Walter
and Leonore Annenberg Award
for Excellence in Diplomacy
| The Academy hosts an annual award luncheon to recognize an individual who has made exemplary contributions to the field of American diplomacy. The Recipients of the Academy's “Excellence in Diplomacy” award are recommended by the Executive Committee and approved by the Board of Directors. |  |
 |
The 2001 Award for Excellence in Diplomacy was presented to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at our Awards Luncheon on November 28, 2001, “I commend you for your dedication to advancing international peace and security, and to promoting human rights, tolerance, and the dignity of the individual. These efforts enhance the safety and well-being of people everywhere, and provide the foundation for humanity’s continued advancement and progress.” - George W. Bush His remarks are reprinted below. |
TWELFTH ANNUAL DIPLOMATIC
AWARDS CEREMONY
BEN FRANKLIN DINNING ROOM
US DEPARTMENT OF STATE
WASHINGTON, DC
NOVEMBER 28, 2001
Joseph Sisco: (reading a letter from President Bush)
Dear Mr. Secretary General.
Congratulations as you receive the 2001 Excellence in Diplomacy Award from the American Academy of Diplomacy.
The 21st century offers America and the world both incredible opportunities and tremendous challenges. Recent events in the United States and around the world have demonstrated that we must work together to defend freedom and to uphold international peace and security. At the same time, we must also continue to address the ongoing tragedies of hunger, poverty, HIV/AIDS and other diseases, and illiteracy that plague so many of our fellow human beings.
As Secretary-General of the United Nations, you have helped lead the way in these vital endeavors. I commend you for your dedication to advancing international peace and security, and to promoting human rights, tolerance, and the dignity of the individual. These efforts enhance the safety and well-being of people everywhere, and provide the foundation for humanity’s continued advancement and progress. I look forward to continuing our partnership as we pursue common aims.Best wishes on this special occasion.
[signed] George W. Bush
Sisco: And now the Academy is honored to present its “Excellence in Diplomacy” award to the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan. But before doing so, I would ask Mrs. Annan to stand and be greeted. Mrs. Annan in her own right has had a distinguished career in addition to raising a family of three.
Mr. Secretary General, we congratulate you for winning the Nobel Peace Prize which you so richly deserve. Ours is a much more modest organization, but we are second to none in our esteem and admiration for you, and we are proud that the Academy made its selection well before the Nobel Prize committee made its decision! You are the first non-American to receive our award. I presume, Mr. Secretary General, to give one main reason why I believe you have been an outstanding and successful Secretary General. It is that you have not only reflected impeccable integrity but have addressed problems pragmatically and at the same time maintained a vision of what a better world of peace, prosperity, and justice can be. You are dealing effectively with the realities of today without losing the hopes of tomorrow. The world community is in your debt for your years of service.
I now ask my former colleague, John Negroponte, the US Ambassador to the UN, to present the award to the Secretary General. John is a former career Foreign Service officer, a professional’s professional in every way. He served for 35 years in a number of high level positions, including as our Ambassador in Honduras, Mexico and the Philippines. I am sure his outstanding service of the past four decades will be replicated at the UN during these critical days.
John Negroponte: Ambassadors Sisco and Grossman, Mr. Secretary General, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a great pleasure to be here today in a very special forum and on a very special occasion.
Diplomacy, as we all know, is a combination of great vision and small details – and having the skill and experience not to let either one overwhelm the other.
At the same time we also know nothing is more deceiving than the morning’s headlines when something significant has been accomplished. An enormous amount of work is condensed into a few words while provisional advances take on the aspect of permanence.
This Academy and its distinguished membership are testaments to these facts. You all are life-long participants in a trade that never rests or reaches a conclusion, and yet you persist in believing that there are ways to organize the details of international interests and perspectives so that great visions can be fulfilled and noble ideals can be honored.
I certainly share that belief and have taken on my current assignment at the United Nations with tremendous enthusiasm. As the events of the last few months have reaffirmed, the UN must play a major role if we are to resolve some of the world’s most difficult problems.
On September 11 America was attacked. Within a day the General Assembly, the Security Council and Secretary General had made their solidarity with us clear. And by the end of September the Security Council had passed an historic resolution – 1373 – directing the full membership to cut off the terrorists’ finances and deprive them of safe haven.
This kind of swift response is testimony to many things, but it certainly reflects the principles and élan of a Secretary General who, from his first days in office, instilled in the UN a fresh sense of purpose and responsiveness.
Kofi Annan, the first Secretary General to be elected from the ranks of the United Nations staff, has emphasized human rights as the touchstone of his tenure and, in his words, “bringing the United nations closer to the people.” There is no element of the UN program, from administrative reform to peacekeeping and development, which he has not addressed and improved.
Among us I think I can call him a diplomat’s
diplomat and be well understood. The Secretary General is a wise counselor,
and indefatigable administrator, and a courageous leader. He knows the
United States well from having studied and lived here so long, and he
is generous in offering the President, the Secretary of State, and me
his best advice and full support.
It’s therefore a great privilege to be able to present Kofi Annan
with the American Academy of Diplomacy’s highest award for his extraordinary
contributions to the peace, prosperity and well-being of the world’s
peoples. We in the United States are deeply grateful for your efforts,
Mr. Secretary General. Your admirers in our diplomatic corps are legion.
Congratulations.
Kofi Annan: Thank
you for this warm welcome and those kind words of introduction. It is
a great pleasure to join you today, and to see so many familiar faces
in the audience.
Thank you, also, for the honour of awarding me the Academy’s “Excellence
in Diplomacy” award. I know I follow a long line of distinguished
honorees. At the same time, I see the tribute as being paid less to me
than to the work of the United Nations. On behalf of my colleagues around
the world -- from clinics to ceasefire lines, from conference rooms to
refugee camps –- I thank you warmly for this recognition.
Let me also congratulate David McCullough for winning the Academy’s award for distinguished writing on American diplomacy.
High-stakes diplomacy is unfolding at this
very moment, as United Nations officials, Afghan faction leaders and others
meet in Bonn in an effort to usher in a new era of peace for the people
of that long-suffering nation. Thus it seems timely to share with you
some thoughts about diplomacy -- how it has changed, and most importantly
how it can serve us in the 21st century.
The business of using envoys to conduct negotiations between states dates
back to antiquity. The farthest reaches of recorded history in China,
Egypt and India all show signs of practices governing relations between
neighbours, states, and kingdoms. Indeed, the late Harold Nicolson, perhaps
the foremost authority on the subject, suggested that even the earliest
pre-humans had to work out suitable arrangements for living in adjacent
caves and sharing hunting territories.
Since then, diplomacy has developed machinery,
techniques, language, conventions and professional ethics. You in this
room, seasoned diplomats with combined experience spanning several generations,
know how daunting the tasks are that diplomacy is asked to tackle; and
how difficult it can be to make progress -- whether it is a peace agreement
you are negotiating, or ground rules for world trade. But I think you
will agree that without the tools of diplomacy, and without the skills
and the will to use them, the world might be an even messier place than
it is.
Still, the world is changing rapidly, and we, the practitioners of diplomacy,
must adapt.
Diplomacy was once confined largely to the arena of political relations
between states, with the primary goal of preventing or resolving conflict.
Today, conflicts are more often within states than between them, rendering
the diplomat’s task that much more complex.
The talks in Bonn illustrate one of the key roles of this new diplomacy. It is not for the United Nations or anyone else to impose any particular arrangement on the Afghan people, but rather to assist them in seizing the opportunity offered by this meeting, at this moment in Afghan history. Here and elsewhere, it is the parties themselves who must break the cycle of misery and violence, who must place the interests of their people first, who must choose the path of compromise over conflict -- a path that has proved singularly difficult in the past decade.
It is essential now to create credible institutions, and for any new Afghan government to respect and uphold human rights and ensure that previously excluded groups, particularly women, are full participants. It is also clear that a massive programme of relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction is going to be needed over many years if Afghanistan is to get back on its feet. Much diplomacy will be required to put together this intricate mosaic.
But even more significant than this change in style has been a change in substance: diplomacy has expanded its remit, moving far beyond bilateral political relations between states into a multilateral, multi-faceted enterprise encompassing almost every realm of human endeavour.
Not that the need for diplomacy outside the realm of pure politics is entirely new. After all, the Bretton Woods institutions are as old as the United Nations itself, and some of the specialised agencies, such as the International Labour Organisation and the International Telegraphic Union, are even older.
But the accelerating pace of globalization and economic integration compels us to take this diplomacy to a new level. This year alone, we have seen three striking examples:
-- In June, after some very difficult negotiations on issues of great cultural sensitivity, the General Assembly reached agreement on a global strategy to combat HIV/AIDS;
-- In September, very soon after the terrorist attacks on the United States, the Security Council adopted a wide-ranging resolution aimed at ending the financing of international terrorism; and
-- Earlier this month, in Qatar, the World Trade Organisation agreed to open a new Round of trade negotiations --a Round in which, I hope and believe, developing countries will for the first time be well equipped to defend their interests.
In all those developments the United States has been fully engaged, and has made a vital contribution to the outcome. In some other areas, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court diplomatic progress is hampered, though not completely blocked, by American opposition. I hope in time this will change. More immediately, I hope the United States will play an active part in the coming Conference on Financing for Development, to be held in Mexico next March. This could be decisive for our efforts to achieve the halving of extreme poverty in the world by 2015 -- and other goals which were set in principle by the Millennium Summit last year, but can only be achieved if Member States apply real financial and political muscle to the task.
I do not mean to suggest that multilateral diplomacy is an automatic recipe for harmony and progress. No doubt there will always be times and places where interests prove irreconcilable, cooperation falters, or the age-old competition for power and advantage prevails. Yet the more we advance, the more we are aware of our common interest in maintaining a viable way of life on this planet. Multilateral diplomacy offers a way to articulate and pursue one’s national interest while making common cause with others. In fact, when it comes to dealing with problems such as pollution, the drug trade or terrorism –- none of which respects sovereignty or national borders –- I find it hard to imagine real success being achieved in any other way.
Diplomacy is still regarded with scepticism in many quarters. Some see it as capable of attaining only the lowest, slowest common denominator; others think it is preoccupied exclusively with protocol, rank and ceremony. Most depressingly, and I believe unjustly, many believe it lacks a moral compass.
Certainly diplomacy has had its shameful moments in history, and –- like any other profession -- it has its flawed practitioners. But to think in stereotypes is to ignore not only the need for pragmatism in many cases, where the ideal is simply not achievable, but also the core principles and values that must underpin that pragmatism.
Properly conducted, diplomacy can help us avoid finding ourselves amid the ruins of war, wondering what went wrong. It can help parties in dispute to draw back from the abyss before it is too late; to confront each other across the table instead of the battlefield; to seize opportunities instead of squandering them; and to see that by threatening each other they threaten themselves. Among my hopes for the new century is that all countries will recognise diplomacy, both bilateral and multilateral, as their first line of national defence -– and therefore to give it as high a priority as they give defence when they allocate their financial and political resources.
Thank you again for the award you have given me today. And thank you for your commitment to the United Nations. Our Charter was a triumph of diplomacy, including American diplomacy. But we shall realize its goals only with your commitment and support.
Thank you very much.
Sisco: In closing, the Academy wishes to thank the Annenberg Foundation and others for their generous support of our programs.
