Of course the UN brings in a lot of moral authority.

It also seems that the Afghans themselves want to avail themselves of this opportunity and all recognize that the UN is uniquely qualified to help bring them together.

In the globalized world that is ours, maybe we are moving towards a global village, but that global village brings in a lot of different people, a lot of different ideas, lots of different backgrounds, lots of different aspirations.

There is a story which is not being told strongly enough of the Afghan employees of the UN inside the country who are saving hundreds of thousands of lives everyday by their bravery and nobody talks of them.

The third point is that for some time the UN has been talking about helping Afghanistan in the reconstruction of the country but there has never been any real commitment by the international community to provide resources for that.

There again, that is a fundamental principle: no two situations are alike.