In this time of globalization, with all its advantages, the poor are the most vulnerable to having their traditions, relationships and knowledge and skills ignored and denigrated, and experiencing development with a great sense of trauma, loss and social disconnectedness.

So the first thing you need to do about conflict is to prevent it, and the best way of preventing it is by dealing with the question of poverty.

The notion of the world as a village is becoming a reality.

Well the specific role of the World Bank is to be ready with financial assistance immediately after this emergency takes place because you need to reconnect water, you need to reconnect power, you need roads, you need bridges, and that has to be done urgently.

The first thing that you need to deal with is the issue of equity and poverty.

Ownership is a sine qua non of sustainable development.

It's going to be possible to rebuild the physical aspects of Kosovo. I was there recently, and you get a sense of the destruction of homes. Infrastructure and the countryside is relatively untouched. I think the biggest problem will not be the physical reconstruction it will be the emotional and mental reconstruction.

I think that's one of the reasons for the Sarajevo conference, that Yugoslavia, Serbia, return to the family of nations because enduring peace can only come when you have Serbia within that framework.

I was deeply concerned then, and have become more concerned since, that unless we can deal with the questions of development and the questions of poverty, there's no way that we're going to have a peaceful world for our children.

If you want peace, you've got to deal with people you don't just deal with objects. And whether they take it as a responsibility or not, the success or failure in Kosovo is going to be the success or failure of building, first, economic hope, and then trying to heal the damage that's been done.

The future is in our hands. We are not hapless bystanders. We can influence whether we have a planet of peace, social justice, equity, and growth or a planet of unbridgeable differences between peoples, wasted resources, corruption, and terror.

If you're changing the status quo, whatever move you make is disrupting something else.

But when someone is on a winning horse, and everything looks wonderful, it's very hard as an outsider to persuade them something is wrong.

The issue of poverty is not a statistical issue. It is a human issue.