NEW YORK — In his statement at the high-level plenary meeting of the 60th UN General Assembly, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about "the split of civilizations" and the need to overcome it.

He used the phrase in the context of "coordinating international cooperation in the fight against terrorism as the ideological successor of Nazism."

He said, "It is not only through the concerted actions of the states that we should counteract the ideologists of the split of civilizations and terrorist aggression. It is of principal importance that the broad potential of civil society, mass media, cultural and humanitarian cooperation, as well as of equal interdenominational dialogue be engaged.

"Who else will take the role of coordinating and organizing this work but the United Nations? And in doing so, it can rely on the support of all the Member States as well as on cooperation of the influential international organizations and entities of regional integration."

These words are strongly reminiscent of Kofi Annan's August statement on the Global Agenda for Dialogue Among Civilizations and his plan to create a High-level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations, announced less than a fortnight before the 60th GA, on September 2.

The term "dialogue of civilizations" was coined by the former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, who cautioned against an ideological split between Christians and Muslims. He spoke about this in the 1990s, long before the 9/11 tragedy in the United States which shook the world. Khatami meant that the world should respect and treat equally different values, ideas and religions in order to combat growing intolerance and mutual mistrust in the world, and the attempts of the leaders of one civilization to force their values and principles on others. The UN proclaimed 1998 the Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations.

Would we have had terrorist attacks in New York, Beslan and London if the world had listened to the Iranian president? I don't know. But the world's leaders were forced to take up Khatami's idea as a result of these terrorist attacks. The concept was initially supported by the prime ministers of Spain and Turkey and has now been upgraded from "dialogue" to "alliance" of civilizations.

On September 14, the UN Secretary General unveiled it as an international initiative spotlighting the resources of civil society, something the Russian president also spoke about in his statement.

The essence of this action plan is clear and it has already been put in motion with a series of symposia and meetings of specialists on world cultures and religions. Such meetings took place in Sana, Yemen in February 2004, on Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan, and in Hanoi, Vietnam, later that year.

Clearly, religious leaders, universities and non-governmental organizations should combine their efforts to bring together the people who have different views, religions and cultural values. The goal is to help them discuss the similarities and differences between the world's nations and the importance of heeding and respecting these differences.

The growing terrorist threat, breeding on cultural alienation, has forced the UN to step up countermeasures. A high-level group, similar to the "wise men" who drafted a report on the reform of the UN for Kofi Annan, has been charged with preparing within a year a report on ways to promote dialogue among civilizations.

The group includes Mohammad Khatami, the man who had created the concept, former Director General of UNESCO Federico Mayor (Spain), Archbishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa, Rabbi Arthur Schneider (U.S.), and Professor Vitaly Naumkin of Moscow State University, Russia, who was chosen because of the success of his extraordinary recent book about Islam in Central Asia.

Russia is an active member of the program alongside the U.S., Iran and a score of other countries. Its attitude to the evil of terrorism is harsh, as proved by Putin's statement, but it does not entail intolerance of the multitude of values and principles in this diverse world.