South Africa is regarded as being an extraordinarily important country - not just for South Africa, but for Southern Africa, for the BRICS, working now in a new way in which power is becoming more shared - thankfully.

I was influenced at an early age by Gandhi, and I have read many biographies of him. I have been greatly influenced in the last twenty years by Mandela. It is amazing that he has managed to keep such a balance, that he came out of prison after such a long time as a rounded, holistic person who could reach difficult accommodations with generosity.

Freedom from discrimination for women, ensuring that female children can learn to read, these are human needs for half the human race, not western values.

There is a democratic deficit. In Latin America in particular there is real concern that democratic governments are not delivering and that is leading to experimenting with different models that are much less democratic. But even in Western Europe the deficit is a problem.

When a genocidal killing occurs, as happened in Rwanda, it is not just an internal domestic matter.

An endless war against terrorism can tend to inflate the terrorists, because being at war is attractive to some angry, unemployed, disaffected youth.

Many people think that we have no shared value system in the world today but we actually do.