Prime Ministers, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to Oslo.

I have been looking forward to having you here as our guests for a number of reasons:

- The panel has high ambitions and I hope that our role of facilitating our discussions here will bring us closer to fulfilling our mandate given to us by the United Nations and the secretary-general.

- Many of you, the secretariat, and a great number of people around the world have great expectations towards the Panel. We have had a very short time to complete our work, but we are close to completing it, and that is quite an achievement since we met for the first time only five months ago.

- But I am also happy to see you here in Oslo since Norway is such a staunch supporter of the United Nations and an important player in the activities of the United Nations that are under scrutiny by this panel, its development, environment and humanitarian activities.

The outcome of our discussions will be awaited with great anticipation also in this country, and enthusiastic and outspoken friends of the United Nations have been following our work since we started. They will not settle for anything but an excellent report, and that is what we are going to deliver.

But our most important constituency is not the UN in New York, or the Secretary-General, or the friends of the UN in Norway or other countries.

Our most important constituency are those millions and billions who do not enjoy the prosperity and freedoms that many of us take for granted.

Our most important constituency are those whose life situation gave rise to the millennium development goals.

Our most important constituency are the millions who right now wonder how they will make it through this day. – Who do not know where the next dollar will come from.

Who are often without a voice and without a choice.

Its for the sake of the poor and the destitute that we must have and efficient Unietd Nations, one that is well governed, well funded and which will remain a global repository of hope.

That is why we are under an obligation to take a fresh look at the way we have come to build a fragmented UN, one that risks being weakened, marginalized and less relevant.

While it has the potential wield great authority.

It is within the UN that we have formulated universal human rights and overarching development goals.

We have worked within the UN system to abolish

disease such as small-pox,

repressive regimes such as apartheid,

and torture, inhuman and degrading treatement.

Now we are in a situation where more and more people are struggeling with success to break out of poverty, hundred of millions are experiencing substantial improvement in their living conditions and prospects for the future and their children.

But these promises are not universal.

The gaps between the poorest and the not so poor is widening.

We have never had greater capacities to bridge these gaps.

But we cannot allow the international community to waste resources or to wirg towards the millennium development goals in anything but the most effective and rewarding way. Focussing our work , measuring results and showing the world that development as organized by the United Nations pay high rewards.

That is why we need to be radical, open-minded, in the recognitions that the most radical steps we can take is to stand still and do nothing, hoping that the old system will continue to serve us.