NEWLY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY CITES NEW CHALLENGES FACING UN, URGES MEMBER STATES TO FULFIL COMMITMENTS
Press Release
GA/SM/58
NEWLY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY CITES NEW CHALLENGES FACING UN, URGES MEMBER STATES TO FULFIL COMMITMENTS
19980909 Following is the text of the address by the President of the General Assembly, Didier Opertti (Uruguay), at the opening of its fifty-third session:I should like first of all to say that I am sincerely moved at the great honour that it represents for my country, Uruguay, to have been proposed by consensus -- by consensus, I wish to emphasize -- by the Latin American and Caribbean regional group to preside over this fifty-third session of the United Nations General Assembly and subsequently to have received the endorsement of the Assembly.
I wish to convey my country's deepest gratitude to all and to make a personal undertaking to work with the 185 delegations that make up the Assembly, with a view to conducting business in a manner in keeping with the duties that the Charter and the rules of procedure of the General Assembly assign to the President.
I must stress here and now that the honour and responsibility of presiding over the United Nations General Assembly have been conferred on my country, Uruguay -- a country with open borders, a full member of the Common Market of the Southern Cone, which won its political independence in the first 25 years of the nineteenth century, which has since then presented itself to the world without inappropriate ambitions, without political prejudices and with an unchanging internationalist vocation based on peace, tolerance and mutual respect, with the protective guarantee of the legal order. Uruguay cast its founding vote in favour of the creation of this singular phenomenon of twentieth century civilization that is the United Nations, and participates today in a professional manner, making the ultimate sacrifice in terms of Uruguayan lives in peacekeeping operations in various parts of the world.
I undertake, before you all, to conduct Assembly business in a manner reflecting the fact that I am a Uruguayan, which implies a humanistic, conciliating and unprejudiced vision of the world.
Furthermore, it is on the basis of that vision that I respectfully make an appeal to all States represented here to endeavour to reach a consensus
that will enable us to identify common, universal interests that will make the United Nations an untransferable setting in which, to quote the great Uruguayan jurist, Irureta Goyena, "we can reconcile transparency of principles with the opaqueness of reality".
I must thank in particular the President of the fifty-second session, my distinguished colleague, Ambassador Hennadiy Udovenko of Ukraine, who has given of his best and has generously passed on to me the experience he gained in his year as President, sharing with me his satisfactions and his concerns and, fundamentally, his steadfast trust in the future of the Organization and its strengthening, which is tantamount to placing one's trust in peace, development and security. In sum, in the progress of the peoples that make up the United Nations.
The guidance provided by Mr. Udovenko and the working group dealing with the review of the membership and decision-making of the Security Council constitutes very valuable background information and adds to the significant efforts made in that respect by his predecessors. His address marking the closure of the fifty-second session of the General Assembly is a document of substance that must be considered in all its aspects.
I should like now to address the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and to assure him once again that work will be coordinated with him and his entire team, so as to ensure that the efforts and competences of each body are successfully combined. We have been greatly impressed by the Secretary- General's endeavour to identify the scope of his responsibilities and goals, as well as to establish what the future of the Organization will be. His personal visits to our region and his contacts with heads of State there have enabled us to appreciate the role that the Secretary-General plays in direct connection with governments.
Conducting the business of the General Assembly in the current international circumstances is an activity that can be carried out only if we can count on the commitment and goodwill of all, bearing in mind at all times that this Organization gives rise to many high expectations among the governments and peoples of its Member States and that we must meet these expectations decisively and in a spirit of tolerance, tirelessly seeking to achieve the necessary agreements and understandings to solve the wide range of pressing problems that will be discussed in this forum.
The following are some of the special challenges that the United Nations faces and for which it has in most cases already assumed responsibility: the serious disruptions on financial markets and their adverse effects on national economies, including the economies of countries that did not give rise to this situation -- in an inescapable globalized context; the dramatic resurgence of acts of terrorism and the appearance of the dialectics of force brought about
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by that resurgence; the pernicious influence of drugs on those who take them, and a sophisticated supply that takes on forms of criminal organization that involve the various stages of the drug-trafficking circuit; the increase in international crime and the insecurity of citizens; the protection needed by underprivileged individuals and peoples; protection of nature and the environment, which are under assault; human rights in their most genuine manifestations; and, lastly, the achievement of social peace. Not to forget, of course, development assistance, cooperation in the fields of education, science and technology, and the United Nations fight against disease, as well as many other areas of endeavour, such as the codification and progressive development of international law, a task carried out discreetly, in depth and effectively.
These are just some of the chapters that cannot be left out of the contemporary international agenda of the United Nations, in view of its basically multilateral nature.
In 1945 the San Francisco Charter was a response to the firm goal of avoiding war, and the structure of the Organization and the membership and competence of its organs were geared to achieving that goal, but today, at the least, further consideration must be given to the issue of redesigning the United Nations and agreeing on a new United Nations, and the current 185 Members must conclude the essential agreements that, on the basis of respect for justice and international law, will make every Member State feel unreservedly responsible for the preservation of the values in question, without which neither the United Nations nor any other international organization will have any real importance or representativity.
Affirming that the United Nations is a composite of the world would perhaps be a reductionistic and inaccurate simplification. However, it would be extremely difficult to imagine a world without the United Nations or without an organization carrying out similar tasks.
This is the situation that applies in the case of the exercise of reforming the Charter, in which an open-ended working group has been engaged, under a resolution adopted in 1995 by the General Assembly.
And this is also the context of the expectations of and calls for greater participation by countries, and above all by their peoples, which have placed in the United Nations most of their hopes for greater democratization. A better, more balanced, more secure, more equitable world, which -- while acknowledging historical, religious, cultural, economic, scientific and technological differences -- can give rise to agreements at a basic level and take into account individuals organized in society, as the epicentre of programmes and action and above all their inspirational value.
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This last-mentioned factor, which could be regarded as something abstract and even to a certain extent unreal or unpragmatic, is, in our view, the compass for an international community that daily displays signs of almost magical modernity and, on the other hand, with respect to fundamentals, reveals alarming regressions that bring the international situation to levels of contradiction that oblige us to rely on ethical values and basically shared responses.
Under the Charter, the Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security and must act on behalf of Member States in carrying out its duties under that responsibility. Appropriate coordination is therefore required between the General Assembly and the Security Council, as a key principle governing their relationship, so that the acts of both organs carried out within the framework of their various competences can be regarded as the shared resources of the Organization with its current form of decision-making. This does not imply, in and of itself, either a positive or a critical evaluation of the current institutional structure of the United Nations, which now dates from half a century ago, nor is it an obstacle to the review which is already fully under way.
Half a century, it should be added, during which the most spectacular scientific and technological progress has taken place, and during which the extent and dynamics of the political transformations that have occurred at both the national and the international level have, particularly in this past decade, been such that they have not been accompanied by similarly rapid institutional development.
It can be said without exaggeration that the twenty-first century is upon us. However, the speed of change and the formal certainties of the Charter cannot be regarded as irreconcilable. On the contrary, this should prompt us to continue without haste but steadily along the path of modernization and fine-tuning of the Organization. This should not be just a diplomatic or legal exercise; this should be a natural political response on the part of States and is therefore an unpostponable exercise, consisting in the further improvement of the only universal instrument that the world has for bringing about its agreements and arbitrating in its misunderstandings in accordance with the law and the principles of justice.
It is perhaps appropriate to recall here that the problems that the Organization faces today are of a different type from those it encountered earlier. In the past 10 years, only half a dozen of the more than 100 conflicts that have breached international peace and security have been territorial conflicts. However, these conflicts have in some cases become attacks on the security of individuals and the stability of institutions, as well as, on some occasions, breaches of the peace in entire regions of the world.
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Creating a favourable climate for consideration of these issues progressively, promoting an animus societatis among all Member States, is perhaps our main goal. During our presidency, we shall pursue that goal, without excluding any States and in accordance with the Charter and the rules of procedure, with your support and the assistance of the Secretariat in such General Assembly forums as the various committees and working groups -- in short, with the support and assistance of all those who are involved in and experience the annual session as a forum that, although it may be routine and announced in advance, does not thereby forfeit any of its interest or importance.
Naturally, the list of challenges and issues before the United Nations is not confined to the systematic and orderly cataloguing of the agenda, which is certainly indispensable and whose consideration is the General Assembly's primary duty, so as to take a decision in each case. As they unfold, international events make the United Nations into a sounding board and focus of attention for peoples and governments, non-governmental organizations and sectors, analysts and observers, communicators and journalists and, above all, those who are endeavouring, full of hope, to transform their individual problems into a common cause.
The United Nations has not been and will not be able to solve all problems and settle all conflicts to which international coexistence gives rise. The Secretary-General is constantly endeavouring to reduce his budget, but he will be unable to go beyond a certain point without running a risk of triggering a crisis throughout the system. Consequently, there will always be a high level of dissatisfaction and criticism, of varying intensity according to the source.
However, perhaps nothing would be more dangerous than, under the sway of these criticisms, disregarding the extremely important achievements of the United Nations in a very wide range of fields, which must be viewed and adopted as conquests of all mankind, as demonstrated by the steady increase in the number of Members of the Organization. Let us all take care of this Organization, and even as we acknowledge and draw attention to its shortcomings, let us not allow scepticism to spread and make us lose heart. Let us renew our original commitment to peace and progress as essential values, without making any prior exceptions, and without sectorism and unproductive freezing of international relations. Let us view with the greatest lucidity and realism possible the critical points that can jeopardize the Organization; but let us not confuse the substantive and the procedural, let us not confuse what is of key importance and what is of secondary importance.
However, it must also be said frankly that it will be possible to do little or very little if States do not fulfil their commitments to the
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Organization. We offer the Secretary-General our cooperation in the pressing action he is taking in that connection.
Let us acknowledge that the transformation of the United Nations is both quantitative and qualitative and that this transformation must not only take place within the system and its organs and agencies, but must extend also to the conduct of States themselves, to their relations with one another, to regional relations and to the links between organs within the Organization itself.
In substantive terms, such challenges as the condemnation of and fight against terrorism, nuclear disarmament (of which Latin America provides a stellar example), human rights, the ongoing protection of children and women, the protection of minorities and displaced persons, appropriate trial before a competent court for those guilty of the most serious crimes against humanity, and the fight against disease, marginality and extreme poverty are the sort of challenges that can be met only if we upgrade our tools for responding to them, both at the political and at the Secretariat level.
In this context, we must evaluate fairly what the United Nations has achieved so far -- the fiftieth anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the fiftieth anniversary of the launching of the first peacekeeping operation being eloquent manifestations of these achievements that we are celebrating now.
Attention should also be drawn to coordination between the United Nations and other international organizations, to the promotion of economic integration mechanisms as one of the most effective strategies in working to achieve peace and secure borders through trade and cooperation, and to the encouragement of all effective forms of preventive diplomacy.
In conclusion, my friends, I invite you to join me for a year moving resolutely on a path that will present us with difficulties, but will fully open up the way for hope and be based on the desire to serve a just cause.
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