
I was in New York September 19-21 for various missions, primarily to serve as moderator for a day-long launch meeting for a High Level interfaith Forum within the United Nations system. This note reports briefly on that meeting and its conclusions, with some background as the effort may not be widely known to you and other Bank colleagues. I will report separately, to those most directly concerned, on other New York meetings, which included inter alia a presentation for the UN Ethics Office staff on our work and approach to ethics, a meeting organized by the Cordoba Initiative with Malaysian Prime Minister Badawi, a Council on Foreign Relations meeting with Bolivia's President Evo Morales, meetings with Carnegie on the C-100 education initiative, and the annual Appeal of Conscience dinner which featured awards and speeches by inter alia President Lula. The latter was at the invitation of Count Auletta, benefactor of WFDD, and I was able to discuss WFDD strategy and prospects with him.