YouSaid · the spoken record

Roberto Robaina González

lines on the record: 141
first: 1995-09-24
most recent: 1998-09-24
sittings or episodes: 4
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

“In a world in which relations of respect, good-neighbourliness and cooperation among the peoples and Governments should be fostered every day, the fact is that one Power, resting on its unquestionable economic, military and technological might, seeks to impose rules and norms of conduct on the rest of the world, thus undermining the sovereign rights of each and every one of our nations. What political, legal or moral reason underlies and legitimizes the missile attack against the Republic of Iraq by the United States Armed Forces just a few days ago? What principles or claims can be used to cover up the unilateral and unjustified use of force?”
1996-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 51 (1996)
“It is fitting to recall what Harry 24 Truman said of the Charter of the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference in 1945: “If we fail to use it, we shall betray all those who have died in order that we might meet here in freedom and safety to create it. “If we seek to use it selfishly — for the advantage of any one nation or any small group of nations — we shall be equally guilty of that betrayal.” (Documents of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, San Francisco, 1945, vol. 1, p. 687) Further comment is unnecessary; subsequent history has been quite eloquent enough. But the most dangerous thing, as has often been said, is that the United Nations is merely the reflection of the world in which we live. This domineering unilateralism shows up even more crudely in the daily conduct of international relations.”
1996-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 51 (1996)
“That position of the planet’s most powerful country is not aimed against one person; rather, using the question of the Organization’s efficiency as a pretext, it stands against the United Nations mandate to attend to the needs of the great majority of mankind. It is a new and gross attempt to impose on the community of nations the will of a single State in the management of the multilateral forum of cooperation that should be the most representative and democratic one in the world. We should ask ourselves if we, the members of this Assembly, can passively accept the threat posed by this unilateral imposition.”
1996-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 51 (1996)
“This endeavour includes the aspiration to receive fair treatment in international economic relations; to try to save children from starvation and disease; to promote emergency assistance to refugees and disaster victims; to attempt to combat crime, drug addiction and disease; to promote education and the development of human resources; and to tackle the enormous task of halting or slowing the progressive ecological deterioration of our planet. These are precisely the functions that the notorious United States Senator is trying to abolish, and it is because of the existence of those programmes that the managerial approach of the Secretary-General is so fiercely attacked.”
1996-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 51 (1996)
“But there is more: the Government of the United States of America, which owes the United Nations the shameful amount of over $1.5 billion, assumes, with no embarrassment whatsoever, the right to determine unilaterally who can or cannot be the Secretary-General of the United Nations and to declare how an Organization deliberately deprived of the resources required for the fulfilment of its functions should or should not be managed. Eighty per cent of the work of the United Nations system is devoted to assisting the developing countries and to strengthening their ability to help themselves.”
1996-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 51 (1996)
“Just a few weeks ago, the Chairman of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued an ultimatum for the United Nations to carry out reforms in accordance with the prescriptions of that country or else face the consequences. His articles in renowned publications question precisely the principles on which this institution is founded, particularly the principle of sovereign equality of States. For this influential United States politician and those who identify themselves with his primitive views, there is only one argument: some States deserve more privileges than others. In this way they try to make a dead letter of the principle of sovereign equality of States, the cornerstone of the Charter adopted over 50 years ago in San Francisco.”
1996-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 51 (1996)
“Hence, in expressing my Government’s satisfaction at having President Razali lead us in our work, I cannot but express confidence that his diplomatic professionalism, his personal achievements and his long and proven experience in the work of this Organization will give him strength in leading us in a remarkably difficult and complex session of the General Assembly. Far from being more democratic and universal, the Organization in which we come together today is tending to tighten more and more the exclusive circle of those who govern it. The just demands heard from this rostrum are now sounding the alarm at the march of ideas being promoted mainly in our host country.”
1996-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 51 (1996)
“First and foremost, I denounce the new Israeli aggression and the policy of hegemony that defends these acts, and I express support for our Palestinian brothers in their struggle for their legitimate right to finally have an independent state, with Jerusalem its capital. Also about a year ago, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, the country of the President of the General Assembly, very rightly stated that the United Nations should support the collective needs of peoples and nations in order to serve humanity as a whole, and that it was therefore necessary to correct the trend of making them an instrument of the wealthy and the powerful. Today it must be recognized that we are meeting again without having removed that danger.”
1996-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 51 (1996)
“A year ago, from this same rostrum, I began my statement by reading some 10 hair-raising news items of the moment from the international press, on bellicose conflicts, violence and death in the cities and deadly epidemics claiming new victims. Intending to do this again today, I found that the situation remains the same, or is perhaps even worse. Unfortunately, the world wasted another 12 months without doing anything to stop such catastrophic events. As if it were necessary to illustrate this with specific facts, even as we gathered here we once again witnessed the bloodshed of the heroic Palestinian people.”
1996-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 51 (1996)
“On behalf of my country, I prefer today to commemorate rather than celebrate and to call on this Assembly, 50 years after its founding, to veto irrationality and vote unanimously for the future of mankind.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“They have not been made to please anyone outside, especially those who have so altered themselves as to be unrecognizable. Day by day, minute by minute, Cuba is striving to improve itself, to adapt and survive in this global jungle, where more than ever before survival of the fittest is the rule. The lion may be able to devour the deer, but he has a hard time swallowing the hedgehog. For this reason, the United Nations must also change and become more democratic, to become the genuine vehicle for development and peace which humanity needs if it is to survive. It must become a forum for dialogue and concord where the principle of the sovereign equality of States is the keystone and foundation. Many have spoken, and will continue to speak this year, of celebrating the merits and work of the United Nations, which no one can deny.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Our economy, although subject to the blockade, will grow and will provide for and meet the most pressing needs of our people. The powerful infrastructure that we have built up over three decades with what some have called the subsidy that Cuba has wasted well befits a people whose high level of education and culture and a stable land of peace and order. All of this is sustained by the broadest popular consultation and consent and a democratic consensus enjoyed by few Governments. The changes which Cuba has made and will continue to make in its own way apply not only to our economy, but to our political system, civil society and institutions, in order to make our democracy increasingly genuine and participative. These changes fall squarely within our sovereign prerogative.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“The people of the United States, whose economy, politics, dignity, laws and human rights have also been profoundly damaged, must prevent this seed sown for more than 30 years from becoming a genuine source of national shame, as was its war against Viet Nam. Let it be clearly understood: Cuba desires normal relations with the United States, provided that a natural feeling of good-neighbourliness, respect and equality prevails between the two countries. But Cuba will never give way to threats and will survive at all costs whatever happens, because it is capable of escaping from crises, but cannot shake off the dishonour of living on its knees. It will not do that. Cuba will continue with its forward movement to change and develop.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Without the blockade, Cuba would more clearly demonstrate its unsuspected reserves of talent and energy and the material and spiritual quality of our lives would be improved. That would enable us to give our modest support much more freely to the cultural and scientific advancement of all mankind and of the United States as well. It is incredible that in the so-called land of the free, tourists and businessmen are able to travel and invest freely all around the world except to one destination and in one market, which is increasingly attractive and is located only 90 miles from its own shores.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“If truth were better valued on the market, the world would correctly identify the most striking victims of the human rights violations in Cuba: the vulgar servants of a foreign Power from which they receive encouragement and resources to conspire against the very land in which they were born to promote the annexationist aspirations of our powerful neighbour. Moreover, honest people throughout the world can discern among the members of the Cuban community in this country a growing majority who have begun to defend the sovereignty of Cuba, to claim the rights that have also been denied them and works with all our support and all our respect to normalize relations with their homeland. 28 The world cannot be deceived all the time, least of all the noble and hard-working people of the United States, who daily call out for solidarity with Cuba.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“The often heroic and painful efforts to secure medicine for the sick, insulin for diabetics, aminofilin for asthmatics and pacemakers for those with heart conditions must be recognized and acknowledged, because the providers of those medicines and the experts concerned were warned off, boycotted or proscribed by the Treasury Department of the United States. The world must know that the right to life is deeply jeopardized in Cuba, and that my country is living, working, loving and every day renewing its hopes of a better world in spite of that.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Cuba is fully entitled to call for action that would put an end to this madness, because any Member State may be the next victim in the future. It is high time now to put an end to a conflict which had its origins more than two centuries ago — before socialism emerged, and long before the East-West conflict and the triumph of the Cuban revolution. Cuba has managed to succeed thanks to solidarity. In its name, we hope that the issue of human rights may cease to be used as political manoeuvring in a way that stains the honour of many decent countries. Alongside the lying and pathetic chronicles of human rights violations in Cuba, the world must recognize that there has been no lack of love, no lack of sacrifice in the salvation of millions of women and children who, because our trade was blockaded, did not have enough food to eat.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“In this Assembly there are documents circulating that prove what I say, as well as vulgar threats and attempts at blackmail against those who are exercising such freedoms, not only because they are ethical in taking the right side in a matter of international interest, but because they have links with Havana. Diplomacy and politics these days cannot be practised by threatening families that wish to be reunited, or businessmen, members of Congress or politicians who have to resort to bodyguards for their own protection. What can we expect the next century to offer us if this trial imposed on Cuba by a world Power succeeds? We need something more than the reiteration of the condemnation of the blockade in this Assembly.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“We affirm this in the strong belief that the democratic, economic and social justice process initiated in Cuba in 1959 has followed an honest path; it has demonstrated its viability, its strength and its capacity to face the challenges of these times and respond to them. We firmly believe in the authenticity and the popular support underpinning our revolution and our socialism — a socialism as Cuban as our palm trees. We defend our right to life and to our own voice, because in the world of pluralism that we aspire to, plurality and diversity among nations must be respected.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“There is also time to stay the hands of those in the Senate and the Executive Branch who wish to stab in the back the future of any attempt at a rapprochement between Cuba and the United States and add new tensions to international relations that are already difficult. Faced with a world that accepts diversity and differences, that does not turn to us with aggression or isolate or discriminate against us, this North American position is automatically blocked in time and in existence, and is isolated in its attitude towards Cuba in this Assembly. My country does not question anybody’s right to the type of government they desire. We urge no one to imitate our model. But neither can we accept that anyone should impose a different one on us.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Certain extremist sectors in this country are trying to delay a lasting solution to the conflict between these two countries for many years and to abort the migration agreements signed by both Governments last year. Only two days ago the House of Representatives took the first step towards this crime in approving that bill which, among other absurdities, proposes an 27 international blockade against Cuba, which is really directed against the whole of humanity. This is no surprise to us because, apart from gestures from the many friends that we have in this great nation, those who have directed its destiny over the last 36 years have brought us nothing good. However, we trust that there are still honest people who, even without being friends of the Cuban Government, may have the basic common sense to know which side is in the right.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“It would be ungrateful of me if, in speaking of the incredible achievements of the Cuban people, I made no reference to the millions who have stood by us during these difficult years: the dozens of countries and Governments that did not break off relations with Cuba, those that strengthened their relations and those that found the courage to enter into such relations for the first time in the face of unspeakable pressure and threats. It is precisely now, when trade and foreign investment are beginning to energize the Cuban economy, that a campaign has been launched in the United States Congress to approve a bill that would mock and run counter to the wishes of the majority of nations and harm free trade and all civilized forms of relations between peoples and Governments.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“It has also been possible because we have kept faith with the Charter that we signed 50 years ago, with its commitment to respect and require respect for our sovereignty, our national independence and our self- determination, while not allowing interference of any kind in our internal affairs. There is more. These results have been possible because, free from the commitments of the past, and with the experience of having depended economically on other countries, we have with great sacrifice undertaken the task of building our economic independence.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“All this has been possible because since 1959 we have zealously and resolutely defended the commitment made to the fathers of our nation to keep it free and sovereign, 90 miles distant from that great Power that has always regarded us as part of its backyard, as some sort of annex to its own territory. It has been possible because in this world obsessed to its very soul with buying and selling — while of course deriving profit from the process — we have maintained and demonstrated that one can live with an ethics based on principles, on national unity, on justice, on respect for human dignity, equity, morality and loyalty, and no one — absolutely no one — has the right to question this.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“We have survived the attempt to eliminate us, which has been mocked by the tenacious resistance of my people. After years of crisis, the Cuban economy experienced a 7 per cent growth in the past year while the budget deficit was reduced by almost half. Inflation, measured by the informal exchange market, was reduced by more than 80 per cent, and at the end of the first half of 1995 the economy had grown by 2 per cent. Significant economic measures made those results possible, and yet the traditional attention our Government gives to education, health, employment and social security has never diminished.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“And if we are to avoid suicide, we must definitively support the conclusion of treaties that will completely ban atomic weapons, their technological monopoly and peaceful and simulated explosions and declare a total moratorium on testing until the practice is completely banned. Such treaties must be acceded to by all nuclear Powers without any exception. For the third consecutive year I have come here mandated by Cuba to address this Assembly and to denounce what has already been denounced, to condemn what has already been condemned, and to reiterate the call of the overwhelming majority of the community of nations. On the very threshold of the twenty-first century the criminal economic, trade and financial blockade which the United States has imposed against my country for 36 years continues.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“26 Can there be solidarity in a Security Council without transparency and anti-democratic in its workings, which no longer fulfils the principles of the Charter or exceeds them and refuses to abolish the veto power and renounce permanent membership? What kind of solidarity do we mean when that body, the Security Council, resists even the alternative of sharing its obsolete power fairly with other nations that better represent this world? In international law we must in no way accept as valid the life-style of those who proclaim as a national philosophy that they have no friends or interests — unless we wish to bring on mass suicide for the planet.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Like the model the leadership is seeking to erect on the basis of brutal selfishness, the third world seems condemned to become bogged down in debates on confrontation and cooperation and to abandon the best of the human spirit, which is precisely this solidarity. And this very Organization which combated colonialism and apartheid with such solidarity has also been changed into a kind of supranational mechanism far removed from its intergovernmental design. Is there solidarity in the secret contacts and covert understandings that precede the decisions taken by the Organization, which is manipulated in the interests of certain Powers? Can we regard as solidarity the further invasions to eradicate famine, safeguard peace, restore democracy and support so-called good governments?”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“From the centres of world power refined and subtle forms of a new colonization are being imposed as part of national policies and national-security strategies — in other words, of extraterritorial domination. Cuba knows this by heart. The ridiculous charitable gestures, the crumbs fallen from the table, the alms, all go hand in hand with the cultural and ideological invasion that corrodes peoples from within and neutralizes them as actors on history’s stage. The new ark of the post-modern saviours is predestined to divide humanity into the auto-elect and the excluded. Solidarity, the symbol of love among human beings and the essential attribute of mankind’s salvation in every age, is now an endangered species.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“The countries of the South cannot desire or continue to support the notion that the North should constantly impose conditions upon it. The countries of the North must listen to our views as well as alter their own patterns of development. Although it is fashionable to include the issue of human development in the agendas of international discussions, it has been relegated to second place by post- modern technocracies. There are those who celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakdown of the European socialist world without realizing that no new world has yet been constructed to replace them and that, on the contrary, many other new walls are growing up around us.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Streets, parks, cities and even prisons are being privatized, and under this influence it would appear that we are now approaching the privatization of law and of world power, and the United Nations itself is unable to escape from this, for some believe that the bulk of Member States have little or nothing to say in deciding their own destinies. Let us agree on this: the world has changed. We can repeat it. It is true. But how has it changed? Notwithstanding the impressive achievements of the human race we are forced to live at the same time with unspeakable suffering that mocks all material and spiritual progress in which we might feel some pride as we approach the new century. The “civilizatory” crisis began in the richest and most powerful part of the planet and is now spreading to international agencies and into this lofty arena.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Whenever reason raises its head, an attempt is made to trample on the third world’s right to development by imposing mechanisms in which the factor of domination is inherent, something this Organization was established precisely to combat. All the efforts and time we have spent here to establish a new, more just and more equitable economic order have been doomed to failure by the intransigence of the rich, which has made the gap between rich and poor a gulf that is ever-more unspannable. A great wave of privatization has done away with national structures and is jeopardizing the important but fragile social achievements of mankind in its development.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“25 From the bipolar world of the East-West conflict we have moved to the unipolarism of the most powerful, and only the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries and the Group of 77 have managed to survive, although some have tried to do away with them, silence them or reeducate them, as if the problems of the third world were dependent solely on disputes between the great Powers and their post-war allies. To the calls by the vast majority of the world for the preservation of sovereign equality, territorial integrity and non-interference in the internal affairs of States, which are the bases of international law, we have been given answers that seek to destroy those principles for the benefit of a few.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“In the complex debates of the last few months many tributes have been paid to the argument of limited sovereignty, humanitarian intervention and preventive diplomacy, all set forth in “An Agenda for Peace” in the implementation of which the United Nations is wasting two thirds of its budget. Those discussions have not been free from brushes with fashionable neo-liberal ideas that equate development with assistance and set up chains of conditionalities disguised as the same good intentions with which the road to hell is paved.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Such news is rarely seen on television in the civilized countries where we are constantly told about marvellous detergents; but how can one cleanse the world of the horrors of war and destitution with such detergents? Light and shadow, but above all more shadow than light, seems to be the mood of this General Assembly on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations. In preparing itself, Cuba has noted with concern the often graceless and vulgar way in which highly developed countries are trying to take advantage of this opportunity to define new economic, legal and political bases for the world. These bases run counter to the true objectives of peace, development, equality and justice, as well as of the preservation and needed restoration of the cardinal principles of the Charter.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Fifty years on, despite all its efforts, the United Nations has not been able to eliminate hunger, poverty, the millions of children dying of diseases that are curable and entire peoples who are longing for a simple glass of drinking water. The virtual reality in which we are told we live today cannot conceal the nuclear weapons which, as has been asserted, may destroy the planet three times over, as if once were not enough. Nor will the illusion of the future created in the opulent cities so rich in show- windows and neon lights save the world from the waste that is being emptied into the oceans, the contamination of the atmosphere, and the destruction of ecosystems and species, including the human race.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“An exclusive kind of panamericanism in this hemisphere is sabotaging the aspirations of the community of Ibero-American and Caribbean nations to strengthen their forums of regional concerted actions and to seek consensus to meet their common needs. The country that has arrogated to itself supreme leadership in this area as a manifest destiny has, as it did two centuries ago, been conspiring to abort any regional or international association of peoples that does not fit in with its narrow national interests. Asia and Africa, which achieved decolonization, are now laboratories in which societies with age-old cultures and a strong tribal heritage are being afflicted with new liberal and Western models that are totally alien to their national characteristics.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Globalization, an all-inclusive term conceived in the interests of the major transnational corporations, is now devouring national entities, sovereignty and independence beyond any limit or reason, bringing in its wake a global invasion of destitution, population growth, mass migration and environmental degradation, which cannot be avoided by even the most powerful of this world. At the same time, ideological differences, the imposition of measures, isolation and selfish actions of all kinds continue to torpedo our new efforts to integrate into associations, such as the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the recently established Association of Caribbean States (ACS).”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Drug trafficking is also terrorizing the major cities, but what promotes that scourge is not the cultivation of certain types of vegetation in the underdeveloped world, but tolerance of drug consumption and covert protection for its production and trade in order to make a profit in those very cities. Extremism, xenophobia, racism and discrimination on the basis of national origin, creed or gender are proliferating once again, together with the spectre of fascism, which seems to have arisen from the tomb.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“However, the threats of a world cataclysm have grown over decades of regional and local conflicts, stirred up by a wide range of motives involving 24 geopolitical, economic and trading disputes as well as ethnic and religious conflicts. Europe, the veteran of two world wars, which thought it was protected by a number of post-war agreements, is now the arena for a number of confrontations in all corners of that continent. In the Balkans, concentration camps, which we believed had died with Hitler, have once again made an appearance. Terrorism, originally fomented by certain powerful developed countries, has now turned against those very countries with a lash like the tail of the serpent and now, in order to combat that scourge, they are spending the same millions they had invested earlier in perpetrating it.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“There is nothing new in the newspapers these days: “Ethnic tensions growing in various parts of the world”; “Violence claims a three-year-old victim”; “Concerns increase over new outbreaks of dengue fever”; “Fighting continues in the Baltic”; “Young man commits suicide after killing his parents, his brother and eight other people”; and “Children of the third world run the risk of contracting the diseases of the Western world”. Is this peace? Is this the new world? Is this the new order to which we committed ourselves 50 years ago? Half a century after the end of that devastating world war are nations really united? Until a short while ago many of us believed that we had finally distanced ourselves from the danger of world war and that some long-standing confrontations were beginning to be resolved through dialogue and negotiation.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)