Gordon Brown warns next six months will test the world

On Africa, climate, nuclear arms, recession and terrorism, prime minister tells UN it stands 'at a point of no return'
Patrick Wintour
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 September 2009 20.25 BST
Gordon Brown today warned that the world is entering a critical six-month period that is likely to test the resolve of global leaders even more than the banking crisis of the past year did.
Speaking to the UN general assembly in New York, he said that if world leaders showed the moral courage to meet the challenges, they would "have for the first time in human history created a truly global society".
He said: "The great lesson of the last year is that only bold and global action prevented a recession becoming a depression. We have delivered a co-ordinated fiscal and monetary response that the International Labour Organisation estimates has saved 7- to 11 million jobs."
Brown was speaking much later than expected owing to the vast overrun in speeches by other world leaders, notably those of Colonel Gaddafi of Libya and the US president, Barack Obama.
Setting out his foreign policy agenda in the run-up to next year's general election, Obama defined the five new great challenges for the next six months as famine in Africa, nuclear proliferation, climate change, ending the recession and terrorism. On all five issues, he said the world was "at a point of no return".
The lesson of the banking crisis was that "global challenges can only be mastered through global solutions".
In his starkest language yet about the risks of failure at the UN conference on climate change in December in Copenhagen, he describes the talks as "the next great test of our global co-operation".
"If we miss this opportunity to protect our planet, we cannot hope for a second chance some time in the future. There will be no restrospective global agreement to undo the damage we have caused. This is the moment now to limit and reverse climate change we are inflicting on future generations."
He added: "If the poorest and most vulnerable are going to be able to adapt, if the emerging economies are going to embark on low-carbon development paths, if the forest nations are going to slow and stop deforestation, then the richer countries must contribute financially."
He also warned Iran and North Korea that "the world will be even tougher on proliferation, and be ready to consider further sanctions".
He insisted a new non-nuclear pact would require non-nuclear states to prove they were not developing nuclear weapons, changing the whole onus of proof in the international inspection regime.
He also confirmed that, as part of the review conference next May, he would offer to reduce the number of planned replacement Trident nuclear submarines from four to three. But in comments outside the assembly speech, he denied the reduction in the number of submarines would lead to a fall in the number of weapons.
On the economy, he argued the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh would have to consider carefully when to reduce the impact of stimulus measures, but he insisted: "We must not turn off the life support for our economy prematurely."
He hailed an agreement announced yesterday that should bring free healthcare to 10 million Africans and Asians, and claimed that the beginnings of universal free health care in Africa were emerging in countries such as Burundi, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Liberia and Ghana.