FOREIGN MINISTERS OF OMAN, SRI LANKA, ETHIOPIA, AUSTRALIA, RWANDA SPEAK IN ASSEMBLY'S GENERAL DEBATE

3 October 1997

Press Release
GA/9322

FOREIGN MINISTERS OF OMAN, SRI LANKA, ETHIOPIA, AUSTRALIA, RWANDA SPEAK IN ASSEMBLY'S GENERAL DEBATE

19971003 Prime Minister of St. Lucia Addresses Assembly

The General Assembly this morning heard Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar urge all States to condemn the conscripting or luring of children for war. Addressing the Assembly as it continued its general debate, he said the assumption that children's involvement in armed conflicts was inevitable and unavoidable must be rejected.

Because of the length of many conflicts, children often experienced multiple and cumulative assaults from birth to early childhood, he said. The international community should begin a campaign to eradicate the use of children in war and the media must expose and create international pressure against those who did so. The Convention on the Rights of the Child must be strictly adhered to by all belligerants in armed conflicts. Specific measures were needed to demobilize and reintegrate child soldiers into society.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia, Alexander Downer, said national human rights institutions that were supported by regional frameworks would best protect individual human rights. The international human rights system inevitably had a broad focus and limited ability to assist States implement agreed international standards. Domestic institutions, which guaranteed participation and accountability, should form the real basis for a sustained improvement in the quality of human rights, he added.

The Prime Minister of St. Lucia, Kenny D. Anthony, and the Foreign Ministers of Oman and Ethiopia also made statements.

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 following: The Prime Minister of Saint Lucia and the Foreign Ministers of Oman, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Australia, Rwanda and Madagascar.

Statements

YOUSEF BIN ALAWI BIN ABDULLAH, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of Oman, said due to the arbitrary policy of the current Israeli Government, the peace process in the Middle East was apparently undergoing a difficult crisis. Israel had not implemented its agreements with the Palestinian Authority, and had rejected the "land for peace" formula, a principle on which the whole 1991 Madrid Peace Process was built. Israel's non-compliance and its reluctance to halt the building of illegal settlements in occupied Arab Jerusalem and other occupied Palestinian territories had disrupted the peace process. Nevertheless, Oman was confident the co-sponsors of the peace process and other peace-loving nations, particularly the European Union, were capable of narrowing the differences between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in a just and equitable manner. The question of Jerusalem was to be deferred to the final stage of negotiations. However, Israeli practices in Jerusalem and its vicinities contradicted what had been agreed upon in Madrid in 1991.

He called on the international community to express solidarity with the Palestinian Authority by resisting Israeli practices that produced nothing more than violence and bloodshed. Oman demanded that relevaant resolutions and agreements be implemented in full. Oman also called on the international community to enhance the peace process by supporting the Palestinian Authority, financially and logistically. He called on the people of Israel and all political actors in that country to safeguard the peace process and resist all forms of violence and terror that had negatively affected the national interests of all the people in the region, including those of Israel. He reaffirmed Syria's desire to have peace that was just and comprehensive. He also reaffirmed the importance of an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Lebanese territories to the internationally recognized borders in accordance with Security Council resolution 425 (1978).

He reiterated his country's position in deploring and rejecting all forms of violence and terrorism, and called on the international community to stand united to guarantee that those criminals who committed or perpetuated such crimes be brought to justice and held accountable.

On the situation between the United Nations and Iraq, he said Oman believed that the implementation of resolution 986 (1995), and its further extension was an important step that would alleviate some of the sufferings endured by the people of Iraq. He welcomed the cooperation between Iraq and

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the Special Commission, adding that would certainly enable its new Chairman, Ambassador Richard Butler, to submit a favourable and final report on the future of the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. However, there were still some fundamental issues, particularly the question of Kuwaiti prisoners and detainees of other nationalities, and the return of Kuwaiti properties that had to be resolved. The United Nations needed to exert more efforts and to establish further contacts with Iraq towards bringing the question to an end.

Oman had been pursuing within the combined efforts of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) a policy to solve regional disputes and areas of tension through peaceful means and dialogue, he said. The question of the three islands "Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa" might jeopardize peace and stability in the region. Oman supported all efforts to solve that question through direct peaceful negotiations and legal means between the concerned parties, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, in a manner that would safeguard neighbourly relations, stability, and regional security.

He said his country had deposited the instruments of ratification for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the beginning of 1997, and had commenced negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) towards finalizing a safeguards agreement in accordance with its obligations as envisaged in the Treaty. Oman called on Israel to expedite its adherence to the Treaty and to place all its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards, a move that ought to contribute to the peace process in the region.

The Chemical Weapon Convention, he observed, was an important multilateral treaty prohibiting a whole category of weapons of mass destruction. It contained practical verification measures under a strict international monitoring system to which all parties had to adhere for the benefit of humanity at large. In order to avoid a similar fate to the NPT, all nations should become party to it. Preserving the universality and comprehensive nature of the Treaty should constitute one of the highest goals among the list of priorities of the international community.

Turning to the situation in Africa, he said Oman supported the United Nations role in coordinating worldwide efforts through international donor agencies and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and countries that bordered conflict areas.

He said Oman had prepared a national strategy to protect the environment and achieve a balanced and sustainable development. It had also prepared a national plan to combat desertification in the country in implementation of the International Convention to Combat Draught and Desertification. On the regional level, Oman, in its efforts to translate the recommendations of the Conference on the Prohibition of the Dumping of Waste from Ships at Sea and the Protection of the Environment, would build a bunkering port for ships on its shores. On the international level, the Sultan Qaboos Prize for

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Conservation, set by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), demonstrated Oman's obligation to translate the concept of collective responsibility of environment protection into a practical reality. Reviewing national policies, he said Oman gave high priority to family issues and to projects that provided the best care for women and children. The government had also set up plans to expand the network of women's associations which were based on voluntary social work, as well as to extend children's social service to remote and rural areas of the country.

On the regional level, the economic cooperation among the States members of the Gulf Cooperation Council was being strengthened, he said. The member States of the Council were seriously looking forward to joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). Oman had a free-market economy and promoted foreign investments. It had introduced various incentives and made necessary changes to its laws to eliminate barriers that might stand in the way of attracting foreign investors and protecting their rights.

LAKSHMAN KADIRGAMAR, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka, said the international community should begin a campaign to eradicate the use of children under the age of 18 years in armed conflicts throughout the world. The media must expose this issue and create international pressure against those who lure children into wars.

Citing a recent study chaired by Graca Machel, of Mozambique, on the "Impact of Armed Conflict on Children", he urged a strict adherence to the Convention on the Rights of the Child by all belligerents in armed conflicts and stressed the need for specific measures to demobilize and reintegrate child soldiers into society. Sri Lanka rejected the complacent assumption by some that the involvement of children in armed conflicts was inevitable and unavoidable. The barbaric practice of conscripting or luring children for war must be condemned by all civilized States.

Calling on the international community to act on the Machel report, he said the world must denounce the slaughter, rape, maiming, and exploitation of children as totally intolerable and unacceptable. Many of today's conflicts lasted the length of a childhood, meaning that from birth to early adulthood many children would experience multiple and cumulative assaults.

He urged the international community to ban fund-raising and other activities of terrorist organizations on their soil. Terrorism was a phenomenon with international ramifications and only well-organized and well- coordinated international action could combat terrorism.

Affirming the universality and inalterability of the Human Rights Declaration, he urged that international action to enforce human rights should be fair and even handed*. "Human rights should never be used by powerful States to bludgeon and bully weaker ones for spurious political reasons". The essence of peace and development was that each human being should be able to

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enjoy better standards of life in larger freedom. Sri Lanka had established a national human rights commission, an independent organization with investigative, monitoring and advisory powers. Sri Lanka had also decided to allow international scrutiny of its actions with regard to rights of its citizens.

Welcoming the appointment of Mary Robinson as the new United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, he said he was confident that she would be fair in her approach; seek and promote informed dialogue, not confrontation; strive to win the trust of the developing countries; and avoid double standards or wield human rights concerns as a weapon against developing countries.

Pledging Sri Lanka's support for the Secretary-General's reform proposals, he said the renewal of the spirit of multilateralism enshrined in the Charter should guide the proposed reform. Reform must command the consensus of the General Assembly if it was to be effective and conceptually sound.

SEYOUM MESFIN, Foreign Minister for Ethiopia, said the eradication of poverty and the promotion of human rights were the cornerstones of Ethiopia's development strategies and democratic reforms and that its Federal Parliament planned to establish a national human rights commission and an ombudsman early next year. Leading members of the military regime that had ruled Ethiopia in the 1970s and 1980s were being tried for war crimes. Ethiopian courts, however, had been denied the opportunity to bring all the perpetrators of those crimes to justice since many of them had been given safe haven in other countries. He called on the concerned States to take appropriate measures, in accordance with international humanitarian law, to ensure that those responsible for the crimes against humanity were brought to justice.

He said international cooperation, whether through bilateral or multilateral means, could not be a substitute for what individual countries must do to ensure sustainable development and economic growth. "The responsibility to extricate our countries from the miseries of poverty lies on us", he said, and aid would not do it even if it was available. But it was critically important that the international economic environment provide a level playing field, particularly for those who had failed to put their countries on the track of sustainable development. The prediction that the level of poverty would continue to grow in Africa was a challenge to the international community as it reflected on the dire condition of the continent. Ensuring food security for all should not be an impossible task. Individual countries had assumed responsibility, but the international community had a role to play, including in the fight against corruption which had an international aspect and was therefore amenable to national solutions.

Ethiopia had made important progress in building the basis for food security for its people, he said. But there could be no guarantee as long as

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production was totally dependent, as in Ethiopia, on rain-fed agriculture and when available water was not utilized for irrigation purposes. The equitable utilization of transboundary rivers should be accorded the utmost urgency. Regional cooperation on international rivers would be impossible if calculations based on a zero-sum outcome, favouring one side or another, governed the attitude of parties. With respect to the Nile waters, which affected Ethiopia directly and on which there had been no effective cooperation among the riparians, he called on all those involved to commit themselves to real, genuine and equitable regional cooperation to ensure fair, equitable and just outcomes.

The practical implementation of United Nations initiatives to address the economic and social problems faced by developing countries and mitigate the effects of poverty, despite good intentions, had always been half-hearted and, at best, less than satisfactory. That applied to the United Nations Programme for the Least Developed Countries in the 1990s, to the United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s (NAD), and to other initiatives. Hopefully, the United Nations system-wide Special Initiative on Africa would not meet a similar fate. In both the bilateral and the multilateral area, international cooperation regarding the developing world was neither commensurate with the challenges or the tremendous effort made by those countries, including many in Africa, to make their economies business friendly. Many African countries, including Ethiopia, had taken decisive measures to liberalize their economies, cut government spending, institute sound macroeconomic policies and enhance the role of the private sector and civil society. Ethiopia's economy had begun to grow, with over a 10 per cent gross domestic product (GDP) rate of growth in 1996. The average rate of growth over the last five years had been over 7 percent. Despite setbacks, Africa had also made progress in the area of governance and democratization. These gains needed to be consolidated. However, African economies operated in an international economic environment that was hardly friendly to growth and sustainable development. Challenges involved market opportunities for commodities, protectionism, unfavourable terms of trade, difficulty attracting sufficient foreign direct investment and debt-servicing obligations.

He said he appreciated efforts made by the Group of 7, including promises at the Lyon summit and debt relief measures for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries. However, to qualify for some of these debt relief measures, countries were expected to meet conditions that could not even be absorbed by far more advanced economies. Hopefully, some of the latest initiatives and the emerging trends encouraging renewed focus on Africa, like the Ministerial Meeting of the Security Council last week, would help increase the international community's sensitivities to Africa's development challenges.

The process of peacemaking in Somalia was at a very critical juncture and the international community and the United Nations should not keep their distance from those efforts, he said. The member nations of the Inter- Governmental Authority on Development were determined to see the process succeed. The support of the OAU and other partners had been indispensable, particularly to ensure that those like Hussein Aideed were brought on board the peace process. Unequivocal United Nations support, spearheaded by the Authority, was critical. The countries of the region had chosen to work on the precept that a less than good government in Somalia was better than none

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at all. The absence of central authority in Somalia had seen the growth of forces, including from outside the region, bent on ensuring that chaos continued and expanded in the country and the region.

ALEXANDER DOWNER, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia, said reform of United Nations structures and the Secretariat, including the integration of 12 secretariat entities into five and the proposed consolidation of five intergovernmental bodies into two, would help streamline and reduce bureaucratic structures. He applauded the Secretary-General's commitment to remove 1,000 staff posts and to cut administrative costs by one third. All Secretariat staff should be moved to fixed-term renewable contracts to allow for greater employment flexibility. He also supported the introduction of a merit-based promotional system in place of a system where seniority played a disproportionate role. He called on the Assembly to endorse the Secretary- General's package of reforms as a whole, even if some details were subsequently negotiated. Financial reform should include a negative-growth budget and a new scale of assessment, which accurately reflected relative shares of national income and capacity to pay.

His Government was committed to an expanded, more representative and transparent Security Council, he continued. It should include as permanent members important powers able to make major contributions, particularly Japan and Germany. It should also include permanent seats for under-represented regions and additional non-permanent seats. As representative of a middle power which had significantly contributed to the United Nations, he was concerned that the interests of small and medium-sized countries not be forgotten in that exercise. An expansion of the Council should be accompanied by a new understanding on the application of the veto. Any new arrangements should be reviewed after 10 years, so that countries could examine the size, composition and working methods of the Council.

To better achieve the goals of international human rights treaties, he said that durable national human rights institutions must be established. With the linkage between respect for human rights, good governance and sustainable development so important, he welcomed the initiative to encourage human rights coordination at the United Nations. While committed to the advancement of human rights, his country did not want human rights to become an unproductive battleground or an environment full of slogans.

Domestic reform founded on working institutions that guaranteed participation and accountability was the real basis for a sustained improvement in the quality of human rights, he said. The international human

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rights system inevitably had a broad focus and limited ability to assist States in implementing agreed standards. The role of regional human rights institutions should be strengthened, including in the Asia-Pacific. Effective institutions were a means to achieving good governance, and institutions based on good governance offered real hope for eradicating violence. For that reason, Australia gave priority to institution building in the human rights field.

Developing countries were establishing new or strengthening existing national human rights institutions, he said. The work of national institutions in individual countries could be strengthened through sub- regional and regional arrangements, which provided a framework for exchanges of views and experience. Australia supported the development of human rights mechanisms in the Asia-Pacific, a process which was already underway.

Review of the existing electoral groups established in the 1960s was missing from the reform discussion, he said. The substantial disparities in the size of various groups and the inadequate level of representation available to many subregions argued for reform. The widespread sense of underrepresentation was exacerbated by the social and political diversity of the larger groups and the limited extent to which a single member could be said to be represented by the whole. Although it would not be helpful to prescribe a formula for a new configuration, he believed it was time to discuss the matter.

KENNY D. ANTHONY, Prime Minister of St. Lucia, said a rolling back of the structures of social responsibility was being witnessed at the international level and that there was calculated institutional insensitivity to the plight of the disadvantaged. The banana-producing countries of the Caribbean had received a harsh and crushing blow when the Appeals Board of the World Trade Organization (WTO) upheld an earlier finding that the preferential treatment the European market accorded to bananas from Africa, Caribbean and Pacific countries contravened WTO rules on free trade.

St. Lucia was among the founding members of the WTO and it had hoped that the WTO would have established a standard of arbitration premised on fairness, civilized negotiation of vital interests and the inculcation of equity in international trade and commerce, he said. The WTO ruling was nothing short of a capitulation to the machinations of those who were blinkered by free trade and sheer greed. The WTO and the complainants to the European banana regime had ignored the fact that its ruling was the economic and social destruction of its smaller member States.

The WTO Dispute Settlement Body's initial panel did not have a single representative from a developing country, he continued. The Appellate Board was chaired by an American, despite the fact that the principal complainant was the United States. The United States, which did not produce a single banana, activated and participated in the proceedings while the banana-

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producing countries were denied the right to full participation and relegated to spectator status. If the WTO was to be of any value to small developing countries, there had to be reform to its system of dispute settlement so that it took account of the consequences of the implementation of its rulings.

The United States had to reexamine its recent policies toward the Caribbean, he said. Its challenge to the Caribbean region's banana industry had damaged confidence in its declaration of friendship. Its new immigration laws were causing apprehension and dislocation for thousands of people of Caribbean origin and the imminent deportation of persons who had lived for decades in the United Sates would cause a humanitarian problem. The deportation of trained criminals to lands they did not know as home was further rocking the social and economic fabric of Caribbean democracies.

Turning to United Nations reform, he said that Member States must honour their financial obligations to the Organization in a timely manner without conditions. The Organization must also take steps to become more efficient and effective since a leaner United Nations was needed to be more capable of making maximum use of its resources. The Organization needed to become responsive to the needs of all its Member States which for the majority was sustainable development. The United Nations must also answer the call for wider representation in the Security Council. St Lucia reiterated its support for an increase in membership of the Council that would reflect the universal membership of the Assembly and ensure a balanced representation of the developing world. His country also hoped that the Secretary-General's proposed "dividend for development" did not become like the peace dividend -- a noble idea that was yet to materialize.

The plight of Montserrat was a human tragedy that the world ignored, because once again, its setting was another small island State which seemed to be in a remote corner of the international community, he said. The establishment of a Caribbean family of nations was a historical imperative for St. Lucia and the strengthening of the integration process and the closer association of its people would continue.

ANASTASE GASANA, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Rwanda, said understanding the real problems and the real causes of conflicts in Africa must be a priority for the United Nations. International support for new African leaders who wished to create a new Africa was vital.

The underlying causes of conflict in Africa and the evils that continued to eat away at African nations were ignorance, poverty, poor leadership, coups and foreign intervention, he said. Poor leadership had led many countries to ruin, as had been the case in 1994 in Rwanda, when the genocide occurred. The United Nations force in Rwanda at that time had packed up and abandoned the Rwandan people. The planning of the genocide was possible due to poor political leadership. All coups in African countries since 1965 had been managed by some Western capital, to the detriment of Africa. Foreign

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intervention still being pursued in Africa had stimulated a new wave of coups. Reviewing recent unrest and current conflicts in Africa, he called upon the United Nations to fight the evil that germinated into conflicts.

The people of Rwanda had been traumatized by the genocide and the destruction of the social fabric of their country, he continued. He called upon the international community to support the efforts of Rwanda to overcome the consequences of those traumas. He called upon Member States to adopt the "mini-Marshall Plan" on the reintegration and rehabilitation of post-genocide Rwanda. Since 1996, some 1.4 million displaced persons had returned to Rwanda. The Government had developed ways of supporting local authorities and magistrates in welcoming returnees. Among those returning there had been some troublemakers responsible for murdering civilians in the North of Rwanda, mostly those that had witnessed the genocide and authorities committed to a reunified Rwanda. Successful measures had been undertaken by the Rwandan Government to protect people in the North of the country.

Turning to matters relating to the fact-finding team sent by the United Nations to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he said his Government urged the Secretary-General and others concerned to end the problems through discussion. Rwanda believed that effort would be assisted by the release of a report completed in 1996 by a United Nations special commission investigating arms trafficking in eastern Zaire and refugee camps in that area.

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