Samoa's Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, has addressed a plenary session of the United Nations General Assembly reviewing progress towards achieving Millennium Development Goals.
He described the MDGs as a vision of measurable achievements not mere aspirations and called on the session to be an honest self-assessment in order to identify the gaps and obstacles to achieving the goals:
"Postponing the time to achieve the MGS targets must not be an option or we risk assigning more of our people to remain and slip into destitution. the next five years will be vital . They will determine whether the goals will become tangible realities for everyone to enjoy or mere aspirations of what might have been."
He said despite the set backs of the global financial downturn and last year's tsunami, Samoa remains committed to achieving the MDGs by 2015.
