Kurt Waldeheim

In my last annual report as Secretary-General, I tried to assess the United Nations' ability to measure up to the new challenges of our times. "I have to say," I concluded in 1981, "that for all our efforts and our undoubted sincerity, the Organization has not yet managed to cut through the political habits and attitudes of earlier and less hurried centuries and to come to grips decisively with [the] new factors of our existence."