TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT DIDIER OPERTTI (URUGUAY) AT HEADQUARTERS, 13 SEPTEMBER
Press Release
GA/SM/92
TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT DIDIER OPERTTI (URUGUAY) AT HEADQUARTERS, 13 SEPTEMBER
19990913 The PRESIDENT (spoke in Spanish): First of all, I would like to thank you for attending. I would like to take this opportunity to reaffirm my desire to maintain the kind of communication that will enable you and the media you represent to have a statement from the President of the fifty-third session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. I would also like to tell you of the main issues that have been dealt with this year and of what I would call the achievements, as well as, in some cases, the frustrations that the Organization has experienced.I should tell you, briefly, that the Organization is currently dealing with a whole series of problems that I would enumerate in the following manner. It has a budgetary problem -- a lack of sufficient means -- as a result of the arrears on the part of some of the major contributors. This, of course, is reflected in a cut-back in the programmes and activities of the Organization and has recently affected its functioning a great deal. This is an issue for which there does not yet seem to be a glimmer of a solution and one which will obviously continue to occupy the Organization's attention during the next session.
Another major issue that the Organization is dealing with, at this time, is the phenomenon of the rise of violent confrontations in the world on the basis of extreme nationalism, ethnic tension and religious fundamentalism. In these confrontations, political violence taking place within some countries gravely affects stability and human rights. The Organization is confronting those problems, although we cannot really say that the Organization was created or envisioned in order to solve those types of problems. In fact, the Organization was envisioned and created in San Francisco fundamentally to resolve and deal with questions relating to international peace and security. The conflicts that we are seeing nowadays have different facets. They are conflicts that take place inside national communities but which have an effect on values that the international community considers to be universal, such as human rights. This injects the Organization into the problem and leads it to participate in the search for a solution to them. With greater or lesser results, the Organization is thus involved in addressing those issues.
A third point that I would like to address briefly is the question of the reform of the United Nations. This is a long-delayed matter that has been under consideration for seven years. The reform I am speaking of here is dealt with in the chapter on the Security Council, its composition and number of members, and its relationship with the General Assembly and with States that are not members of the Council. This is ultimately one of the key topics that obliges the United Nations to face up to its own difficulties and to take measures to correct those problems.
We have been working very intensely this year on this matter. As we see it, we have made some interesting progress. I refer you to the report of the Working Group (document A/53/47), which is available in the official languages of the Organization. For the first time in the last seven years, this document contains a third chapter -- namely, chapter III Cð which covers general observations. It is a progress report that indicates those points or aspects on which delegations were gradually able to reach agreement, and embodies a reaffirmation of the United Nations system in the area of peace and security at a time when this is much needed, for there have been circumstances in which the United Nations system has been set aside, as was recently the case in the crisis in Kosovo. There are also specific references, for example, as to the number of members of the Security Council -- which may be between 20 and 26 -- and there is also a reference to the veto. It has been envisaged that an expansion of the Security Council might imply a discussion of the veto. This is very important, for the veto is a very sensitive issue for both those who hold it and those who do not. It is, in other words, a matter for the entire United Nations. So I would say that the Assembly has made reasonable progress on this point during this session. It is expected that the next session, the fifty-fourth session, will give fresh impetus to this issue.
There are other matters that I would like to touch upon. One example is the Millennium Assembly -- the fifty-fifth session in the year 2000, for which preparations are being made -- at which the major issue will probably be what is happening with the United Nations, the future of the United Nations. Rather than dealing with a specific, concrete issue, the United Nations itself will be the topic. Of course, the questions of poverty, violence, underdevelopment, assistance for development, the resources required and the constant questions of culture and education, will also all be raised. But without doubt, there will be a predominant topic: the question of whether the United Nations has a future and, if it does, what that future will be.
The future of the United Nations will not depend upon the functioning of the United Nations -- the matter of its offices, employees, equipment, buildings or its presence here in New York, Vienna or in various other places where it has offices. The future of the Organization will hinge on whether public opinion continues to consider the United Nations as a guarantor of peace and security. That is the future. If the United Nations ceases to be the frame of reference, then all the rest will become rather meaningless. That does not mean that the United Nations should not work to protect the environment, human rights and women and children, to eradicate poverty, improve underdeveloped areas and to provide for better land use and the better integration of populations. It must continue to strive to combat crime, organized crime and drugs and to promote health, culture and education. Of course, it must do all of those things; they, too, are valid objectives for the United Nations.
But what is clear is that the preservation of peace and security is the function that gives meaning and coherence to everything else. As I see it, the greatest challenge for the United Nations at this time is to reaffirm itself as a guarantor of peace and security. There is the new example of East Timor. There was the bad example of Kosovo. It now seems as if there is a possibility that the United Nations will regain that role in East Timor, putting an end to all the violations of human rights and the disregard of the political will, which was expressed through a popular consultation that was guaranteed by the United Nations and in which the United Nations played a significant role. We must now ensure the implementation of the result of that consultation and give the population of East Timor guarantees. The time has now come for the United Nations to take the reins again in East Timor and to show the international community and public opinion that, indeed, the United Nations continues to be the guarantor of peace and security.
I should be happy to answer any questions you may have. I will answer if I can.
QUESTION: Mr. President, we welcome you on behalf of the United Nations press. After listening to you describing the problems and difficulties of the United Nations, we wondered why you were not here more often to explain the problems of the United Nations.
THE PRESIDENT (spoke in Spanish): Why I did not come to the press room more often?
QUESTION: Yes, number one. And number two: your country is a founding member of the United Nations, and you have been talking about the ways in which the United Nations is not really fulfilling its responsibilities according to public opinion. What is your opinion about the reorganization of the Charter of the United Nations? You yourself said that the Organization has been involved in so many things that were not in the Charter in 1948 when it was signed in San Francisco. Can you elaborate and give us a glimpse of the future, the way you were doing?
The President (spoke in Spanish): Well, first let me say that we probably would have been here more often if the way our work is organized had made that possible. In any case, it is not too late if we can take the time today, as we are doing, to take stock.
I believe that various things have happened with the United Nations. First of all, there has been a very powerful quantitative change: the number of States has increased from 51 to 185, and soon, with the addition of two new members, we will have 187. That is a very large quantitative change, stemming from decolonization and the dividing up of certain regions that were formerly single political units. It is also the result of access to the United Nations by emerging States. There has been a quantitative change in the United Nations. It is more difficult to reach agreements among 185, than among 51. Their commitment to international affairs is very varied, depending on their nature and the timing of their accession to the Organization.
There has also been a significant qualitative -- not just quantitative -- change. And this qualitative change means that the new members expect different things from the United Nations. The founders expected to continue to use the United Nations format as a forum for preventing war and developing peace. This, basically, was the meaning underlying the founding of the Organization. The new States that become members of the Organization do so expecting more than that: they expect the United Nations, not only to maintain peace and security in the world, but to help in development, in eradicating poverty, in enhancing education, in combatting drugs, in their struggle to improve the health conditions of their populations and avoid infant mortality, and in enabling freer decision-making within families with regard to the number of family members. Population and development are now key issues in the United Nations. They also want to be protected from the abuse of power, from human rights violations, racial discrimination and from confrontations that are often almost tribal in nature. They want to be protected from economic globalization which might undermine more fragile economies. All of this has tremendous ramifications, depending on where those countries are located. There is, as it were, no central nucleus or focus of globalization: it is everywhere; it is a tremendous network. So the various members come to the United Nations with a variety of attitudes and expectations.
Clearly, the United Nations has to be a forum for a dialogue of civilizations. It is clear to me that we have to make this Organization into a great arena in which we become better acquainted with diversity. There is diversity in the world. The United Nations cannot be a kind of leveller or equalizer. It must recognize that these differences exists, working on certain vital common bases, such as respect for the human being, as basic common elements throughout the Organization.
Today, after my closing statement, I was speaking to a representative of an Islamic country, who had the good idea of proposing that dialogue among civilizations should be the main agenda topic for the Assembly in 2001. We talked specifically about how the United Nations could make a real contribution to peace and security by acting as a focal point for a coming together of different peoples and civilizations. If we come here with our differences and confront one another with them, we will never achieve the climate of tolerance essential to achieving peace.
It is often, perhaps excessively repeated that war is born in the minds of men. The minds of men give rise to war when there is intolerance and rejection. If there were mutual respect and tolerance of differences, perhaps we could begin to defuse these causes of conflict. Naturally, there are certain basics of civilization that we cannot entirely set aside: respect for humanity; the rights of men and women; the participation of women; recognition of the rights children -- all of these are key elements of human thinking. This may be a medium or long-term task; perhaps we will be unable to fulfil all this by decree, day by day. We have to accept that it is a gradual process, that it will be incremental, gradual and ongoing. We do not have a magic wand to change things from one day to the next. What is clear, however, is that we will have to work towards this integration.
A final point on the issues that you raised. I believe that the Millennium Assembly offers a great opportunity. If the United Nations lets it pass like just another session among many -- such as the fiftieth anniversaries of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or peacekeeping -- if we merely go on recording historic anniversaries with a kind of nostalgic harkening to the past; if we are incapable of renewing things and looking at what we must do in the present, then we will simply be relegating the United Nations to the history of the past and denying its role in the history of the future.
If we wish it to have a role in the history of the future, we need to present the United Nations with a new agenda, replete with the basic. What is the United Nations today? What is its purpose? In what ways is it effective? We must ask these questions dispassionately, not in a bureaucratic spirit, without calculation. We must try to recreate their original inspiring spirit. The United Nations was not established to meet certain administrative needs. It was born of a need felt by the entire international community, by all peoples. The link between the United Nations and peoples must be re-established. I told a journalist this morning that it seemed very difficult to use the topic of the United Nations in an electoral campaign. It is very difficult for a journalist to portray the United Nations in a manner to fire the general imagination. The population at large is insufficiently aware or interested, not because of a lack of education or culture, in most cases; not because of a lack of information, in others; not because of a lack of facts. It is simply that they are sceptical about it. They are sceptical.
In order to dispel that scepticism and restore hope, we need to simplify our debates in the United Nations. There must be less speechifying, more action; less divergence, more concordance; less formal diplomacy, more real politics if the United Nations truly wants to reassume its role as the great upholder of peace, a great frame of reference for the civilized world today. Once upon a time, when you spoke of the United Nations, it was of something of far-reaching importance. The mere words AðUnited Nations@ð implied a great deal. They mean far less today and I think we must be aware of this.
QUESTION: Under the circumstances of this public awareness, would you give the Department of Public Information (DPI) a greater role and, with the budget limitations, still give it a greater budget to help. What ways do you see DPI helping?
The PRESIDENT (spoke in Spanish): I believe that one of the basic features of modern society is information, communication. But the important thing is to have information to convey. Information works for an existing product; it informs about existing things. Information does not make the product. That is done by the political bodies, the decision-makers, the protagonists in the system. Then the information on that event or product needs to be distributed to the public. More important than the information is the product. Then, once you have the product or the event, you have to inform.
The major deficit, however, is not in the area of information. There is plenty of information. There is a whole range of information; in some countries there is more, in some less. Sometimes, in the newspapers Cð even some here in the United States and in Europe Cð it is hard to find information about the United Nations. Paradoxically, there is more information about what the United Nations is doing in Latin America and the Caribbean than there is in Europe or the United States.
I am not saying that this is absolutely true, but generally speaking it is. Here, undoubtedly, there is political data, real data. If the newspapers do not include the political coverage, it is because readers feel no great interest in it. Readers are probably not interested because they are not interested, or are less interested, in what this Organization produces, except when a crisis erupts, as in Kosovo or East Timor, something striking.
But we need the United Nations to be represented in times of crisis and of normality alike, showing its work in human rights, the fight against poverty and illiteracy, health care and combating international crime, which affects every society. No society is completely immune to international crime. All are affected in one way or another. I was my country's Minister of the Interior for three years, in charge of security and public order. It was not like here in the United States, where the Secretary of the Interior is in charge of parks, the environment. No, the Ministry of the Interior in our South American countries is a ministry of security. And I can indeed assure you that there is such a thing as international crime; there is organized drug trafficking, traffic in women, labourers and children. All of this is organized. In other words, these are crimes against humanity.
Of course, in this area, the United Nations has an important and positive role to play that needs to be stressed and noted. It should also be noted, however, that the sums of money available to the United Nations to address these matters have been significantly reduced by two factors: the failure of Member States to pay assessed contributions and the use of contributions to cover war operations, such as that in Kosovo. For example, $200 million was approved two months ago to begin establishing a United Nations administration in Kosovo. Two hundred million dollars for September and October alone. They will be asking for several hundred million dollars more in a few days' time to administer the region.
Thus, we need to work more preventively. We need to create strong public opinion. Perhaps the Milosevic phenomenon would not have arisen if there had been strong public opinion and sufficiently organized political parties. Probably, if there were a politically robust and mature environment, it would be very hard for tyrannies to develop.
QUESTION: How can -- for instance in your own country -- the media be encouraged to participate here at the United Nations, sending correspondents or sending broadcasters, both in your country and in Latin America, so that there would be better coverage of Latin America?
The PRESIDENT (spoke in Spanish): I am not a professional person in this area. Of course, I do have people who understand these matters very well.
I think that what you are proposing is one of those ideas that at a time such as this would probably help the United Nations project a better image and provide better information about the system.
QUESTION: What is in the future, sir? In the past, we had former Presidents of the General Assembly who could not even go home.
The PRESIDENT (spoke in Spanish): Until 28 February of next year, I shall continue to serve as the Foreign Minister of my country. I intend to go home tomorrow evening, but will be coming back the following week, as Foreign Minister, to take part in the meetings of the Rio Group and to hold meeting with the European Union to prepare for the dialogue we shall be having with the Europeans in November on the subject of agricultural-export subsidies, something that affects many countries, including Haiti.
I shall return to a normal way of life. In March, I shall return to teaching international law and integration law. In M