Former British prime minister John Major addresses Washington University

ST. LOUIS -- Former British prime minister John Major recalled the dreams and ambitions of an impoverished girl he'd met years ago in Peru as he advised more than 2,500 graduates at Washington University to aim high.

Major, in delivering the university's commencement address Friday, told of a child from a "dismal place almost entirely without hope" in a shantytown outside of Lima who said she wanted to be a brain surgeon.

"I have no idea if she realized her dream," but her ambition still inspires him, he said.

Major himself rose from rather humble beginnings to prime minister from 1990 to 1997.

He dropped out of school as a teenager to support his ill parents and later took correspondence courses that launched him into banking and eventually politics in Britain's Conservative Party.

Major reminded the graduates from economically comfortable families that a great many of the world's people live on less than $2 a day, what the average American spends on a cup of coffee. Such poverty is not only morally intolerable, it breeds resentment and fuels radicalism, he said.

"It's in our interest to end it," he said.

"There are issues that will not wait and must be addressed."

Poverty, he said, is a "potent recipe for an unstable, unsafe world."

Major also warned the graduates against relying on easy "sound bite" solutions to problems. He aroused laughter with his anecdote about former Russian president Boris Yeltsin.

Major said he once asked Yeltsin to describe the state of Russia in one word. Yeltsin responded, "Good."

Not believing him, Major asked Yeltsin to describe the state of Russia in two words.

"Not good," Yeltsin replied.

"Never accept sound-bite government," Major said.

Washington University bestowed degrees Friday on more than 2,500 undergraduate, graduate and professional students in its 145th commencement. The university also bestowed honorary degrees on five individuals:

--Aaron Ciechanover, a 2004 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.

--Anna Crosslin, president and chief executive officer of the International Institute in St. Louis.

--Steve Fossett, record-setting adventurer and the first person to fly around the world, solo, in a balloon.

--Henry Louis Gates Jr., chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

--John McDonnell, vice chairman of Washington University's board of trustees and retired chairman of the board of McDonnell Douglas Corp.