IN ISLAMABAD, DIRECTOR-GENERAL STRESSES ROLE OF CULTURAL CROSS FERTILIZATION PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Paris, April 6 (No.2001-54) - UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura today highlighted the historic and ever-pertinent importance of inter-cultural dialogue in an address to the opening session of the International Colloquium on the Indus Valley Civilization in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he is on an official visit of two days.

The Colloquium is organized by the Ministry of Culture of Pakistan in collaboration with UNESCO within the framework of the United Nations International Year for the Dialogue Among Civilizations, to which, Mr Matsuura said, UNESCO “is fully committed”.

Recalling the launch of the Year in New York last autumn, he noted that the debates which were then held during the Round Table of Heads of State and Government “underlined the overwhelming importance attached by the international community to the improvement of our reciprocal knowledge of, and appreciation for, each other’s cultures as a way of consolidating the foundations of world peace.”

“I believe that is important for our understanding of each other,” he said, explaining: “No civilization is ‘pure’. We are all rooted in cultures and civilizations that have fed and enriched themselves through this cross-fertilization. If one of the successes of this UN Year were to be greater recognition of this fact, I would be happy. What a factor in reduction of tension that would be, as peoples realized that centuries-old ‘enemies’ had a shared past and a common will to shape the future.”

Mr Matsuura described the Indus Valley Civilization, which from 2,500 BC to 1,700 BC, reached a remarkable urban development, as “a decisive source of dialogue, as a great corridor for communication and commercial, cultural and human exchanges between the Near East, Central Asia and the Indo-Gangetic region.”

“If we can pierce the mystery of the language, writing and original settlers of the Indus, we might even […] rethink our entire conception of Eurasian civilizations”, Mr Matsuura said, adding that the Colloquium should “cast light on the common heritage that the Indus civilization represents for all the peoples and countries of the region.”

He declared: “Here we touch upon the fundamental purpose of the dialogue of civilizations: to permit, by the shared re-appropriation of a heritage, the rewriting of a common history and the uncovering of what unites people.” This should, he said, “promote mutual understanding and lay the foundations for peace, not only by fostering mutual knowledge, but above all by recognizing interactions, mutual contributions and signs of cross-fertilization.”

“The ultimate goal of the Islamabad colloquium is,” Mr Matsuura said, “through the shining example of the Indus civilization, to draw attention to the fruitful dialectic of respect for cultural pluralism and recognition of a common heritage as the basis for a genuine dialogue of civilizations. It is through this respect and this recognition that the peoples of the region, in all the diversity of their beliefs and values, will themselves become the defenders and champions of a common physical and intangible heritage whose richness is universally recognized.”

Mr Matsuura concluded by referring to the recent destruction of the two giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan: “The tragedy of the destruction of the Bamiyan monuments underlines the urgency of this ‘cultural ethic’. And I am convinced that it is through education alone, that such an ethic can be built in the minds of men and women. For the tragedy of Bamiyan is the tragedy of a religious fanaticism that has blossomed on the bed of ignorance.”

During his visit, the Director-General held talks with the President of Pakistan, Mohammad Rafiq Tarar; Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf; and several ministers, notably Foreign Affairs Minister Abdul Sattar; Education Minister Zubeda Jalal; Minister of Women’s Development and Social Welfare Attiya Inayatullah; and Sports, Culture, Youth and Minorities Minister S.K. Tressler. President Mohammad Rafiq Tarar bestowed on Mr Matsuura the prestigious Hilal-I-Pakistan distinction.

During his stay in Pakistan, Mr Matsuura also visited Takht-i-Bahi, the beautifully preserved ruin of a 1st century Buddhist monastery, inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List since 1980.

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