SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, BASED ON RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT, ESSENTIAL TO PREVENTING CONFLICT
Press Release
SG/SM/6511
SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, BASED ON RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT, ESSENTIAL TO PREVENTING CONFLICT
19980401 Speaking in Beijing, Welcomes China's Intention To Sign International Covenant on Civil and Political RightsFollowing is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's statement delivered at the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing today:
I am very pleased to be back in Beijing at this important time in the relations between China and the United Nations. China's permanent membership of the Security Council has provided your great nation with a unique role and responsibility in the United Nations. It is a role that China, most recently during the Iraq crisis, has filled admirably.
I have come to Beijing to brief the Chinese Government about the provisions of the agreement I reached with the Iraqi leadership, and to thank the Government for its strong support for my efforts from the very beginning. China's leadership in supporting a diplomatic solution to the crisis was critically important to the success of my mission.
Before speaking to you today about an essential aspect of the United Nations work in peace and security -- prevention -- I would like to take this opportunity to make clear to you the nature, the demands and the promise of the agreement I reached with the Government of Iraq.
I went to Baghdad, with the full authorization of all members of the Security Council, in search of a peaceful solution to the crisis. That crisis is for now averted. The mandate of the Security Council has now been reaffirmed. The access of United Nations inspectors has not only been restored, but expanded to include any and all sites.
- 2 - Press Release SG/SM/6511 1 April 1998
Indeed, in the weeks since the agreement, UNSCOM [United Nations Special Commission] has for the first time in seven years been able to enter a number of sites which so far had been inaccessible, including the so-called presidential sites. Whether the threat to international peace and security has been averted for all time is now in the hands of the Iraqi leadership.
Iraq's complete compliance with the Security Council's demands is the one and only aim of this agreement. Nothing more and nothing less will make possible the completion of the disarmament process and thus speed the lifting of sanctions in accordance with the previous resolutions of the Security Council.
This agreement tests as never before the will of the Iraqi leadership to keep its word. But it also serves as a call for the region and the international community to look to the future, beyond the horizon and to the time when the disarmament process in Iraq has been completed.
All of us can agree that sanctions have added greatly to the Iraqi people's suffering; that the expansion of the "oil-for-food" programme will reduce that suffering without diluting the disarmament regime; and that someday, sooner or later -- and we pray sooner -- a properly disarmed and peaceable Iraq would be able once again to take its rightful place among the family of nations.
The agreement was neither a "victory" nor a "defeat" for any one person, nation or group of nations. Certainly the United Nations and the world community lost nothing, gave away nothing and conceded nothing of substance. But by halting, at least for now, the renewal of military hostilities in the Gulf, it was a victory for peace, for reason, for the resolution of conflict by diplomacy.
For the peoples of the Middle East, this is a time of challenge and fragile progress that requires patience, determination and courage. If the agreement that I reached with the Iraqi leadership is sustained, we may see genuine progress towards long-term peace and stability in the Gulf.
If the agreement with the Iraqi Government is fully implemented and leads over time to a new day in the Gulf; if this exercise in diplomacy, backed by fairness, firmness and force, stands the test of time, it will serve as an enduring and invaluable precedent for the United Nations and the world community. It will prove that acting united, the world can prevent conflict.
Now we must see similar progress on the Arab-Israeli front which is as vital to the region as it has ever been. My visit to the region last week confirmed that no one is under any illusion about the steps that must be
- 3 - Press Release SG/SM/6511 1 April 1998
taken, or about the compromises that must be made, or about the concessions that must be granted if peace is to flourish. It must be a peace that restores dignity, self-determination and security to all sides.
For the United Nations, there is no higher goal, no deeper commitment and no greater ambition than preventing armed conflict. The prevention of conflict begins and ends with the protection of human life and the promotion of human development. Ensuring human security is, in the broadest sense, the United Nations cardinal mission.
Throughout the world today, but particularly in Africa and other parts of the South, intra-State wars are the face of modern conflict. In these wars, the destruction not just of armies, but of civilians and entire ethnic groups is increasingly the main aim. Preventing these wars is no longer a matter of defending interests or promoting allies. It is matter of defending humanity itself.
And yet we seem never to learn. Time and again differences are allowed to develop into disputes and disputes allowed to develop into deadly conflicts. Time and again, warning signs are ignored and pleas for help overlooked. Only after the deaths and the destruction do we intervene at a far higher cost and with far fewer lives to save. Only when it is too late do we value prevention.
The United Nations work in prevention is as old as the Charter itself. In every diplomatic mission and development project that we pursue, the United Nations is doing the work of prevention. The Secretary-General's own good offices in preventive diplomacy have been exercised with success over the years. Though this practice is long established, the potential for progress is still greater.
Within my first year as Secretary-General, I have renewed our peacemaking efforts in Cyprus, East Timor, Western Sahara, Afghanistan, and the Great Lakes region of Africa. These are long-standing disputes with hard and bitter roots. We will continue to seek new ways to narrow the divide in each case and promote a durable peace that can provide security and prosperity to all sides.
The United Nations of the twenty-first century must become a global centre for visionary and effective preventive action. But, the essential policies of prevention -- early warning, preventive diplomacy, preventive deployment and preventive disarmament -- will succeed only if the root causes of conflict are addressed with the same will and wisdom.
- 4 - Press Release SG/SM/6511 1 April 1998
These causes are often economic and social. Poverty, endemic underdevelopment and weak or non-existent institutions inhibit dialogue and invite the resort to violence. A long, quiet process of sustainable economic development, based on respect for human rights and legitimate government is essential to preventing conflict. In this connection let me add, that I was particularly pleased to learn of China's intention to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
I am told that a Chinese proverb holds that it is difficult to find money for medicine, but easy to find it for a coffin. The last decade's intra-State wars have made this proverb all too real for our time. Have we not seen enough coffins -- from Rwanda to Bosnia to Cambodia -- to pay the price for prevention? Have we not learnt the lesson too painfully and too often that we can, if we will, prevent deadly conflict?
Indeed, we have no excuses anymore. We have no excuses for inaction and no alibis for ignorance. Often we know even before the very victims of conflict that they will be victimized. We know because our world now is one -- in pain and in prosperity.
The founders of the United Nations drew up our Charter with a sober view of human nature. They had witnessed the ability of humanity to wage a war of unparalleled brutality and unprecedented cruelty. They had witnessed man's inhumanity to man. They had witnessed, above all, the failure of prevention, when prevention was still possible and every signal pointed to war.
Indeed, my vision of this great Organization is a United Nations that places prevention at the service of universal security. The achievement of human security in all its aspects -- economic, political and social -- will be the achievement of effective prevention.
* *** *