It's going to be possible to rebuild the physical aspects of Kosovo. I was there recently, and you get a sense of the destruction of homes. Infrastructure and the countryside is relatively untouched. I think the biggest problem will not be the physical reconstruction; it will be the emotional and mental reconstruction.

I was deeply concerned then, and have become more concerned since, that unless we can deal with the questions of development and the questions of poverty, there's no way that we're going to have a peaceful world for our children.

The future is in our hands. We are not hapless bystanders. We can influence whether we have a planet of peace, social justice, equity, and growth or a planet of unbridgeable differences between peoples, wasted resources, corruption, and terror.

If you want peace, you've got to deal with people; you don't just deal with objects. And whether they take it as a responsibility or not, the success or failure in Kosovo is going to be the success or failure of building, first, economic hope, and then trying to heal the damage that's been done.

I think that's one of the reasons for the Sarajevo conference, that Yugoslavia, Serbia, return to the family of nations because enduring peace can only come when you have Serbia within that framework.

The issue of poverty is not a statistical issue. It is a human issue.

In this time of globalization, with all its advantages, the poor are the most vulnerable to having their traditions, relationships and knowledge and skills ignored and denigrated, and experiencing development with a great sense of trauma, loss and social disconnectedness.