why your group will be listened to when other groups haven't been in the past. I think that was the nature of your question, wasn't it, really?
FEDERICO MAYOR
Yes, but this is his question that I'm going to answer but when you talk about United Nations, we are one group that has been the result of the Secretary General appointment but we do not represent the United Nations. It is for this that I was talking what is the United Nations and why we must reinforce the United Nations. Now, concerning our group, we have been this morning established very clearly that what we want is to link and to establish bridges with the divide that exists today.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Such as? What kind of bridges?
FEDERICO MAYOR
For example to know better the other. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said before, first of all we must consider that we have not all the truth, and the first action is to listen to the others, and for this we must consider many misconceptions that today we have from the others, and when we are talking for example about Islam, we must not talk only about the Arab countries, but the Islamic ...
TIM SEBASTIAN
So when you submit your report, what is the best that we can hope for from you, what is the best that the world can hope for from you?
FEDERICO MAYOR
I think that the most important thing that we are going to suggest to the Secretary General to recommend is to make a very vast interchange of young people of universities, of scientists, of the media, of all those situations in the world that today are isolated.
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK, let me ask the questioner if he's encouraged by your answer. Are you encouraged by that answer?
AUDIENCE Q (M)
I'm encouraged by that but I'm also encouraged by some other ideas in the room, like I'm trying to foster, you know, talking between other people in the region and trying to understand one another, because I think that's one of the main problems is that people don't understand, they don't accept, and what they don't accept, they fear. And so I think combating that will help us resolve much of the problems that we're facing today.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Would you like to have a final word on this?
DESMOND TUTU
I think the world is aware it is in a mess, and because it is in a mess, they are going to have to listen and they are going to listen in part because what we are seeking to communicate is what we have lived as a group. See, this group (the AOC) is not monochrome. This group does not come from one country. This group does not represent just one philosophy, religion. It's people with very diverse views and you would have thought that they would not even make it to first base in terms of being able to understand one another. I am a Christian, there's a Muslim, there's a Jew, we speak all kinds of languages, but if you take my language, being colonised I could understand English, and yet we were able to come to a consensus. We disagreed, I mean, we spoke vigorously. I mean, today actually I thought somebody was about to chew up the co-chair, because I mean, this day they were really insisting this point and this point must be in your community, but in the end, it's remarkable, I mean, that we kept being able to find one another, and if it can happen, yes, it happened at a small scale, the chances are that it can happen on a broad scale. And there are other examples that each one of us is able to bring. I can bring the example of a South Africa that people thought was going to explode, but there we got an example of people finding each other, so one is able to say, you know, an enemy is a friend wanting to be made, and that's not just a facile sort of slogan, it is for real, and if the world doesn't know that it is in a mess, wow!
TIM SEBASTIAN
Diana Buttu, a brief word.
DIANA BUTTU
I think that in this age, we've been largely examining what's wrong with the UN, and we focused on is it the right mandate, is it the right this, is it the right that, but I think if I were to sum up what I think can happen with the UN is, if we transform the United Nations from being the United Nations to that of United People and take the words of the charter and rather than having the charter focus on United Nations being a collective group of nations that implement or don't implement in that case the will of the people, that we actually transform it from being the focus on nations to that of the people itself, and I think once we're able to focus on what the needs of people themselves are, then I think we'll be able to create a much more different world. How can that be done? I think if we ignore the nation state model that has been largely focused on over the course of the past century, instead start focusing on the needs of people. Unfortunately in this era that we're facing now, the needs of many people are not in fact addressed by the United Nations because it is a form that solely focuses on the rights of one state versus another state, and the impact of one state's actions on another state's actions, and I think that we really need to go down to the grass roots level and start focusing on the idea of the United People and that is a global people.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right, we're running out of time and my panel is telling me that they have to get away. It just remains for me to thank all of our distinguished panellists for coming today. Thank you very much to the audience for coming, and hope to see you again. Thank you very much indeed.