Agreement has been reached on the UN Summit outcome document. It is not as ambitious as Norway had hoped, but several important decisions are in line with Norway’s priorities.

- This outcome document will make the UN Summit less successful than we would have wished, but it is far from being a failure, Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Petersen commented at the opening of the summit. We are disappointed by the lack of progress on non-proliferation and disarmament. But progress has been made in several other areas, and we must make sure we take advantage of it, said Mr Petersen.

Norway has taken a broad approach to the summit and has given priority to a number of other issues in addition to non-proliferation and disarmament, such as intensifying co-operation on reaching the Millennium Development Goals and restructuring development co-operation; enhancing UN peace-building efforts; strengthening the UN’s human rights bodies and its humanitarian response capability; and modernising and reforming the UN. Norway has also stressed that the outcome document should take account of women’s concerns and participation.

Norway was disappointed that it was not possible to reach concrete results on non-proliferation and disarmament. Still, significant progress has been made due to Norway’s initiative. Compared with just a few months ago, there is now far broader international agreement on important non-proliferation and disarmament issues.

- I would venture to say that Norway has played a constructive role as regards the issues of non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament, said the Foreign Minister. We are being listened to, and there are clear expectations for Norway to continue playing an active role. This was also reflected in UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s opening address at the summit, where Norway was the only country he mentioned specifically. He stressed how important it is that we continue to pursue our efforts in this field. This gives us an obligation to do so, said Mr Petersen.

Norway is disappointed that it was not possible to agree on a definition of terrorism. It is, however, positive that the outcome document acknowledges the link between development, peace, security and human rights. It is encouraging that the summit has reaffirmed that the conditions for the use of force must be based on the UN Charter.

The outcome document refers to and reaffirms the MDGs and gives broad support to the restructuring of development co-operation advocated by Norway and others in recent years. On the other hand, the document is disappointingly weak on issues related to the environment and climate. We regret that it was not possible to agree on stronger wording with regard to the monitoring of commitments.

Norway welcomes the decisions aimed at strengthening UN peace-building efforts, for example to establish a peace-building commission and a peace-building fund. It is positive that human rights-related efforts will be boosted through the establishment of a UN Human Rights Council and that agreement was reached on increasing allocations to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. However, complex negotiations remain before any final conclusions can be drawn. We welcome that the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity is clearly established in the document.

Regarding UN reform, clear – although in many ways only temporary – progress has been made in the outcome document. Much remains to be done before firm conclusions can be drawn as to whether the administrative reforms really address the needs for change that have been identified.