NEW YORK // Britain's Queen Elizabeth II addressed the United Nations yesterday, more than half a century after she first gave a speech to the world body when the crisis of the time was Suez following an attack by Britain, France and Israel on Egypt in 1956. In her speech yesterday, she reflected that during her lifetime the UN had moved from being a "high-minded aspiration to being a real force for common good" but that "in tomorrow's world, we must all work together as hard as ever if we are truly to be a United Nations".
She said she had witnessed great change since she was last at the UN in 1957, "much of it for the better, particularly in science and technology and in social attitudes", which had come about mostly because of the millions of ordinary people who wanted such change rather than through governments or committees. Challenges ahead included the struggle against terrorism and dealing with climate change, she said.
Speaking on behalf of the British government, a key ally in the US-led war in Afghanistan, she said the aims of the UN charter were enduring. "To promote international peace, security and justice, to relieve and remove the blight of hunger, poverty and disease, to protect the rights and liberties of every citizen," she said. She met Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, Ali Treki, the president of the General Assembly and ambassadors of 15 Commonwealth countries of which she is also head of state. Since the queen, 84, first addressed the UN in 1957, the organisation has grown from 82 to 192 countries, many of which were then British colonies.
Although US-Anglo relations have sometimes experienced strain, from Suez to most recently over the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, opinion polls show the queen commands great respect in the United States even if huge crowds did not line the streets as on her previous two trips to New York. Yesterday's visit of the queen and Prince Philip, her husband, was scheduled to last only five hours and include a tour of Ground Zero where the World Trade Centre stood before the attacks of September 11 and the opening of a garden in downtown Manhattan dedicated to the 67 British victims of those attacks.
Officials said record-breaking heat of more than 37.7 C was unlikely to deter the octogenarian queen, a keen horse-rider who appears robust and healthy. She has toured the United States in previous years including several visits to the Kentucky Derby horse race. Her trip came just two days after the July 4 celebrations to mark 234 years since the US Declaration of Independence from the British monarchy. But the queen appears personally immune to republican zeal as she has appeared on Gallup's annual top 10 list of most admired women a total of 42 time since 1948. Her last trip to New York was in 1976 when she took part in ceremonies to mark the 200th anniversary of US independence.
Queen Elizabeth ascended to the British throne when she was 25 following the death of her father, King George VI. The antics of her four children and eight grand-children have provided much tabloid fodder but the most media hysteria was directed at Princess Diana, her daughter-in-law who was married to Prince Charles. When Diana died in a Paris car crash in 1997 with Dodi Fayed, her boyfriend, the queen was criticised for appearing unmoved by the grief that overwhelmed many Britons and others around the world. But her standing seemed to recover quickly.
The queen spends a great deal of her time promoting the Commonwealth, a grouping of 54 nations all but two of which were former British colonies. In 2012, Britain and the Commonwealth will celebrate her diamond jubilee or 60 years of her reign. She is queen of 16 realms and nominal leader of two billion subjects or almost one-third of the world's population. Before her arrival in New York yesterday, the queen made a nine-day trip to Canada, of which she is also head of state - a largely ceremonial and apolitical role. She was given a personalised BlackBerry during a visit to Research in Motion, which makes the device. In a speech, she also noted Canadian sacrifices in Afghanistan.
She was declared an honorary New Yorker by Abe Beame, who was mayor of the city during her last visit in 1976. Yesterday, Newsday, a New York newspaper, offered tips on how to behave on meeting the queen including the advice to speak only when spoken to and to address her as "your majesty". On her first visit to New York in 1957, she was hailed as a beautiful and poised young woman. "A visit to New York for just a day is really a teaser," she said of her 15 hours in the city.
She rode in the limousine of Dwight Eisenhower, who was then president and who had recently ordered federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the desegregation of a high school. In her first speech to the UN 53 years ago, she delivered a speech of only eight paragraphs and called the world body a place "dedicated to peace, where representatives from all over the world meet to examine the problems of our time".
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