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17 Nov 2003 21:54:16 GMT

UN ceremony honors Italy for helping the disabled

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 (Reuters) - The United Nations and the World Committee on Disability honored Italy on Monday for advancing the rights of its people with disabilities as well as helping the disabled in other nations.

Italy was awarded the seventh annual Franklin Delano Roosevelt International Disability Award at a U.N. ceremony, recognizing its "outstanding action" in support of goals set by the General Assembly in 1982 for improving the lives of disabled persons.

The award was accepted by Labor Minister Roberto Maroni after President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi cut short a U.S. visit to attend the funerals of the 19 victims of last week's suicide bombing of an Italian military police base in southern Iraq.

The award consists of 1,000 wheelchairs, a $50,000 cash award to an Italian disabilities organization and a bust of Roosevelt, who used a wheelchair throughout his 12 years as the United States' longest-serving president.

Italy was chosen to receive the award because of more than three decades of national legislation aimed at integrating the disabled into the social mainstream as well as its efforts to help the disabled in numerous countries including Albania, Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia, Mozambique, Somalia and Uganda.

Actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed in a 1995 horseback riding accident and is currently vice chairman of the U.S. National Organization on Disability, used the ceremony to appeal to the Bush administration to throw its support behind an international treaty now being drafted to protect the rights of the world's 600 million disabled.

"It will bring about not only radical social change worldwide but will do more for individuals who may now be in despair than you can possibly imagine," Reeve said.

Nearly all nations have endorsed a plan to begin the drafting process. But among the handful of dissenters were the United States, which has ruled out signing but pledged not to obstruct a treaty, and Australia, which said it saw no need for a new global pact to protect the rights of the disabled.

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