Celebrities urge leaders to do more for peace

Published September 23, 2005

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 22: Oscar wining actor Michael Douglas, primate expert Jane Goodall and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel visited the United Nations on Wednesday and called on world leaders to do more to turn words into deeds.

The four celebrities joined the UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan to observe International Day of Peace.

Peace is not just a word, “it is a state of mind,” said Italian author and journalist Anna Cataldi. The words uttered at the Summit “need time to be absorbed before they can become a reality,” she added.

Actor and director Michael Douglas said to have some 190 countries come here and agree on one document was in itself ‘quite an extraordinary effort, and something that should be looked upon in a very positive, very constructive way instead in the rather diluted way in which it seems to have been presented.”

Primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall said that it was good to see the UN and other countries acknowledging global warming as ‘an incredibly serious issue’.

“It is up to us, to those of us that care, to every single person, to make sure that whatever heads of state say, we are going to work on the environment for our children,” she added.