YouSaid · the spoken record

Felipe PÉREZ ROQUE

lines on the record: 160
first: 1999-09-24
most recent: 2007-09-24
sittings or episodes: 8
sources: un-general-debate

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“But it is essential for the industrialized countries to do their share and to supply the necessary medicines and materials for the programme. Africa is waiting for us. Cuba stands ready. It is now up to the developed countries. Democracy within countries is a goal that is being sought. That is certainly commendable if the diversity of cultures, identities, historical experiences, national realities and political models, and the right of each people to adopt, with complete independence, the system that it deems most appropriate, are properly respected. But is there truly any democracy in international relations at present? Unfortunately there is not. In order to attain it, let us put an end to hegemonism, foster development, replace selfishness with cooperation and, finally, respect the purposes and principles of the San Francisco Charter.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“Deeds, not words, are what we need today. Two years ago, we put in place a comprehensive health-care plan under which almost 2,000 Cuban health workers are rendering services, free of charge, in 20 16 countries of Central America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. Now, given the urgent appeal of the African countries, we would like to reiterate the offer that President Fidel Castro made to the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the developed countries during the Millennium Summit to cooperate with Africa in the fight against AIDS and other terrible diseases currently threatening to wipe out an entire continent. Cuba is ready to supply up to 3,000 additional Cuban doctors and paramedics for such an undertaking in sub-Saharan Africa. They would also contribute to the training of African health workers in the field.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“The Millennium Summit, which ended with positive results, demonstrated once again that the devastating effects of imposing a neo-liberal model in a globalized world are hitting third world countries particularly hard. The socio-economic situation of such countries — especially those in Africa — is virtually untenable. Likewise, it made it clear that unilateralism and duress have no place in a world in which solidarity and cooperation are the only possible means to achieve salvation for all. In the wake of the Summit, no doubts remain: now is the time to act, to adopt concrete measures in order to fight the poverty and underdevelopment currently afflicting the majority of the people of the world. Cuba, a poor country that nonetheless has a large store of human capital, has already started to take action.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“Are we entitled to continue discussing, year after year, without any concrete outcome, the right to development, which our people are demanding, while we watch, scattered and disoriented, as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank continue to strip the Organization of the prerogatives bestowed upon it by the Charter? Those who have imposed such devastating decisions as those leading to the unbridled privatization of the national resources of third world countries and the indiscriminate liberalization of the capital account — thereby facilitating the outflow of the scarce foreign currencies from poor countries that, because of expediency or fear, have not been able to fight for the rights of their peoples — will be held to account by their children and by history.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“Isn't it precisely now — when nobody argues anymore about the resounding failure of the neo-liberal policies that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank imposed on third-world countries with a fundamentalist stubbornness to the benefit of transnational companies — that our peoples, united in a great alliance for the most basic rights, must seize the opportunity to demand that a more outstanding, decisive role in these affairs be played by the United Nations Economic and Social Council and this General Assembly? Why should we continue to allow international cooperation to virtually disappear, just now when it is most needed?”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“Setting out to halve in 15 years the number of poor people that we now have is undoubtedly a remarkable endeavour, but how will the other half judge our goal if they are doomed to live as indigents all their lives? What has become of the right to development that was once so solemnly proclaimed by this very General Assembly? Don't you think, dear colleagues, that the time has come for us to calmly and firmly set out to rescue the issue of the right to development as a United Nations priority?”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“Why does not the United Nations, instead of tamely following the hazardous death game with the Western Powers, focus its attention on the so-much trumpeted yet unfulfilled purpose of setting aside a portion of the nearly US$ 800 billion, currently used on military expenses, to promote development and try to save the victims of the silent war that, year after year, through disease and starvation, kills more than 11 million third-world children under 5 years of age? In any case, peace will not be possible if there is no development for the over one hundred third-world countries that are presently observing, as stone guests, the irresponsible squandering of the wealthy, selfish consumer societies that insatiably eat up our children's future.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“The world will be really safer if total, complete disarmament takes place, including, especially, nuclear disarmament. There has to come a day when light weaponry will be eliminated, when other types of deadlier and more dangerous conventional arms — the much more dangerous and deadlier arms owned by a handful of developed countries — must also be disposed of — the sooner the better. Yes, mines must be eliminated, but the threats of aggression against poor countries must be eliminated long before that. Will our planet, by any chance, be safer if the United States finally deploys its hallucinating, costly anti-missile defence system, through which that country's rulers deceive their own people by promising them protection against missiles when nobody knows really from where they could be launched?”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“Is it possible that those who now buttress with threatening language their attempts at interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries have fallen for the idea that the serious problems of underdevelopment, the after-effects of colonialism, hunger, disease and the consequences of the constant pillaging of the third world countries — the real cause of current conflicts — can be resolved through use of smart bombs? 19 Is it not really paradoxical that Western Powers — while developing new, ever more sophisticated killing devices — intend to prevent poor countries from using conventional light weaponry that is essential to nations that, like Cuba, live under the permanent threat of military aggression? Enough of this hypocrisy and Pharisaic behaviour.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“The recent precedent of unleashing deadly wars against defenceless populations, without even consulting the Security Council, is not only a flagrant violation of the Charter, but it is also once again dragging the world into situations like those that once took over 40 million lives in a single war. How many other wars against small, poor countries must be waged before we understand the need to respect the Charter and engage in a deep democratization process in international relations?”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“We all know that the small group of developed countries — led by the United States and its allies with powerful forces — that attempt to impose this perilous concept in the discussions and decisions of our Organization, do not have to fear the consequences of recognizing such a right in international relations. They are not, as we are, the Euro-Atlantic rim, defined by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as the probable scene for their acts of aggression, and the new strategic doctrine of this alliance is not aimed at them, but at us, the poor countries. Actions geared at fragmenting countries and nations, at recolonizing territories and re-establishing zones of influence must cease.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“We are also living in a world characterized by the exploitation and the horrendous destitution of over l.3 billion human beings, who, while suffering on a daily basis and without giving up the hope of a better life for their children, wonder if we will still have sufficient reasons to reaffirm faith in the fundamental rights of man and in the dignity and value of the human person, as proclaimed more than five decades ago by the founders of the United Nations. The attempts at imposing by force and under pressure the so-called right of humanitarian intervention are at present the greatest threat to international peace and security.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“The emergence of a unipolar world in which a single super-Power is capable of militarily controlling the international scene, far from meaning greater security for our peoples, has ushered in a new stage in which the hegemonism of that sole super-Power prevails — direct or covert interventionism under the guise of multilateral actions, insecurity for the small countries, selfishness as a behavioural pattern in international relations and the attempt to disregard the principles of equality among States, national sovereignty, self- determination, non-intervention, the non-threat or the use of force and the settlement of disputes through peaceful means — principles that have constituted the cornerstone of the United Nations.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“We are living at a decisive moment in the history of humankind. More than half a century after the creation of the United Nations, on the threshold of a new millennium that was supposed to herald an era of peace among men, solidarity among nations and greater well- being for the poorest people, we are confronted instead by the most serious and complex economic, social, political and environmental crisis in the history of the human race. The expectations of peace, stability and cooperation that the end of the cold war triggered throughout the world are far from becoming a reality.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“Here with us as well are three outstanding personalities in Cuban medicine, Deputies in the National Assembly, who have testified before that body on the tragic harm that has resulted from the blockade on medicines imposed against our country. There are also three Christian deputies, whose profound ethical, religious and human convictions led them to support the proclamation made in our National Assembly demanding the trial and punishment of the guilty parties. 20 These individuals are prepared to respond, here in the United States, to any questions posed to them, or to meet with the press, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, legislators, senators or even any committee of the United States Congress. We are prepared not only to make accusations, but also to engage in debate and prove the facts that support them.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Here in this Hall today, as members of the Cuban delegation to the General Assembly at its fifty-fourth session, there are three young Cubans representing our country's university students, secondary-school students, and children and adolescents. They are here on behalf of the social organizations that went before the relevant courts to file the claim against the United States Government, demanding reparations and compensation for the damages and injuries suffered by thousands of people. Those same organizations also took the legal initiative of proposing to the National Assembly of People's Power the proclamation I have just cited.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“As a consequence, the National Assembly of People's Power of the Republic of Cuba declared on 13 September 1999: first, that the economic blockade imposed on Cuba by the Government of the United States constitutes an international crime of genocide in accordance with the definition stipulated in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the General Assembly on 9 December 1948; second, that, on the basis of the arguments put forward and of the foregoing statement, it proclaims Cuba's right to demand that such acts be punished; third, that as a result of the grave, systematic and ongoing genocide carried out over the course of 40 years against the people of Cuba, and in accordance with international standards, principles, agreements and laws, Cuban courts have the right to try and punish the guilty parties, whether they be present or absent; fourth, that acts of genocide and other war crimes are not subject to any statute of limitations; fifth, that the guilty parties can be punished even with a sentence of life imprisonment; sixth, that criminal responsibility does not exempt the aggressor State from providing material compensation for the human and economic damage it may have caused; and seventh, that it calls on the international community for support in this struggle to defend the most elementary principles of justice, the right to life, peace and the freedom of all peoples.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Article VII of the 1948 Convention on genocide states, without room for the slightest doubt, that “Persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed”. Subparagraph (e) of article III of that Convention stipulates with the same precision that accomplices to genocide shall also be punished.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“The first Protocol Additional to that Convention specifically, precisely and categorically stipulates, in its article 54, entitled “Protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”, that “1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited. “2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive”.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War was signed on 12 August 1949, and was ratified by the Governments of the United States and Cuba; it entered into force on 21 October 1950. A total of 188 States are currently parties to the Convention. Article 23 decrees that “Each High Contracting Party shall allow the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians of another High Contracting Party, even if the latter is its adversary. It shall likewise permit the free passage of all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases”.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Article II of that Convention reads: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. In subparagraph (c), it immediately goes on to include, among these acts, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. Article III stipulates that the following acts, among others, shall be punishable: “(a) Genocide; ... (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide”. It explicitly states in article IV that 19 “Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals”.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Given the absolute contempt demonstrated by the United States with regard to these General Assembly resolutions, the people of Cuba have decided, independently of the battle taking place in this Assembly, to resort to the legal procedures to which they are entitled in order to demand the appropriate sanctions against those responsible for such acts of genocide. Cuba's initiative is based on a solid and irrefutable legal foundation. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the Assembly on 9 December 1948 and signed by the Government of the United States of America on 11 December 1948 and by the Republic of Cuba on 28 December 1949. It entered into force on 12 January 1951 and has been signed and ratified by 124 States.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“In the same report, the American Association for World Health expresses its belief that the United States embargo against Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of a large number of ordinary Cuban citizens and concludes that the embargo has significantly increased suffering in Cuba, to the point of causing death. For seven consecutive years, the Assembly has consistently adopted a resolution on the need to end the economic blockade imposed by the Government of the United States of America on the Cuban people. The condemnation of that genocidal policy has visibly grown from year to year: year on year between 1992 and 1998, the Cuban resolution against the blockade received 59, 88, 101, 117, 137, 143 and 157 votes in favour, while the United States obtained only 3, 4, 2, 3, 3, 3 and 2 votes, including its own.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“The Geneva Conventions, to which some 165 countries, including the United States, are parties, require the free passage of all medical supplies and foodstuffs intended for civilian use in time of war. The United States and Cuba are not at war. Indeed, their Governments have even maintain diplomatic representation in Havana and Washington. However, the American Association for World Health has determined that the embargo's restrictions are a deliberate blockade of the Cuban population's access to food and medicine in peacetime.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“The Cuban-American terrorist mafia, which is closely linked to the extreme right wing, has achieved its goal of changing the blockade from an order from the executive into rigorous and inflexible legislation. The genocide thereby became institutionalized. Following a 1997 study of the consequences of the blockade for health, the American Association for World Health concluded that it violates the most basic international agreements and conventions governing human rights standards, including the United Nations Charter, the Charter of the Organization of American States and the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“This put an end to commercial operations that amounted to over $700 million in imports of foodstuffs and medicines from those countries. This genocidal policy reached even more infamous heights with the Helms-Burton Act, which codified all previous administrative restrictions, expanded and tightened the blockade and established it in perpetuity. Subsequent to the passage of that law, and with the aim of tightening even further the blockade against the Cuban people, numerous amendments, introduced into bills of such urgency and length that many United States lawmakers did not even have time to read them, were adopted by show of hands in the United States Congress.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“At the most critical and difficult time in our history, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the socialist bloc collapsed, and with them the basic markets and sources of supply that the country could count on to withstand the ferocious economic warfare waged against an island only 90 miles from the United States coast, they decided to be yet more unyielding in their approach to Cuba: with truly vulgar and repugnant opportunism, the blockade was intensified to the maximum. The so-called Torricelli Act of 1992, among other restrictive measures that greatly affected the maritime transport of food and other commodities between Cuba and the rest of the world, prohibited United States subsidiaries based in third countries from trading with Cuba.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“From that time on, successive economic measures against the Cuban people continued to accumulate until they formed a absolute and total blockade, which went so far as to prevent Cuba from importing even an aspirin produced in the United States, or from exporting to that country a single flower grown in Cuba. This complete blockade, cynically referred to in official terminology with the euphemistic and apparently innocuous word “embargo”, has continued to intensify 18 over the past 40 years.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“A market that was established over the course of more than 100 years between the United States and Cuba, with Cuba guaranteeing the supply of this essential food product to the United States and its allies during the first half of the century, including during the two World Wars from which the United States emerged as the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world, was wiped out in a second, dealing a cruel blow to the country's major source of employment and wealth and depriving it of essential funds for the food, medicine, fuel and raw materials needed to ensure the material survival of our people.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Mallory, a senior State Department official, stated that: “The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship ... every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba”. He suggested taking: “... a line of action which ... makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the Government.” On 6 July of that same year, the United States adopted one of the measures proposed: the elimination of the Cuban sugar quota. Never again would the United States buy a single pound of sugar from Cuba.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“A month later, on 24 June, at a meeting called by the State Department to consider options for action against Cuba, the view was put forth that the United States should take a very strong stance forthwith against the Act and its implementation, and that the best way to achieve the necessary results was through economic pressure. The elimination of the Cuban sugar cane quota from the United States market was proposed. According to a declassified document, this would cause the sugar industry to suffer an abrupt and immediate decline, causing widespread higher unemployment; the large numbers of people thereby forced out of work would begin to go hungry. At that same meeting, Secretary of State Herter explicitly described these proposals as measures of economic warfare. In a memorandum dated 6 April 1960, Mr. L. D.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“The Agrarian Reform Act, enacted on 17 May 1959, was aimed at providing food for the vast majority of our undernourished people and direct or indirect employment for the large percentage of the population that was then unemployed. It was enacted when the word socialism had not yet been spoken in Cuba; however, it provoked an extreme reaction in the United States, whose companies owned much of the best and most fertile land in Cuba. Cuba's willingness, stipulated in the Act itself, to provide the owners with deferred compensation paid out in reasonable and workable instalments was met with an immediate demand from the United States Government for prompt, effective and full cash compensation. There was nothing in the public coffers with which to meet this demand.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Five weeks after the triumph of the revolution, economist Felipe Pazos, a professional man — well known and respected in United States Government circles — who had been appointed by the revolutionary Government to take over the management of the Cuban National Bank, announced on 6 February that the former regime had embezzled or seized $424 million from the gold and dollar reserves that backed the Cuban peso. The New York Times subsequently corroborated the report's claim concerning the theft of the funds, which constituted the country's only reserves. The spoils of this colossal theft ended up in United States banks. Not a dime was returned to Cuba. The National Bank immediately requested a modest quantity of funds to deal with this highly critical situation. That request was turned down.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Three days later, on 26 December, President Eisenhower instructed the CIA that he did not wish the specifics of covert operations against Cuba to be 17 presented to the National Security Council. Everything had to be kept strictly secret. The sudden and overwhelming triumph of the revolutionary forces six days later did not give them time to prevent a Castro victory. The first United States assault on the national economy took place on 1 January 1959, when those who had looted the public treasury fled for the United States, together with the perpetrators of the worst massacres and abuses against the Cuban people.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Can we possibly allow an international system to continue into the next century that accords total impunity for monstrous actions such as these, which have been systematically and flagrantly perpetrated by a major Power? The ferocious economic blockade that extends to every facet of our country's foreign trade and financial relations merits particular attention. This blockade, which has lasted over 40 years, began to develop before the triumph of the revolution. A secret United States document, declassified in 1991, reveals that on 23 December 1958, at a National Security Council meeting attended by President Dwight Eisenhower at which the situation in Cuba was discussed, the then-Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Allen Dulles, categorically stated: “We must prevent a Castro victory”.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“At the open and public trial, televised nationwide, at which this claim was considered, it was clearly proved that the United States Government was directly responsible for this continued aggression, and that the undeclared war against Cuba had constituted an official State policy enforced by no fewer than nine successive United States Administrations over the last 40 years. What will they tell their grandchildren, these leaders, officials and agents of the United States Government whose consciences are weighed down by the guilt of planning and carrying out this “dirty war” against Cuba and by the moral burden of responsibility for the death of thousands of Cubans?”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Recently Cuban social organizations, on behalf of the entire population of Cuba, filed a civil lawsuit against the United States Administration claiming reparation and compensation for loss and damages resulting from the deaths of 3,478 Cuban citizens and for a further 2,099 survivors who have been left disabled as a consequence of the covert plots and the “dirty war” waged by the United States. The suit demands that the United States Government, which is responsible for these human losses and injuries, be sentenced to pay a total of $181.1 billion in reparation as a minimum symbolic compensation for the loss of something that is clearly irreplaceable and priceless: the lives and physical well- being of the more than 5,500 Cuban citizens who have been victims of the United States' obsessive policy against Cuba.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“This policy has also included the organization and support of armed groups; air and naval raids against our territory; the hatching of over 600 plots to assassinate the leader of our revolution; a military invasion by a mercenary army; the most serious threat ever of a global nuclear conflict, in October 1962; and finally, a brutal commercial and financial blockade and a ferocious economic war against my country that have now lasted 40 years. Let me set aside the economic aspects of this aggression against Cuba and deal solely with the physical aggression and acts of war carried out by the United States Government.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“High-level authorities in that country have openly admitted that this policy is aimed at destroying the political and economic system built by the Cuban people of their own free will and at restoring the neo-colonial power that the United States held over Cuba and definitively lost on 1 January 1959, with the triumph of the Cuban revolution. As has been made clear by events, public statements by American spokespersons and by declassified secret United States documents, this policy of aggression has been carried out through means that have ranged from political and diplomatic measures, propaganda campaigns, espionage and subversion, and fostering defection and illegal emigration, to acts of terrorism, sabotage and biological warfare.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Will we ever see a change in the current situation, in which there are over 600 telephone lines for every 1,000 people in the United States, Sweden and Switzerland, yet only 1 telephone per 1,000 people in Cambodia, Chad and Afghanistan? As part of this tragic depiction of the situation facing the vast majority of countries in the world, I feel bound to talk about my own country. The situation in Cuba is an eloquent example, if ever there was one, of what should not be done in terms of relations between powerful and small nations. For more than 40 years, my people have been subjected to a brutal policy of hostility and all kinds of aggression imposed by the United States.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“How will we poor countries be able to compete if our professionals leave for the wealthy nations in pursuit of better opportunities; if we are not even allowed to keep our athletes and we must watch with sorrow as they compete under another country's flag? How will we poor nations be able to compete economically if the 10 most 16 developed countries control 95 per cent of the patents issued in the last 20 years, and intellectual property, far from being liberalized, is ever more closely protected? Talking to us poor countries about trade through the Internet is almost a joke, when we know that 91 per cent of Internet users live in the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Will we truly succeed in making the World Trade Organization the democratic and transparent forum we need, or will the powerful interests of a minority be imposed to the detriment of the silent majority, which is too divided, confused and unsuspecting to understand the dangers of a cold and dogmatic liberalization of world trade? Will they remember that the vast majority of third world countries, dependent on the export of a single agricultural product or a few spices, will be wiped out of world trade and crushed by the fierce competition of a few transnational corporations? Should we or should we not take these realities into account and accept the need to protect the interests of the underdeveloped countries, if only to guarantee their very survival?”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“He responded quickly with the words of a Prophet from the Holy Book: “Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless! And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from afar? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory?” (The Holy Bible, Isaiah 10: 1-3) I know that many people in this Hall share these concerns, and I also know that almost all of us are asking ourselves the same question. Can the World Trade Organization (WTO) be spared from becoming a fiefdom of the United States and its allies, as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are today?”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“How will they explain that the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, whose representatives I now address with all due respect, have fallen so far behind as to provide less than one third of their 1970 commitment to dedicate a minimum of 0.7 per cent of their gross national product to official development assistance? I asked a member of our delegation, a Deputy in our National Assembly and a professed Christian, what the Bible would say about such an unjust economic order.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“An economic system that destroys the environment cannot be sustained. The world's supply of drinking water today is 60 per cent of what it was in 1970; and today there are 2.3 billion more human beings on the planet than there were back then. The same is happening with our forests. Could anyone in this Hall defend the proposition that such a pace of destruction can go on indefinitely? An economic system based on the irrational consumption patterns of the rich countries, which are later exported to our own countries through the mass media, cannot be sustained. Why not accept that it is possible to provide a decent life to all the people of the planet with the resources that are within our reach and the degree of technological development we have achieved, through a rational and solidarity-based exploitation of all this potential?”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Who will explain the fact that, thanks to the privilege of having the world's reserve currency, the Americans, save less and spend more than anyone else in the world? Will anyone tell them that in 1998 they were able to import $124 billion worth of cars and spend $8 billion in cosmetics, thanks in good measure to the fact that they controlled 17.8 per cent of the votes of the International Monetary Fund, which gives them a virtual right of veto? How can we explain to the people of Tanzania, for example, that while all of this was happening they had to spend nine times as much on servicing the foreign debt than on primary health care, and four times as much as on primary education? The current international economic system is not only profoundly unjust, but also absolutely unsustainable.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Sooner or later, those reserves evaporate in the course of the desperate 15 and unfair battle to defend our currencies from the strong and highly favoured currency of the anachronistic Bretton Woods accord, the sacrosanct dollar. When the history of these years is written, it will be very difficult to explain how a single country was able to accumulate so many privileges and such absolute power. What will the economists of the next century say when they realize that the United States was able to live with a current account deficit that is already about $300 billion without the International Monetary Fund (IMF) having imposed even one of the severe adjustment programmes that are impoverishing the countries of the third world?”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“While we speak insistently in this Hall of the need for a new international financial architecture, our countries are being buffeted by the scourge of a system that allows the daily occurrence of speculative transactions worth $3 trillion. That structure cannot be fixed; it is not a matter of remodelling it, but rather of demolishing it and rebuilding it anew. Can anyone explain the logic of this phantom economy that produces nothing and is sustained by buying and selling things that do not exist? Should we or should we not demolish this chaotic financial system and build upon its ruins a system that favours production, takes differences into account and stops forcing our battered economies to endlessly pursue the impossible illusion of increasing financial reserves?”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Here in this Hall are the representatives of the Group of 7, whose countries have 685 million inhabitants and economies with a combined gross domestic product of $20 trillion. Also present are the rest of us, who represent the remaining 181 countries, with more than 5 billion inhabitants and economies with a combined gross domestic product of barely $10 trillion. Yes, we are all equal under the Charter of the United Nations, but not in real life. While rich countries have the transnational corporations that control over one third of all of the world's exports, we poor countries have the asphyxiating burden of external debt, which has risen to the level of $2 trillion and continues to grow, devouring almost 25 per cent of our export earnings just to service our debt. How can development be possible under these conditions?”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“As things stand at present, a single country can override the will of all the other United Nations Members. And there is one country that has exercised its unlimited right to veto an infinite number of times: the United States. This is untenable. At the United Nations, we must curb the attempt to impose a single way of thinking on us by trying to make us believe that it is our way, or that it is superior to our rich diversity of cultures and models, or that it is more advanced and modern than our multiplicity of identities. To survive, we must resist being treated as merely the Euro-Atlantic periphery and oppose having labelled as global threats the problems that we face as consequences of colonialism: underdevelopment; the consumerism of the wealthy countries; and even the results of their recent or current policies.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)