TEHRAN The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director General Koichior Matsuura said Asia offers people a continuing, vivid illustration of the abiding dialogue between all out planet's cultures.

The message, recited by the UNESCO Envoy Galileo Violini to the Conference on Dialogue Among Asian Civilizations, quoted Matsuura as hailing President Mohammad Khatami's idea of dialogue among civilizations as a "marvelously imaginative idea" and warmly welcoming the initiative.

Matsuura voiced the pleasure over the UNESCO Executive Board's accepting his proposal recently to designate such dialogue between cultures and among civilizations as one of the organization's outstanding priorities throughout the whole medium-term period, 2002-2007.

He said that indeed, UNESCO was most privileged to organize, jointly with the government of Iran, a presidential round table on the eve of the United Nations Millennium Summit last September, thus launching this very year.

Matsuura said in this stage of speeding globalization and interdependence, he could think of no worthier and more compelling cause that to bring peoples and nations together through dialogue, openness to one another's spirit, tolerance and mutual respect for their precious diversity, for irreplaceable gifts of every one of people's different civilizations to humanity's common cultural legacy.

No culture is "pure", said the message, adding that every civilization has borrowed from others and been enriched thereby. The United Nations itself, and most singularly UNESCO, were created in the belief that only open dialogue heals discord, and that all the world's peoples are far more united by a common fate than divided by their separate identities.

"UNESCO's mandate includes education, science, culture and communication. This is why UNESCO serves as the world's home for true dialogue among civilizations -- a forum where such dialogue can flourish and bear fruit in every field of human endeavor. Without such dialogue to ensure understanding at the deepest very level among all nations, both between and within all civilizations, cultures and groups, no true peace can effectively endure, nor prosperity last.

"UNESCO is vitally convinced of the need to encourage - through bold programs in education designed to promote a profound culture of peace - the kind of dialogue through which people learn of the cultures of others, listen to what they have to say, build bridges of imaginative sympathy, and so help dispel hatred, ignorance and mistrust. The UNESCO can build the sort of peace which takes firm root, as the founding mandate so well puts it, only in the minds of men. Dialogue concerns all, as individuals, as communities, as whole civil societies. To join in dialogue is to renew one's commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms, to democracy and good governance.

He said that he was convinced that the global community as a whole has much to learn from this great historic Asian experience in so many respects: Political, spiritual, intellectual, philosophical and social.

The idea of a "dialogue among civilizations" is no mere catch- phrase or trite political slogan, said the UNESCO chief, adding, "It is an invitation for us all mentally to leap over our ancient cultural divides in order better to understand one another's world-view and sense of right and wrong.

The message concluded that the more deeply people understand one another, the less they give way to facile prejudice or hate: Hence the urgent call from the very heart of so many communities and societies to pay due heed to their cultural diversity, to be both protected and creatively nourished.