SECURITY COUNCIL SHOULD TAKE STEPS TO RESTORE SIERRA LEONE'S GOVERNMENT, PRESIDENT OF SIERRA LEONE TELLS GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Press Release
GA/9318
SECURITY COUNCIL SHOULD TAKE STEPS TO RESTORE SIERRA LEONE'S GOVERNMENT, PRESIDENT OF SIERRA LEONE TELLS GENERAL ASSEMBLY
19971001 Foreign Minister of Democratic Republic of Congo Pledges To Aid UN Investigators; Bangladesh, Hungary, Syria, Malawi, Cuba, Viet Nam Also SpeakThe Security Council should take appropriate measures to restore the democratically elected Government of Sierra Leone, that country's President, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, told the General Assembly this morning, as it continued its general debate. He also asked that the Council assist the Economic Community of West African States' Monitoring Observer Group (ECOMOG) in its efforts to restore legitimate government.
If the international community insisted on negotiations, they should be between the junta and the Committee made up of the Foreign Ministers of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), he continued. The early reinstatement of his Presidency, the return of peace and security and the resolution of refugee issues must be the focus of talks. The junta leader must lead his delegation to reduce any subsequent double-dealing and international pressures must be strengthened.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bizima Karaha, addressing the problems of Rwandan refugees in his country, said those responsible for the genocide in Rwanda had crossed over into his country with their machetes and their ideology.
He said his Government would do everything possible to help the investigative team, which was looking into alleged massacres and other human rights abuses in the eastern part of the former Zaire. However, the team must establish what really happened in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and find out why the refugees had been armed, and how many were pseudo-refugees and how many Congolese people had been killed by them.
The Foreign Ministers of Bangladesh, Hungary, Syria, Malawi and Cuba made statements, as well as the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam.
The Assembly will meet again at 3 p.m. today to continue its general debate.
Assembly Work Programme
The General Assembly met this morning to continue its general debate. Scheduled to speak were the President of Sierra Leone; the Foreign Ministers of Bangladesh, Hungary, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Malawi and Cuba; and the Deputy Foreign Minister of Viet Nam.
Statements
VU KHOAN, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam, said the international community could choose to let the gap between developed and developing countries widen or to cooperate for shared development. The first would lead to a serious crisis affecting global economic and political stability, while the latter would bring prosperity to everyone.
Development remained a prerequisite for peace, he said. With the world becoming increasingly interdependent, there was a greater need for development cooperation. Despite the progress that had been made in recent years, the ratio of per capita gross domestic product (GDP) between the richest and the poorest countries had gone up from 31:1 in 1960 to 61:1 in the early 1990s. Developing countries were still in need of capital for infrastructure construction, human resource development, life-quality improvement, poverty alleviation and environmental protection.
To reverse those problems, developed countries could offer support in many forms, he said. Those could include the sharing of technology, the establishment of reasonable trade terms, and the opening of markets to give developing countries access to sell their goods. Eliminating inequitable terms of economic and trade relations, sanctions and embargoes would alleviate suffering and contribute to peace in many developing countries.
He went on to say that the United Nations could greatly assist in promoting economic and social development. The goal of United Nations reforms should be to improve its mechanisms for aiding development. To reach that goal, a committee of the whole should be established for further deliberations on the issue. Developed countries could also support those efforts by enhancing their contributions to United Nations development programmes.
He said the Security Council should be expanded to include more permanent and non-permanent members. Also, working procedures and organizational structures of the Organization should be modified to reflect the addition of over 100 independent States since the inception of the United Nations.
On the situation in Cambodia, he stressed the principle of full respect for the independence and sovereignty of nations. The affairs of a country must be decided by the people of that country, free of foreign interference.
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In the Middle East, Viet Nam continued to support efforts to reach a durable and lasting peace. That could be achieved by ensuring safety for the nations of the region, resolutions, respecting the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people -- including the right to establish a Palestinian state -- and strict implementation of United Nations resolutions and the principles of concluded agreements.
Viet Nam's new National Assembly would lead the country into the next century, he said. Through the process of national industrialization and modernization, the goal was to make Viet Nam a basically industrialized State by the year 2020.
In foreign relations, Viet Nam planed to pursue a policy of gradual regional and international integration, pursuing an open policy of independence, sovereignty, diversification and multilateralism. With the goal of increasing its international involvement, Viet Nam had also asked to become a member of the Economic and Social Council.
ABDUS SAMAD AZAD, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh, said the international character of the responsibilities of the Secretary-General and his staff should not be compromised by the United Nations reform exercise. Bangladesh welcomed the Secretary-General's proposal to submit a code of conduct for international civil servants since it would provide for greater transparency and would also assure higher standards and integrity in the work of the Secretariat.
The war against poverty, ignorance and prejudice remained to be fought, with the United Nations in the vanguard, before meaningful peace and international security could be achieved in the post-cold war era, he said. Peace had to be built, nurtured and underpinned by a host of interrelated actions which were inextricably linked to development and human security.
There was a clear logic and rationale for expanding the Security Council to make it more representative in character, he said. Convergence of views, let alone consensus, continued to be elusive on the question of expansion in the permanent seat category. Any enlargement exercise should not lose sight of the concerns of the smaller and more vulnerable States who had the most vital stakes in an effective and dynamic United Nations.
Noting that an Agenda for Development had been adopted in June, he said it was a matter of gratification to have achieved a development consensus that was so badly needed and clearly warranted. Bangladesh believed that the process would be incomplete without full involvement of civil society. Recognizing civil society's key role in promoting global partnership, his country welcomed the Secretary-General's proposal for a "People's Assembly" in 2000.
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Democracy, good governance and the rule of law must be added to the mix of free enterprise, market economy, international trade and competition, and broad-based public participation in economic expansion, he said. Those were the keys to economic growth and human development. The imperative of a supportive external environment for the least developed countries should, however, not be diminished. He expressed the hope that the current slump in official development assistance (ODA) flows would be reversed. Development of the South was not only an investment in peace and security, but would also be an advantage to the North since it would mean bigger markets for their exports with all its concomitant benefits.
Bangladesh hoped that the third United Nations conference on the least developed countries (LDCs) would be held in 2000 to chart the course of global support for those weakest members at the start of the next millennium. Concessions for least developed countries should receive special consideration to enable them to meet World Trade Organization (WTO) deadlines. If the situation so warranted, those deadlines could even be made flexible for that group of countries. At the meeting in Geneva next month, his country urged that all concerns of the Least Developed Countries, including duty free access of their products to foreign markets, be given favourable consideration.
Through the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the region was striving for cooperation and poverty eradication, expansion of regional trade and investment, he said. A "growth quadrangle" comprised of India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan had also been launched to explore areas of joint economic activity. Bangladesh also entered into a sub-regional arrangement to boost economic and commercial cooperation among its member countries. The problem of sharing the water of the Ganges River with India had been resolved with the signing of a 30-year treaty last year on sharing arrangements.
AHMAD TEJAN KABBAH, President of Sierra Leone, said that on 25 May, a combination of elements of the Sierra Leone army and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) violently overthrew the country's democratically elected Government and unleashed a reign of terror. "Overnight, Sierra Leone was transformed into a gulag of horrors; the killing of defenceless innocent civilians, looting, confiscation of property, and rape" and those atrocities continued. Against that background, he appealed for help from the international community to save a nation and a people.
"My presence on this podium symbolizes the people of Sierra Leone stretching out their hands to the United Nations to pull them back from the brink of catastrophe", he said. Unless something was done now, the barbarism and adventurism of the military junta would push the country over the brink. The people of Sierra Leone hoped the international community would not allow the military junta to convert their country into one vast killing field. Only
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the speedy restoration of the democratically elected Government could provide a lasting solution to the crisis and enable the country to return to normalcy.
Reviewing events leading up to and following the February 1996 election in Sierra Leone, he said that despite setbacks, there had been a peaceful, orderly and transparent conduct of the vote. Having failed to prevent the holding of the elections through political manoeuvring, the anti-democratic forces within the army and the RUF had launched a campaign of terror and intimidation and eventually, the unconstitutional overthrow of the civil government on 25 May. Thousands of citizens, some out of fear for their lives and other human rights violations, had moved into neighbouring countries, declaring they would rather live as refugees outside Sierra Leone and had in various ways refused to cooperate with the junta. What continued to sustain them was the expectation that the international community would not let them down. No one who had seen the reign of terror unleashed by the regime on the defenceless citizenry or witnessed the daily looting, rape and other brutalities which had become a way of life, could mistake it for peace.
"There is no peace in Sierra Leone", he said. His Government had made the pursuit of peace, the end of the rebel war, and national reconciliation planks of its policy. It had appointed a broad-based Government of national unity. All efforts to achieve national reconciliation and usher in lasting peace would be erased if the regime was allowed to remain in power. The question before the world community was how best to bring a swift end to the ruinous regime of the military. However, he had serious reservations about negotiating with the junta, which was an unstable coalition, he said. Although it appeared to be a government in which every member shared collective responsibility for decisions jointly taken, the decision of one part of the unstable coalition would not, by any stretch of the imagination, bind the other. Owing to their separate and conflicting objectives, there was hardly any prospect of negotiating with a unified position. Moreover the RUF, the principal faction in the junta, had threatened to launch a scorched earth campaign rather than yield power peacefully. Its position was that if it could not rule Sierra Leone, no one else should. During negotiations between the junta and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the leader of the junta had stated that his regime was determined to remain in power for a minimum of four years.
If the international community insisted on negotiations, they should be between the junta and the Committee of ECOWAS Foreign Ministers. The ECOWAS negotiating agenda -- the early reinstatement of the legitimate Government of President Tejan Kabbah, the return of peace and security, and the resolution of the issues of refugees and displaced persons -- must remain the agenda of such talks. They must be time-bound and the junta's delegation must always be led by the junta leader himself, to reduce the scope for subsequent repudiation and double-dealing. Finally, existing international pressures must not only be maintained but further strengthened.
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The brand of political persuasion practised by the military/RUF coalition bordered on systematic genocide, he said. Since 25 May, whole villages, entire communities and targeted families had been wholly or partially decimated. However, he rejected demands for a war crimes tribunal, because it would add to the already grave problems and postpone lasting national reconciliation. There was a distinction between elements of the army which were in complicity with the head of the junta, and the bulk of the army, who were basically decent men and women and loyal to the best traditions of the Sierra Leone army. No worthwhile national purpose would be served by a policy of reprisals against the misguided elements of the army and others in the junta's camp.
He said his country sought no more from the United Nations than the assurance contained in the 6 August Security Council statement that it would, in the absence of a satisfactory response from the military junta, be ready to take appropriate measures with the objective of restoring the democratically elected Government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. At the same time, the Council was being asked to assist ECOWAS and its monitoring group, the Economic Community of West African States' Monitoring Observer Group (ECOMOG), in giving practical effect to that objective. Once the democratically elected Government was restored, it would consider the question of security and full implementation of the Abidjan Peace Agreement. Without security, no meaningful humanitarian assistance could reach the people of Sierra Leone.
LASZLO KOVACS, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Hungary, welcomed the Secretary-General's intention to implement concrete organizational measures within his own areas of competence. His package of reform proposals focused on United Nations activities where agreements by Member States were necessary. The suggestions to ensure coherence of United Nations efforts in development cooperation, to bolster its institutional capacity to combat international crime, drug trafficking and terrorism and to integrate human rights concerns into all principal United Nations activities and programmes deserved full support and swift, concrete action.
He said his Government supported efforts by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other multilateral regional organizations to prevent new conflicts, initiate peacekeeping and peace- building activities, solidify the rule of law and promote cooperation in the OSCE region. Hungary was seeking to consolidate genuine good-neighbourly relations with all countries in its region, especially those bordering it, and to launch initiatives and enhance cooperation to better respond to the new challenges threatening regional stability. His country was active in such organizations as the Central European Initiative, the Central European Free Trade Agreement and the South East European Cooperative Initiative. Further, his country had increased its participation in United Nations mandated peacekeeping operations, including both infrastructural and logistical support and the deployment of military and police personnel. It had contributed to
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the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Implementation Force (IFOR) and Stabilization Force (SFOR) and served in the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP).
Turning to the issue of Security Council reform, he said legitimacy and efficiency were both important. Once the Council was enlarged, its size and composition should not be an impediment. Rather, it should be an asset for effective decision-making and action. Agreement on Council enlargement was a fundamental pillar of the United Nations reform process. A future Council comprising Germany, Japan, countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean as permanent members, and additional non-permanent members, must preserve and enhance its purpose-oriented character.
The financial reform of our Organization was an indispensable prerequisite for ensuring its viability and relevance, he said. Payment of assessed contributions was an obligation under the United Nations Charter. Hungary had made serious efforts to meet all its outstanding financial assessments, and now belonged to the small, but hopefully growing, group of Member States that paid all their contributions in full and without conditions. The financial crisis must be solved in a way that was acceptable to Member States and good for the Organization. Hungary was ready to join in further constructive efforts along the lines of the proposal by the European Union to arrive at a comprehensive compromise solution.
As a legitimate concern of the international community, human rights issues should be given weight in all United Nations activities in a well- coordinated manner and given adequate funding, he said. Today, human rights were violated on a massive scale worldwide and the international community must defend them, while holding violators accountable. Regional, cultural and other factors should not stand in the way of consistency in promoting the universal respect of human rights, or allow complacency to surface in attitudes vis-a-vis human rights violations.
On the subject of development and the environment, he said the United Nations should elaborate a comprehensive programme for sustainable development acceptable to all nations. He was concerned at the insufficient progress in that area and fully supported efforts to solve the burning questions of underdevelopment and degradation of the world's ecological habitat. In addition, his Government supported a total ban on anti-personnel landmines and intended to become one of the first signatories of the new Convention. It was an important milestone in the development of international humanitarian law and the endeavour to end the immense human suffering caused by the proliferation and indiscriminate use of those weapons. The remarkable achievements of the Oslo Conference did not diminish the role that other fora, including the Conference on Disarmament, could play in promoting the objectives of the new Convention.
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BIZIMA KARAHA, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said that, because of its geostrategic situation and its immense natural and human resources, his country had a sad history of suffering, with scandalous human rights violations being perpetrated against its people. Since the end of the cold war, the international community had realized the devastating consequences of the dictatorship of the former regime of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and international financial institutions, had numerous documents describing the impact of that regime.
The revolution in his country on 17 May, coming after the end of apartheid in South Africa, was evidence of a new political reality in contemporary Africa, he said. The new progressive power in Kinshasa was dedicated to restoring the institution of the State, human rights and the welfare of its people. The victory of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo over Mobutu's dictatorship was a victory of African progressiveness and pan-Africanism over the forces of pessimism, misery and defeatism, which had been a pretext for assuming political and strategic control on the African continent.
He said President Laurent-Desire Kabila was working tirelessly to: rebuild the country; bring internal stability; reorganize State services and improve national spirits; encourage the civilian population to return to work; create economic and political conditions favourable for domestic and foreign investment; and bring peace and stability to the region. The Government aimed to reinforce regional cooperation and promote economic development to help prevent the escalation of the types of conflicts and crises that had paralysed the continent. Those efforts were designed to emphasize regional and South/South initiatives. His Government also aimed to improve its bilateral relations with all its partners for urgent and essential rehabilitation action.
He said the Government had implemented a national reconstruction programme which would focus on rebuilding the transport and communication infrastructure, agriculture, health, education, employment opportunities and personal security and protection. In the last four months there had been positive progress in efforts to eradicate institutional corruption, reintegrate the armed forces, establish a national army and build regional cooperation with government participation in regional meetings and conferences. Economic steps had been taken to: stabilize the currency; establish a national bank; and provide secondary education, clean drinking water and electrification.
He described Africa, and particularly Central Africa, as the centre stage for much of the world's conflicts and spoke about the current situations in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burundi and Angola, as well as in Congo-Brazzaville. The crisis in Congo-Brazzaville called for an urgent Security Council meeting,
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as the parties there had lost the ability to settle the conflict. His country had been shelled from Congo-Brazzaville and had also been receiving refugees.
Finally, he said he wished to address the problem of Rwandan refugees in his country and the sending of a United Nations investigative team, which was looking into alleged massacres and other human rights abuses in the eastern part of the former Zaire. The campaign against his country and President Kabila was in some ways reminiscent of the situation in the Belgian Congo in the 1960s. The refugee situation was a humanitarian, not a political, issue and any attempt to politicize it would not be in keeping with the principles of the United Nations Charter. He reiterated that his Government had nothing to hide and had been deeply concerned over Rwandan women and children who had been killed by extremists and genocidal Rwandans.
Some members of the Security Council had rightly refused to subscribe to the Canadian idea of an international force, for the simple reason that the true Rwandan refugees had returned to Rwanda, he said. The armed bands around Kivu were not refugees, but hostage takers. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and international agencies with more than $1 billion had not succeeded in repatriating even 100,000 refugees, while President Kabila's forces had repatriated more than 700,000 during three unilaterally declared cease-fires and through the creation of safe corridor. It had also fed and clothed the "so-called" refugees that it had been accused of killing.
The investigative team needed to find out why the refugees had been armed, how many were "pseudo refugees" and how many Congolese people had been killed by them, he added. Those responsible for the genocide in Rwanda had crossed over into his country with their machetes and their ideology. His Government would do everything possible to help the investigative team do its job and to give it access, but the team must establish what really happened in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
FAROUK AL-SHARA, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Syria, said the peace process initiated at the Madrid Conference six years ago had reached a dead end and that was due to the volte-face by the current Israeli Government. In understanding the Israeli Government's policy, he proceeded from an objective description of declared positions of the Israeli Government and its practices, which aimed at gradually backtracking from the commitments and agreements reached during the peace talks and ultimately eradicating the peace process launched at the Madrid Conference. The method employed by the Israeli Government was now a new practice of one step back, followed by two steps back, followed by the threat of a further step backward that could not be conceded, even provisionally, until the other side accepted new conditions it had already rejected. The peace process progressed backwards until it cancelled itself out.
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The Israeli Government rejected the formula of land for peace and advanced others, such as peace for peace or peace for security, he said. Acceptance of those two Israeli formulas was tantamount to surrender and becoming an instrument at the service of Israel's security. The insistence of the Israeli Government on achieving security before it ended its occupation would transform the peace process into a cycle of killing, which would not obtain security or peace for Israel and could return the Arab-Israeli conflict to its tragic beginnings.
He said that since coming to power, the Israeli Government had chosen a path opposite to that of peace, it had diversified its attacks against Lebanon by bombing cities, and had planted explosives in many parts of southern Lebanon in order to incite enmity among the Lebanese and cast aspersions on the role of Lebanese resistance. In the occupied Palestinian territories the settlement activities had escalated, including a distribution of roles between the Israeli Government and extremist settlers, in order to appropriate more land, destroy homes and maintain the drive to Judaize East Jerusalem.
In the occupied Syrian Golan, he continued, the Israeli occupation had escalated to the point that the Israeli Knesset recently voted on a bill entrenching the occupation and impeding withdrawal from the Golan, in clear defiance of Security Council resolution 497. A comprehensive peace required full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Syrian Golan to the line of 4 June 1967, as well as from southern Lebanon and the western Bekaa, in accordance with Security Council resolution 425.
He expressed his grave concern at the serious obstacle Israel placed in the way of the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East by not adhering to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). He also underlined his country's concern for the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq. At the same time, Iraq was also required to implement the remaining Security Council resolutions in a manner ensuring a just solution to the issue of Kuwaiti prisoners. He also hoped that there would be a positive response to the initiatives of the League of Arab States and the Organization of African Unity (OAU), as well as the flexibility shown by the Libyan Government, in order to resolve the Lockerbie crisis and lift the embargo against Libya.
Turning to United Nations reform, he said promoting development was one of the major priorities of the Organization. Syria was concerned at any weakening of the role and working methods of the General Assembly. In addition, the changes in the international arena and the significant increase in the number of Member States of the Organization called for a review of the composition and working methods of the Security Council. Further, checks and criteria must be put in place to prevent the arbitrary use of the veto. That would enhance democracy and transparency in decision-making, leading to more fairness and balance, as well as non-selective implementation of its
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resolutions. With regard to the Secretary-General's proposals, more attention should have been given to the fundamental role of the Organization in promoting international cooperation for development, he said. The proposals should have excluded any measures likely to affect those programmes and activities related to development issues and poverty eradication in developing and least developed countries.
MAPOPA CHIPETA, Foreign Minister of Malawi, commended the reforms that were taking place at the United Nations and said the focus on institutional aspects and operations were indispensable. The two-track reform programme submitted by the Secretary-General was both comprehensive and useful.
Welcoming the conclusion of negotiations on "An Agenda for Development", he stressed the need for a strong United Nations in development, an Organization which could respond to the needs of its Member States. It was also important that there be progress in the work on "An Agenda for Peace", Security Council reform, and the financial situation of the United Nations. The opportunity for change must be seized while the time was ripe.
On the situation in Malawi, he said the Government continued to work towards the consolidation of good governance and respect for human rights. It seeks to build a Malawi that is for democratic and economically stable. In the face of drought and poverty, Malawi had made commendable efforts in improving the promotion, protection and enforcement of human rights and the Government had decided to hold national consultations on whether to abolish the death penalty.
The political stability in Malawi had created a conducive atmosphere for foreign investment, he said. The economy had been liberalized and incentives introduced for potential investors, including a comprehensive privatization programme. It had also instituted free primary education and free tuition at the secondary school level for the girl child, with the aim of doubling average literacy rates by 1999. However, Malawi could not go it alone in the implementation of its development programme. Increased international assistance and initiatives towards debt relief or cancellation, increased ODA, private capital flows and improved terms of trade would play a catalytic role in harnessing Africa's efforts to achieve economic development.
On regional issues, he said Malawi deeply regretted that the military junta in Sierra Leone was still holding on, despite international opinion. The junta should step down and hand over power to the elected Government. There had also been an apparent lack of meaningful progress in implementing the settlement plan in the Western Sahara. It was hoped that the work of the Secretary-General's Special Envoy, James A. Baker III, would help in the resolution of that problem. With respect to the Middle East, he said that provocative moves by any of the parties would not help the peace process.
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ROBERTO ROBAINA GONZALEZ, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Cuba, said that 33 years ago, Ernesto Che Guevara, as if he could look into the present, told the Assembly that imperialism wanted the assembly gathering to become a vain speech tournament, instead of solving the acute problems of the world. At that time, there were some 700 million illiterates, 200 million unemployed and a little over 1 billion people in the world. Now the situation has become worse: industrialized nations not only conditioned or denied a meagre share of their resources for the development of the poorest nations, some ignored that obligation. Although trips to Mars were raucously advertised and some assured that the world economy was growing, there were now 1 billion illiterates and as many unemployed or underemployed. Since last Tuesday, when the fifty- second session began, 425,000 children had died of curable diseases.
It was absurd hypocrisy for military expenditures to be the number one world business, with close to $900 billion in circulation, followed by drug smuggling, with upwards of $500 billion, he continued. As much money was invested in a modern bomber as would be required to relieve the foreign debt of the 20 most indebted countries. Under the current circumstances, in the upcoming third millennium, consumerism, environmental deterioration, illiteracy, xenophobia, terrorism, drug addiction, famine, AIDS, prostitution -- all the visible symptoms of the human rationality immunodeficiency syndrome from which the planet was suffering, would prevail.
He went on to say that only 285 people had a wealth equal to that shared among 2.5 billion human beings. He wondered whether the words of a powerful minority were worthier than the lives of that overwhelming majority of human beings, who for many reasons not only were deprived of their right to say a word, but also lacked the resolution and the power to use it. He also wondered how there was talk of multilateralism, despite an endlessly increasing unilateralism, and the imposition of an exclusive ideology. Instead of everyone having the same rights and duties, a few had more and more rights, while the vast majority got more and more duties.
If ideas were to be truly globalized, he said, United Nations reform should democratize all its bodies and preserve its universal character and intergovernmental nature. It was high time to overcome the rhetoric in which the international community had been immersed for the last two years. He rejected the corporate and transnational approach of the main United Nations contributors, who operated as if the United Nations was a stock exchange and the just aspirations of the peoples were merchandise. Reforms must ensure that the General Assembly would really exercise its prerogatives -- including those that had been usurped -- while preserving the principle of equality among all Member States. Intergovernmental participation in considering and adopting decisions on any reform package should be a fundamental precondition.
People, especially the poorest, would only understand decisions that reflected on their lives and homes, and not just those satisfying their
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governments, he continued. The simplification, rationalization or reorientation of structures and activities related to the promotion of social and economic development should be the result of a process that always guaranteed full completion and execution of all programmes, mandates and activities in those areas. The United Nations needed to recover its real decision-making capacity in issues related to free trade, funds for development and other monetary topics. Any measure that handed over that role to its main contributors must be inhibited. He opposed any formula based on extortion and pressure, particularly that promoted by the main contributor of the United Nations, which was as well, economically and morally, its most indebted Member.
Continuing, he said it was essential that the reforms reach the Security Council. He stressed the importance of reforming the Council in its composition and procedures. The Council would never be secure until transparency, democracy and the participation of the non-member States forever overcame dangerous and concealed manoeuvres. Peace would never be guaranteed until the veto disappeared, or was at least restricted until it was ultimately eliminated.
Turning to the subject of the United States blockade of Cuba, he said his country continued to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in price differences, surcharges on freight and additional charges in its imports of fuel, food, medications and other basic products, despite its limited incomes. In addition, Cubans were deprived of free access to medications that appeared in the market after 1979, including third generation antibiotics, and others, to treat AIDS and cancer. Impunity gave free reign to those who expedited the enactment of the criminal Helms-Burton Act, as a new escalation of the blockade. It was extraterritorial from top to bottom, because it was conceived and implemented against another sovereign State and, at the same time, against the rest of the world. Similar measures already harassed more than 35 sovereign States, or 2.3 billion people, and a potential market of $790 billion.
Crazed politicians and legislators restrained the very values of freedom upon which that great country was founded, he continued. Such policies also affected the majority of Cubans living in that country. Among them, a silent majority of immigrants was emerging every day that rejected genocide against their motherland. All of the madness brought back to life official and covert operations, mercenaries, spies and assassins, who were ready to plot and unleash terror against human beings and even make use of aggressive biological agents against the Cuban economy. Disguised as tourists, defenders of human rights or philanthropists, those agents today exacerbated a confrontation between Cuba and the United States. They were identical to the one 35 years ago, who acted in the aggressive climate that led to the missile crisis in October of 1962.
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Cubans would never accept that the abdication of what they were and had always been was the price asked for by its neighbour, which was as arrogant as it was powerful, he said. International pressure alone could prevent the aggression against Cuba. Cubans would never submit to being slaves to an empire that had decided to blockade its existence and kill all hope. The imperial Power that wanted to subdue the world was no match "if we stayed together". There would be no place in history for those who bent their knees.
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