YouSaid · the spoken record

Dienstbier

THE RECORD WRITES THIS SPEAKER AS DIENSTBIER

lines on the record

59

first

1990-09-24

most recent

1991-09-24

sittings or episodes

2

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un-general-debate

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1. “Only with the end of confrontation and with the East and the Nest engaging in genuine co-operation will the United Nations be able to exert more effective efforts in promoting global security and human rights, eradicating famine and underdevelopment, protecting and improving the environment, combating drug abuse and terrorism and building up mechanisms of economic development and co-operation for the whole world community. If we are to succeed, we need a peaceful, favourable international environment where nobody suffers too much and where everybody has a chance. Naturally, there are differing priorities as to courses of development. The wealthier part of the world is in a process of economic integration.”

   1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

2. “Then, m aggression is not an aggression but a holy war or a liberation struggle; killing is not murder but the defeat of enemies of freedom or of criminal elements. In the United Nations, too, we were encountering that approach for over four decades. I am happy to note that, by taking an unambiguous stand on the Iraqi aggression against Kuwait, our Organisation is coming back - definitively, I hope - to its real mission.”

   1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

3. “However, it was also a proof of the fact that systems incapable of reflection and self-renewal at ever higher levels are doomed to passivity, rigidity and ultimately to extinction. Many dictators have terrorised peoples in this century; there were Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, there were numbers of others in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the end, they always led their countries to failure and defeat. Undoubtedly, those continuing along similar lines today will end up in the same way. That, however, always costs a lot of suffering, misery and human lives. We also know from our experience that those who cause suffering always seek to justify their actions by invoking lofty ideals: the only true faith; the interest of the nation; the struggle for the best of worlds.”

   1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

4. “When we were not willing to do so - as at the time of Munich or the Prague Spring - they sent troops to make us obey. Nevertheless, we have always succeeded in recovering. The first Czechoslovak President, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, believed that greatness was not a matter of size or numbers of population but rather a matter of inner strength, truth, culture and education, of the contribution a person or a nation can make to enrich the common treasury of humanity, of the values he or she will create and offer to others. Standing on the threshold of our new democracy, we want to meet this challenge. The rapid disintegration of the totalitarian structures in Central and Eastern Europe wan the fruit of the activities of people yearning to live in freedom in a just, democratic and prosperous society.”

   1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

5. “No more than a year ago I was living in a country mired in immorality, economic decline and police persecution; now I am living in a country full of hope that has already had free elections and is taking the first steps towards introducing a market economy, a year ago I was working as a boiler-room attendant, publishing an independent underground newspaper and being chased by the secret police, while today I am addressing you as the Foreign Minister of my country. In the heart of Europe, at the crossroads of European history, we have often been compelled to think about our place within the community of nations. Armies used to roll over our territory, and a number of European wars started and ended there. More than once, forces stronger than ourselves forced us to give way to their interests.”

   1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

6. “It was not until the past few years that, among other things because of the more favourable developments in the eastern part of Europe, certain results emerged. To a considerable extent we owe it to the tireless activities of the Secretary-General, Mr. Javier Peres de Cuellar, that the United Nations has, after all, played a meaningful role - for example in Namibia's accession to independence and in the assertion of minimum human-rights standards. I have said that the past year was a year of Europe - a year of historical failure of its totalitarian regimes. My country, too, is now, after 50 years, rededicating itself to its democratic traditions. We are all still somewhat surprised.”

   1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

7. “Twenty-two years ago I was sitting in this Hall in the press gallery and listening to a statement by the then Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko. He was putting forward arguments to back up a definition of aggression. It was a fine definition. However, I felt a shiver running down my spine. Gromyko was speaking as if he did not know that he was defining, describing and condemning precisely what his own country had perpetrated against Czechoslovakia no more than six weeks earlier. Then, for many years, I followed from the places where I had to live and work because of that aggression - among others from a prison - the difficulties and sometimes even political paralysis of this Organisation, the cascades of rhetoric and mutual accusations.”

   1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

8. “The most recent sessions of the General Assembly have already indicated that the United Nations is only now returning to the opportunities of the time of its founding. The success of last year's session was due to your predecessor General Joseph N. Garba of Nigeria, who deserves our gratitude. It has become customary to address here all the particular areas of United Nations activities. I shall certainly comment on some of them today, and we will express our views on others later. Yet I feel a need to be a little bit personal, which will take a little time. It is a special honour for me to be welcomed into the community of nations as the first Foreign Minister of newly liberated Czechoslovakia.”

   1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

9. “Mr. President, allow me to congratulate you on your election. Your professional skills and your kindness, which I had the opportunity to know during my recent visit to your country, will be much needed in guiding the present session of the General Assembly. The past year was to a substantial extent a year of Europe. The eastern half of Europe is regaining its freedom and sovereignty. Your presidency appears to me to be a symbol. You are taking office as a representative of a European country which is, however, also fairly close to Africa and whose port of Valletta was for centuries a place of clashes as well as a refuge that was always available on the routes between Europe and Asia, the West and the East, as was said in Rudyard Kipling's time, or the North and the South, as we are beginning to say nowadays.”

   1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)