UNITED NATIONS, Nov 6: The United Nations General Assembly on Friday unanimously adopted a resolution tabled by Pakistan for the “Promotion of religious and cultural understanding, harmony and cooperation”.

The resolution acknowledges the valuable contribution of various initiatives including Pakistan’s enlightened moderation as a strategy to promote peace and harmony.

It also recognizes that inter-religious dialogue and understanding, including awareness of differences and commonalities among peoples and civilizations contribute to the peaceful resolutions of conflicts and disputes and reduce the potential for violence.

While recognizing the challenges of intolerance and conflicts that exist and create divide across countries and regions and pose a threat to peaceful relations among nations, the resolution emphasizes that all cultures and civilizations share a common set of universal values and can contribute to the enrichment of humankind.

Introducing the resolution, Pakistan’s former foreign secretary, Ambassador Riaz Khokhar stressed that the challenge by the world every single day was to replace fear with acceptance, harassment with tolerance and hatred with respect.

“Cooperation –- and not the clash of civilizations –- must be the paradigm for our collective endeavours”, he added.