Zardari urges UN to promote religious harmony across the globe

ABU DHABI - Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has made an impassioned plea to the United Nations to work out special plans for promoting cultural and religious harmony across the globe.

In a meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on the sidelines of the fourth Energy Summit in the UAE, Zardari warned that religious harmony was fast eroding across the world, and said these tendencies also “crossed national boundaries and religious divides”.

“Extremism is being manifested in various forms including violence, intolerance,” the Daily Times quoted Zardari, as saying.

The president said that tolerance and harmony could not be fragmented and compartmentalised into Islam or Christianity.

“Promotion of tolerance and harmony have to cross religious, geographical divides… exceptions and selectivity will shake faith in the universal norms of the UN Charter,” he added.

Calling upon the UN to give special attention to promoting religious and cultural harmony in the world, he rued that “not only there is disharmony between different cultures, but it is on the increase.”

Zardari said it was disturbing that in the wake of the war on terrorism, “people were generally receding from the universal values of tolerance and harmony advocated by the UN.”

“We are concerned over this trend which seems to corroborate the ominous theory of a clash of civilisations,” he added.

Pakistan had come into existence in the shadow of the United Nations, as both were created in the fading years of the 1940s, said Zardari, adding that his country supported the universal values of tolerance and harmony. (ANI)