights for all its citizens.

 

During the long dark night of military dictatorship, lasting eleven years, my mother and I were repeatedly arrested, kept apart, in solitarity confinement amidst harsh conditions. Every attempt was made to break our will but we remained strong bolstered by the love of the people who supported us.

 

Our supporters were whiplashed, tortured, shot and hanged. But they never wavered. Some went to the gallows with my father’s name on their lips, others were buried with their coffins covered in the tricoloured party flag.

 

My mother was baton charged and denied proper treatment. Today she suffers from a form of Alzheimer’s her doctors say was brought on by improper treatment of that head wound.

 

I spent nearly six years behind bars, often in solitary confinement. During the summers it was unbearably hot and during the winters it was brutally cold. The conditions in the cell were primitive. Mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches, dust storms and dryness were constant companions as was loneliness and a lack of communication with the outside world.

 

I spent long hours in prayer. My belief in God sustained me when each moment seemed an hour, each hour a day. Through out this period, I was confident that we would triumph, confident that truth would prevail, confident that those who are patient and persevere are rewarded with victory. I never lost hope. I never gave up.

 

I was told that the death cells were being emptied for me as part of the psychological warfare to break my spirit. But I held to the belief that life and death are in God’s hands.

By the time I was freed into exile through international pressure, I was anorexic. My hearing and eyesight were affected forever. My face muscles hurt when I talked. They had atrophied through the years of silence. Freed from the grey walls of my prison cell, I found it hard to adjust to sunlight, to the noise of peoples voices, to ordinary conversation.

 

My family background and long years of imprisonment made me the rallying point for the democratic movement. I returned to Pakistan in 1986 welcomed by millions of Pakistanis who demanded an end to dictatorship.

 

And when I got married and expected my first child in 1988, the military dictator called for elections. He thought a pregnant woman could not campaign. I could, and I did, and, with the support of the brave people of Pakistan, I was elected Prime Minister of Pakistan.

 

It was not an easy campaign. The religious parties that had supported the Afghan Jihad in Afghanistan opposed me. They claimed that the marriage of any man who voted for me would be null and void in the eyes of God. They claimed that the only place for a woman was behind the veil and the four walls of the house—Not in government.

 

They said it was a religious duty to kill me because I was challenging the right of men to rule the country and defying the tradition enforced on women. But I did not give up. And won.

 

Circumstances propelled me onto the road of leadership.

 

I find that leadership is born of a passion and it is a commitment. My commitment to democracy helped me walk the high mountain of success as well as the low valleys of imprisonment and exile.

 

Leadership demands a price from an individual and it also demands a price from the family.

 

I do not understand the work-life balance.

 

For me, success is 99% perspiration and one % inspiration.

 

My election broke the myth that a woman could not be elected Prime Minister in a Muslim country. It was a severe set back for the forces of fanaticism that wished to build a theocratic society.

 

It stirred a debate in the entire Muslim world. The lead scholar in Saudi Arabia gave a Fatwa, a religious edict, against my election. But other religious scholars supported me. I especially remember the religious scholars in Egypt, Syria and Yemen. The religious scholar in Yemen said that Islam permitted a woman to govern a Muslim country. He said the Holy book of the Muslims referred to the rule of Queen Sheba in laudatory terms noting that her reign brought prosperity to her people.

 

But the fanatics in Pakistan were deeply upset at my election. They dreamt of spreading the ideological frontiers of Islam through Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to the borders of Europe.

 

Elements of the military that had fought the Afghan Jihad as a religious war against godless communism also opposed me. They refused to salute me and engaged in covert conspiracies to overthrow me.

 

My opponents turned to Osma Bin Laden for help. They called him back from Saudi Arabia where he had returned following the decision of the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989. They asked him for ten million dollars to bring down the Government I led. In return they promised to legislate a religious bill turning Pakistan into a theocratic state.

 

Until today the fanatics who believe in a war between the Muslims and the Non-Muslims fear my popularity and the strength of my Party. They see us as a symbol of a modern Muslim state, pluralistic, democratic, tolerant, respecting freedom and human rights. They fear the empowerment of the people which challenges authoritian forms of government.

 

Undeterred by the opposition, my party began the restructuring of the state.

 

We broke the bureaucratic stranglehold becoming the first in the region to privatise, deregulate and decentralize our economy.

 

We opened up our markets transforming our economy from permits and permission to initiative and entrepreneurship.

 

As Prime Minister of Pakistan, I successfully built good relations with India through negotiations with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

 

I bargained with Afghan leaders to influence the formation of a moderate government in Kabul.

 

My government opened up trade and common links with Central Asia.

 

But the elements of the military establishment that had fought communism in Afghanistan and now wanted to take on the west did not give up. They twice destabilized the governments I led.

 

During both my stints in opposition, Pakistan was on the brink of being declared a terrorist state, during both times, the World Trade Towers were attacked and so were targets in India, including its Parliament.

 

It was during the eclipse of my government in 1996 that the Taliban seized all of Afghanistan. It was after my overthrow that Al Qaeda was established In Afghanistan and set up camps to train, recruit and arm young men from across the Muslim world.

 

Two years after my overthrow, in 1988, Osama Bin Laden declared war on the west from the soil of Afghanistan. Three years later, the Trade Centers were attacked.

 

The cause of history changed with the change of leadership in Pakistan.

 

In 2001, the military regime claimed to change course. Following President Bush’s ultimatum to stand up and be counted as friend or foe. It said that it had adopted the policy of peace with India and Afghanistan which I had initiated and internally tried to restrain armed militias.

 

However, extremists groups continue to pose a challenge in Pakistan and in South Asia as the recent New Delhi bombings demonstrate.

 

The vendetta against Bhutto’s daughter, the leader, the military Generals hanged, still continues. I am forced into exile where I now live.

 

But I have not given up and remain the symbol for a democratic future for my country.

I faced many challenges since 1996. My husband was arrested the night my government was overthrown. He was held hostage to my political struggle for 8 long years. I am continuously told that the web of legal cases woven around my family and myself can be broken if I announce my abdication from political life. I do not do so.  

I know that my duty to my people comes first, for the sake of my children and all the children of Pakistan. My duty to Pakistan’s democratic struggle is one baptized in blood. During this struggle, I lost both my brothers who were killed in the prime of their lives.

 

I have three children. They were very small when our troubles started. My youngest was three. I was their sole caretaker when my husband was in prison for 8 years. I believe women can combine career and motherhood.

 

It is critical that women enter the 21^st Century ready to accept the challenges of a modern world.

 

The Islamic values of Ijma and Ijtihad, give us reasoning power to build a consensus for our times.

 

Acquiescing to tradition -- a tradition of subjugation of mothers and daughters -- can no longer be accepted. 

 

These are difficult times.  Freedom is under assault.  Democracy is under assault.  We live in an age of terrorism. 

 

But we shall prevail if we reclaim our lives from the fanatics who wish to subjugate women and keep our people ignorant.

 

When the human spirit was immersed in the darkness of the middle ages in Europe, Islam proclaimed equality between men and women.

 

Let us remember that Islam introduced divorce, child custody and alimony for the first time in civilization.  Islam came as a message of emancipation that put an end to the degradation of women and the burial of the girl child.

 

It is this tradition of Islam that allowed me my battle for political and human rights. It strengthens me today in this hour of crisis for my family, my nation and myself.

 

As leader of Pakistan, I ensured the protection of our mothers, sisters and daughters.

The cause of women rights is for me a cause of human rights.

 

The new century must, for once and for all, exclude the notion of battered women. 

 

It must be an era where honor and dignity are protected in peace, and in war, where women have economic freedom and independence, where women are not defined by their fathers or husbands, but by their own achievements, where they are equal partners in peace and development.

 

My time in exile has coincided with the era of terrorism and the threat of a clash of cultures, of a miscommunication between the Islamic and Non-Islamic world.

 

I tried to act as a bridge between different cultures, countries and continents.

 

I explained the peaceful and tolerant message of Islam to international audiences to correct the misperceptions propagated by the extremists who exploit it to promote their politics of hate. 

 

I visited India to promote a South Asia where there is peace and prosperity through open borders and trade. My political opponents  have now accepted the wisdom of the policies for which I was once termed a “security risk.”

 

When I was at Oxford, I won the Presidency of the Oxford Union debating that “The Pen is more powerful than the Sword.”

 

I believe in the battle of ideas, and that no force can win a victory against an idea, a policy or a vision that is based on truth and justice.

 

I still believe the Pen is more Powerful than the Sword although the world has changed since I was a student at Oxford. 

 

The era of peace for which we prayed has become a time for war.

Tolerance has been replaced with terrorism.

There was a time when multi-lateral leadership succeeded in those glorious days when the Berlin Wall fell and freedom swept the Eastern Bloc at the end of the last century.

 

The peace bonus, when we hoped that poverty would be eliminated by diverting resources used to fight the Cold War, did not materialise. 

 

The stability we hoped to achieve in a unipolar world has degenerated into dangerous unpredictability. 

 

The attack on the World Trade Towers created a new form of unilateral leadership. Now fear replaces hope.

 

Unilateralism in Iraq has lead to hundreds of thousands Iraqi deaths, 2000 American deaths, and a U.S. national debt of 300 billion dollars.

 

Natural disasters in the world are fueling economic and political instability. The Tsunami killed a quarter of a million people in December  2004.  A devastating earthquake in Northern Pakistan and Kashmir killed 100,000 of my fellow countrymen, rendering millions homeless through a cold and dangerous winter.

 

The hurricane Katrina created the unsettling image of an American city underwater with a superpower unable to quickly save its own people.  

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

The natural disasters take place against a reconfiguration of the international economy and international wealth. 

 

Many of us believe that demography is destiny, that demographic factors shape economic factors, political factors, and the military balance of power.   

 

The moving finger of demography writes, and having written, moves on. The demographic hand is writing in this very continent of Asia where many predict that the 21rst century could be the Chinese century.

 

New York has 2000 skyscrapers rising from the rock of Manhattan.  Yet Shanghai has an astanding 4000 skyscrapers -- twice as many as New York. 

 

The American debt was bought, principally by Japan and China.  The financial institutions of the East now underwrite the 200 billion dollars  borrowed to rebuild America’s Gulf Coast.

The energy situation is another example. 

In 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter was ridiculed for declaring that the energy crisis was the “moral equivalent of war.” 

 

China and India are emerging as two new powers as thirsty for energy consumption as the west. 

 

Increased competition for diminishing energy reserves will force the price of energy in only one direction -- UP.  This can further disrupt the economics, politics and social stability of the 21^st century. 

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

It is impossible to separate economic justice from political liberty. 

 

I can attest to the price to world peace paid when human rights is not integral to the foreign policy goals of the major democratic players in international affairs.

 

We learn that, democracy, women’s rights, human rights, press freedom are important, but apparently only sometimes. 

 

Violations of these principles lead to international sanctions  -- but only sometimes.

 

Some believe that the imposition of democracy on Iraq would somehow democratize this entire region.  But critics claim that an artificial confederation drawn under occupation will remain controversial and short-lived.

 

I recall that Communism was not defeated by capitalism or by the NATO; it was fundamentally defeated by humanism. The Czech President Vaclav Havel so accurately noted that “communism was not defeated by military force, but by the human spirit, by conscience, by the resistance of man to manipulation. 

 

This is manifest in the large, discontented, and radicalizing Muslim communities in France and across much of Europe.  The challenge is to transform alienated Muslim immigrants and their children into integrated members of the nation, convincing them to accept the full obligations of democratic citizenship.

 

This can not be accomplished through economic subjugation and social ostracism.  The way forward is not religious and cultural ridicule.  The way forward is through equality, opportunity and respect for cultural and religious pluralism. It is through religious tolerance.

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

Islam denounces inequality as the greatest form of injustice. 

 

It enjoins its followers to combat oppression and tyranny. 

 

It enshrines piety as the sole criteria for judging humankind. 

 

Ladies and gentlemen,  

 

Despite the constraints of a political system that was all too often rigged against democrats, and a social system that was biased against women, when I became prime Minister of Pakistan I used my office to try to reverse centuries of discrimination. 

 

My tenure was a textbook affirmative action program against gender discrimination.  We increased literacy by one-third, even more dramatically among girls. 

 

We brought down the population growth rate by establishing women’s health clinics in thousands of communities across our Nation. 

 

We outlawed domestic violence and established special women’s police forces to protect and defend the women of Pakistan. 

 

We appointed women judges to our nation’s benches for the first time in our history. 

 

We instituted a new program of hiring women police officers to investigate crimes of domestic violence against the women of Pakistan. 

 

We encouraged women’s and girl’s participation in sports, both nationally and internationally by lifting the ban imposed on their participation. 

 

We held a Muslim Women’s Olympics.

 

We held the first meeting of a Muslim Women’s Parliamentary Conference.  

 

The record I accomplished is one in which I have great pride.  Despite the reversals in my homeland  -- the progress that we made raised the bar of expectations and cannot long be ignored.

 

In my commitment to political liberty and to democracy, I have never wavered. 

 

Unfortunately, that has not always been the case in the conduct by many great nations of international affairs over the last generation.

 

Afghanistan is an example of how retreating from the principles of human rights and democracy can have the most tragic consequences. 

 

 

The overall policy of standing against Soviet aggression in Afghanistan was right.  Yet in our admirable zeal to end the Soviet occupation, we did not plan our work for a post-war Afghanistan built on democratic and Islamic principles of coalition, consensus and cooperation. 

 

We were not consistently committed to the values of freedom, democracy, social equality and self-determination that ultimately undermine the basic tenets of terrorism. 

 

We must not make that mistake again.

 

There must be a middle ground between the internationalist realism theory of the late Hans Morgenthau, constructing  power devoid of moral content, and the interventionist internationalism of the neoconservative movements that ignore cultural diversity. 

 

Might doesn’t always or necessarily make right.  Indeed it was the  American President Abraham Lincoln who said that it is “right that makes might.” 

 

This mix of realism and idealism was best manifest when The United States, under President Bill Clinton, militarily intervened to stop the genocide of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia. 

 

Was the US strategically threatened?  No.

 

Was it morally threatened by genocide on this planet? Yes.

 

It should be a guide for the international community on what can be done, what must be done, to successfully confront clear and unambiguous evil.

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

It is clear to me, that the solution to the paradoxes of the early 21^st century can only be achieved by broad consensus.  Solutions will not be imposed by political extremes, whether on the left or the right. 

 

The Right would seek to intervene to impose their values and their policies across society.

 

The Left can take on the aura of elitism and are at times contemptuous of the broad cross section of people in the middle of society who are religious, honest and hardworking, and want nothing more than a secure and decent life for their children.

 

In so many places on this planet the debate rages between the extremes  -- those on the margins of society who have contempt for each other, and for anyone else -- who does not endorse their political agenda. 

 

This is the tragedy of politics throughout the world. 

 

There is a Center, a Sensible Center, a Moderate Center, which is outside the political decision making process. 

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

The Sensible Center may be ignored, but in the end it is the Sensible Center that is the answer.

 

When political forces, political parties and political leaders can finally come to realize and fully appreciate that they have a fundamental obligation to society, the world can gallop into the unlimited social, educational, global and scientific promise of the 21^st century.

 

It is our job to find answers. 

 

It is our job to find consensus. 

 

It is our job to marginalize the extremes.

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

Robert F. Kennedy once said that “the future does not belong to those who are content with today…… Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of society.”

 

Vision, Reason and Courage. 

 

Those are the true qualities of leadership.

 

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.