[Pharmboy]

With ethics advisors like that, we obviously do not need any ethics. This just keeps getting better...irony is so ironical.

[kcvl]

Shouldn't we have Separation of Church and U.N.?!!! Why should taxpayer's pay for a "religious summit" when we aren't even suppose to allow prayer in our own schools?!!!

IMO, it's just another way to funnel money to the one worlders.

******


Bawa Jain of the Interfaith Center of New York, a veteran of the interfaith movement, served as the World Peace Summit's secretary-general. Businessman and staunch UN supporter Ted Turner subsidized the event and served as honorary chair. Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development and senior adviser to Kofi Annan on UN reform, was a key organizer of the event. The list of partner and advisory groups included the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, the National Conference for Community and Justice, the United Religions Initiative, and several other interfaith organizations.

As Jain tells the story, the World Peace Summit grew out of a conversation between Turner and Annan. "If you want peace in the world, Kofi," Turner remarked, "you should bring the religious leaders of the world to the UN and make them sign a commitment of peace." According to Jain and other organizers, the World Peace Summit intended to go beyond other interfaith gatherings that merely seek to bring religious and spiritual leaders closer together in a spirit of mutual understanding and harmony. This event emphasized the consistency between the moral foundations of the world's major faiths and the ideals of the United Nations, particularly in the areas of conflict, poverty, and the environment. The religious traditions and the UN have a "common mission," Jain told us. In his mind the UN provides the perfect venue for bringing political and religious leaders together to address the world's problems jointly.

In his introductory remarks prior to Kofi Annan's address to the World Peace Summit, Bawa Jain made three specific requests of the UN: (1) that a council of religious and spiritual advisers to the UN be established; (2) that a summit of religious and spiritual leaders be convened every ten years at the UN; and (3) that a department of religious affairs be created in the UN Secretary-General's office. Such eventualities may yet emerge, but many oppose any attempt to privilege religion at the UN.8