Friends, thank your for this opportunity to address you briefly, and electronically, at the outset of this important meeting on progress and culture. Let me begin by congratulating GTZ and the Goethe Institute on this initiative and by thanking those of you who have travelled around the world to Berlin to take part as well as the Berliners amongst you, who are your hosts.

If you believe in the noble aim set for the United Nations by its founders you are obliged to accept the critical importance of dialogue across cultures. The United Nations is founded on the notion that we all possess shared desires and beliefs. The belief that we must save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, the desire for social progress to achieve better standards of life and larger freedom and the conviction that all human beings deserve to be treated with dignity – to mention only those values that are explicitly set out in our Charta, from which I have been quoting.

In 1996 Professor Samuel Huntington looked at the globalizing world emerging from the cold war and predicted a clash of civilizations. Indeed, some today argue that the problems that are occupying our leaders, and the headlines, are a consequence of the inherent failings or weaknesses of some countries. Needless to say, we do not accept this assessment.

I even dare to suggest that the real failing is the modern globalized world itself. We live in the age of the information revolution. But the information revolution, unlike the French revolution, offers a great deal of "liberté sans fraternité" and no "égalité". The failure of our globalized world to improve the lives of the millions in Subsaharan Africa who do not have access to the infrastructure needed to enter the global economy and who must do so if their economies are to be sustainable is a reproach to us all.

We must battle to end the digital divide and ensure that the benefits of globalization are available to everyone. But we must also ensure that victory does not come at the cost of their unique cultures because this would not be a victory at all. It is simplistic to insist that progress is a straightforward thing and dangerous to accept that the imposition of even the best modern notions are without cost.

In 2003 in this very city of Berlin I first tell you the story of one of the problems that the United Nations faced in its efforts to help reconstruct East Timor. As part of the UN efforts to help build a new state, we were obliged to create a judicial system of international standards complete with an adversarial system of justice; English prosecutor or defence attorney attempt to demolish each other's arguments in the pursuit of truth. United Nations experts charged with training Timorese the system uncovered a major obstacle. In traditional Timorese culture, guilty parties are expected to confess their crimes, and justice is then meted out compassionately. So in order to ensure the not-guilty plea required by Western court systems the UN experts had first to train the Timorese to lie.

Is that progress, is that justice? And if so, at what price? Is it a thing worth the cost?

In this case the Timorese themselves were driving the process and the answer to that question could only come from them. But one of our tasks as outsiders was to ensure that they could ask the question.

We of the United Nations have a proud history of developing international norms that identify our revealed shared values, ranging from the international declaration of human rights to more recent international instruments to combat terrorism. However, we do not have a one-size-fits-all answer to reconcile in our differences. Anymore that we believe that anyone culture or anyone history carries greater virtues and benefits than another.

What I can say with confidence is that our experience in peace-keeping, in fostering sustainable development, in combating HIV/aids, and in promoting better protection of the rights of women clearly demonstrates that you cannot achieve these goals without local ownership, without listening to local people, without empowering local communities, and without understanding the virtues and strengths of what host societies and people have to offer.

And what is the key to this? Dialogue, exactly the process that you are exploring and at this meeting are engaged. Because of this, I am sorry that I am unable to hear your discussions first hand. But I look forward to learning about them and perhaps even continuing them in some future days in New York.

Please accept my best wishes and those of the United Nations for the success of your conference.