Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva opened the two-day conference of the Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), an offshoot of the United Nation, in Rio on Friday.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon and many world leaders are attending the conference.

The UNAOC mobilizes concerted action toward reaffirming a paradigm of mutual respect among peoples of different cultural and religious backgrounds. It aims to bridge the world’s divides and to build trust and understanding across cultures and communities worldwide.

On behalf of King Abdullah, Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal headed the Saudi delegation to the conference and read out the king’s speech.

“This third forum of UNAOC has a special significance in the light of the ongoing crises and conflicts in the world. It needs our concerted efforts to counter the violence and terror caused by extremist groups who raise a language of hatred,” King Abdullah said in the speech read out by Prince Saud.

Saudi Arabia has been consistently promoting a policy of dialogue of civilizations in order to strengthen peaceful coexistence and understanding in the world. It strives to spread humanitarian values. It seeks to replace confrontation with harmony as a means to defuse tension and achieve peace, the king’s speech said.

Referring to the Kingdom’s efforts to spread a culture of dialogue in the domestic front, the king said, “Signaling the openness of the Kingdom toward other cultures, Saudi Arabia has sent 90,000 students including women for university level studies in 14 countries in five continents besides opening a university of science and technology that welcomes students from all parts of the world so that they can cooperate in employing science and technology for the welfare of mankind.”

The Kingdom strives to strengthen the ties of family bond in the society as the first defense against the influence of extremist ideology in the young people, the king said.

“With our initiative for dialogue between various faiths we aim at clearing the misunderstanding between followers of various religions so that there will be no dispute, hostility or hatred among them,” he said.

The initiative also aims at shared human efforts for universal love and peace, he said. “We have been making our efforts on political and cultural tracks. In the political track, an extraordinary Islamic summit was held in Makkah in 2005 calling for eschewing violence, extremism and terror and spreading the values of dialogue, tolerance and mutual respect.”

The king pointed out that at the cultural level a meeting of all sects of Muslims was held in Makkah in May 2008 followed by the Madrid interfaith dialogue in July 2008  with the participation of all major religions.

The Kingdom also instituted many prizes including an international award for translation, which was distributed under the aegis of the UNESCO recently.