We've seen three wars.

We have seen three wars.

Then came two major initiatives.

We have been here before.

We have seen civil wars. We have seen ideological wars.

And we have seen this recently in Britain.

We have had achievements, but we have also had setbacks.

The results, as we have seen, have always been positive.

We have recently had our own cycles of exuberance and disintegration.

I was just in Paris a few days ago.

Now that Russia has restored its capability, such a move would be unthinkable.

I think today we were a witness to such a moment where unquantifiable victories are won.

Over the past decade, we have seen a crisis of authenticity emerge.

This year we witnessed yet again brutal acts of terrorism.

There was a time when parliamentary misbehavior was dealt with firmly.

Yes, we have watched the humiliating fall of Wall Street s masters of the universe.

We have seen ethnic wars and wars fought to make governments stop killing their citizens.

We have seen greater weakness than anticipated in the United States and Japan.

In recent years, we have witnessed countless tragedies caused by terrorist acts.

We have seen the last part of this cycle over the last two years.

Over the past few months we have seen encouraging signs in the Middle East.

During the past year, we have witnessed the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the holding of a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and, more recently, the conclusion of the agreement on the Gaza Egypt border crossing between Israel and Palestine.

Now I'm not talking about a radical drop in population like we saw in the Black Death.

Yet we have seen major changes recently in homeowners insurance rates.

It is the end of an adventure that was not at all good for France.

We have seen there were numerous examples of Muslim communities working together with fellow Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian citizens to help each other (especially in the aftermath of the floods and landslides), Hisham said.

Over the past few years, we have witnessed considerable change in attitudes towards nuclear energy.

We have witnessed with great concern the series of conflict situations that have been plaguing Africa for many years.

Over the past few months, we have witnessed a strong and solid commitment by both sides.

When the crisis spread to Portugal and Spain, there was the 1 trillion rescue.

And, as we have all witnessed in recent months, Arab public opinion clearly matters.

After all, some women have long had the strength and the will to make it to the top.

The challenges of this phase cannot be underestimated, as we have seen in the aftermath of the tsunami.

In the last decade, we have seen an enormous growth in the community and independent media sector.

We have had important peacebuilding successes, but we have also seen too many failures.

We had fantastic friends and we saw the wonders of the world, like Kilimanjaro, Serengeti and the Olduvai Gorge.

On the other hand, economic interdependence among East Asia s states has been deepening.

We have seen three very visible cases of such growth boosts in three different decades.

We have already seen a significant boost to economic activity from India s construction of its highway system.

There has been some progress on bank repair, but it is too slow, especially in Europe.

There has also been effective practical cooperation on the future of Iraq and Afghanistan, Arab Israeli relations, and Lebanon.

We have seen what happens when prevention programmes succeed, as they have in Brazil, Cambodia and India.

We have seen some welcome new commitments, both from developing countries and donors.

We, too, rejoiced, especially when we witnessed some countries' generous contributions to the Fund.

We have had a huge rebound from the bottom of the world s stock markets in 2009.