LEADERSHIP REQUIRES certain well-defined qualities: vision, character, an understanding of human nature and the ability to imagine common goals and inspire others to work toward them. But true leaders achieve recognition largely based on the challenges they face and by the bold and creative ways they tackle problems.

The 21st century will bring challenges that will test, as never before, the mettle of young leaders in the Americas. The next century holds immense potential for progress for the citizens of the entire hemisphere. In our media-drenched era, those citizens are aware of that potential to a greater degree than ever before. It will be up to future leaders to turn rapidly rising expectations into reality. Three areas of endeavor will require solid skills and a combination of great effort, creativity and decisionmaking: democratic maturity, economic progress and social cohesion.

Democracy-its defense and its strengthening-is the foundation on which our future rests. We have left behind decades of isolationism, confrontational language, mistrust andz outdated pessimism about our potential for development. We have abandoned a militaristic and authoritarian past. With the end of the cold war, we have advanced toward certain common principles, values and ideals in both economic and political matters. We have created a hemispheric doctrine of solidarity that confronts any threat to the democratic process in anyd country. We have made the defense of 10 human rights and the preservation of public freedoms a cornerstone of our democratic governments.

While we have made enormous efforts to foster more cornpetitive economics, the new generation must still face age-old challenges. In addition to persistent poverty and inequality, we have seen a rise in crime and violence; in addition to deficiencies in infrastructure, our governments have deteriorated as a result of fiscal crises, corruption and other abuses.

All these factors conspire against the social cohesion that we need in our hemisphere because they undermine the very concept of what it means to live in a society. The need to build relationships of solidarity and trust-what academics call social capital-should be at the heart of every proposal designed to address dramatic problems of poverty or violence. How to build and strengthen the kind of social cohesion that will help this hemisphere reach its potential is another of the challenges that our future leaders will face.

Integration and economic globalization have expanded the possibility for development and prosperity in our countries, uniting our destinies with those of our neighbors. This process will be consolidated with the creation of the Free-Trade Area of the Americas, reaching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and representing the largest market in the world. For this to happen, we must retain the political will of our congresses and of public opinion and must persuade our workers and labor unions to join the cause of interAmerican integration.

We have resolved to place education and the development of our human resources at the center of our strategy for growth and the elimination of poverty. Our educational systems have not risen to meet the challenges posed by international economicdevelopment models, nor have they met the wide-ranging political, economic, scientific, technological, social, cultural and ethical demands that emerged in the 1990s. Many analysts talk about a radical separation between our educational system and our need for political and economic changes and social development. They point to the low quality of public schools and their declining role in promoting social mobility, the weakness of technical-vocational education at the high school level and the proliferation of overextended university systems.

We have to ensure that our educational systems prepare citizens who are independent, informed, responsible, tolerant and able to analyze information critically; who value democracy and the peaceful solution of conflicts; who acquire the ability to reason and learn on their own; who have the knowledge, values and abilities necessary to grow personally and professionally, to enter the work force and compete internationally and advance toward greater equality.

The most difficult challenge to overcome in the Americas continues to be poverty. The benefits of democracy and economic progress will not reach their full potential as long as a high percentage of our population lives in poverty and as long as Latin America remains the region of greatest inequality in the world. It seems paradoxical to everyone that a hemisphere rich in resources and possibilities could have left millions of people trapped in misery. Ineffective social policies and poor distribution of wealth caused by government that is bloated, slow and inefficient, and by our deficiencies in education, are among the major challenges that will be faced by new generations.

To succeed in promoting this second generation of reforms, it will be necessary to expand the political base that supports them. It will not be possible to bring about such reforms by the same somewhat closed and authoritarian means that were used in the first wave of economic changes following the debt crisis.

Finally, it will also be necessary to develop a multilateral system of institutions and supranational entities that establish collective rules so that globalization does not lead us to a society with more problems and without the mechanisms needed to solve them. Another matter entirely is the volatility that we see as a result of modernization and globalization in our emerging economies. Such volatility will require our leaders to redesign an institutional architecture to face the challenges of new global markets.

What qualities will be needed to confront this complicated and intimidating array of challenges? Our leaders of tomorrow will have to confront a reality that in many ways is modern and on par with the rest of the world but in other aspects is backward, primitive and often violent. The social gaps that our new leaders must bridge are often huge, disparate and multiethnic. To reach across them, the next generation of leadership will have to be skilled in the politics of inclusion rather than the rhetoric of confrontation or the dlitist vision that has divided our societies into the privileged and the marginalized. Our leaders must be paradigms of solidarity, honesty, pluralism, tolerance and willingness to account for their actions. They must subordinate their ambitions to the community rather than the other way around.

Above all, they must be purposeful. Nothing is more essential for our times than strong, creative leadership. In the Americas, this means that leaders must demonstrate the firm will to accelerate reform and find necessary political support. We must leave behind proposals based on nostalgia or opposition to progress. Modernizing and transforming the Americas is our responsibility, and a new generation of leaders can advance the ideals of peace, justice, equality and prosperity for all. Anything less would be a tragic waste of our marvelous potential.