Cotidianul- Report on the participation of Former President of Romania Emil Constantinescu at the ONU, Levant Initiative for Global Peace

Cotidianul - June 26th, 2013; The Former President of Romania, Emil Constantinescu, participated in the UN summit on the Levant Initiative for Global Peace held at the UN headquarters in New York on the 24th-25th June 2013.
  June 26th, 2013

“If the globalization cannot be avoided, and then it can be remodeled”. Emil Constantinescu at the ONU, about Cultural Diplomacy

The Former President of Romania, Emil Constantinescu, participated in the UN meeting on the Levant Initiative for Global Peace held at the UN headquarters in New York on the 24th-25th June 2013. As President of the Academy for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, Emil Constantinescu gave the opening ceremony speech entitled “The Levant Initiative for Global Peace”.

The following participants were present at the summit: Dr. Yizthzak Dayan, Chief Rabbi of Geneva and the representative of the European Rabbi Conference at the UN; Dr. Abdusallam Mraihh, the Mission-Peace Coordinator; Sheikh Ramzi, the Director of the ICRA Institute at Oxford University; the Chairman of Great’s Britain Musulman Conseil; Bishop Enoch Adeboye from SUA, leader of RCCG, the biggest Pentecostal movement in the world; Rabbi Benyamin Abrahamson, Director of the Historic Research in the Islam and Judaism Committee at Yale University; Omer Salem, Founder of the Ibn Rushd Institute; congressman Peter King; Ariel Atias, member of the Israeli Knesset; Rabbi Dr. Elie Abadie of Yale University, Member of the Forum for Israel and Global Ethics and Dr. Jeana Adebayo, International Coordinator of the Christ the Redeemer’s Friends Trust Organization.

“I was born at the beginning of the Second World War, in a 15th Century citadel, on the border of the ex-soviet empire. I have experienced foreign occupation, refugees and life under a right wing military dictatorship and reprisals against a communist dictatorship. I have participated in the anti-communist movement and I have witnessed inter ethnical conflicts, the threat of a civil war and a war about country borders. I am a minerologist by profession. The original minerologists dreamt of turning common metals into gold.

We need to rediscover the cultural exchanges which took place between past civilisations. This does not mean we should simply try to change relations between friends and enemies, but bring people together with the shared goal of consolidating PEACE. Freedom of conscience, tolerance and pluralism are the values that can help us overcome tendencies of hate and revenge. This can ultimately help us build new bridges between old cultures and civilizations and remind us of what we share rather than what separates us. (…) The current movements calling for freedom, democracy and human rights that are taking place in North Africa and the Middle East will not only change those countries but the entire world. It’s about the possibility of implementing a security system based on what we mainly call “soft power” and Cultural Diplomacy as a meins of consolidating peace” (Emil Constantinescu)