YouSaid · the spoken record

Václav Klaus

lines on the record: 41
first: 2007-09-24
most recent: 2012-09-24
sittings or episodes: 5
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

“Those issues are among our security policy priorities. The Czech Republic will continue to take part in United Nations peacekeeping operations, as well as in humanitarian and development programmes. It also supports efforts to reform the United Nations, including the Security Council, which in 2005 began to work towards responding to our changed international environment and promoting a more balanced representation of individual regions and States.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Two months ago, the Czech Republic accepted the request of the United States for representation in diplomatic and consular matters in Syria. There is no doubt that we must look at the situation in Syria from a broader and longer-term perspective. We should know what needs to be done tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. I am afraid that that is the most important lesson learned from other similar issues, such as the recent military intervention in Libya. Allow me to affirm that the Czech Republic will continue to be an active United Nations Member. The Czech Republic observes and applies the principles and standards of international law in its foreign policy and promotes their international application. We will support United Nations activities in the fields of disarmament and the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“For instance, are the developments in Iraq, the unresolved Cyprus issue or the independence of Kosovo a success of the United Nations or not? Let me say a few words about Syria. As a country that has recent historical experience of a transition to democracy, the Czech Republic wishes Syria to be able to take the same path. However, we do not see a feasible solution now. Our immediate effort must focus on helping the people affected by the current tragic situation in the country. The Czech Republic has already sent humanitarian aid to Syria and to Syrians f leeing into neighbouring countries. We have set up a medical evacuation programme for wounded Syrian refugees. Czech experts took part in the United Nations observer mission in Syria. Our Embassy in Damascus is also providing assistance.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“External observers must not succumb to the temptation of imposing the settlement that they themselves regard as the right one, but which is not in line with long- term natural developments in the country or region in question. For a number of reasons, those inevitable preconditions are often not met in attempts at peaceful conflict resolution. It is therefore no wonder that we often see the opposite results to those that the architects of a particular settlement would have wished. We must ask ourselves what successful peace talks and international missions are. Do external interventions improve the situation or do they make it worse by hindering spontaneous processes that could reintroduce stability in the region, possibly with smaller sacrifices compared to the price paid through external intervention?”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“When the division of Czechoslovakia was taking place 20 years ago and the situation was emotionally strained and painful for us, it never crossed the mind of any of our politicians that the problem should be addressed by any other than peaceful means. The difficult negotiations, undertaken solely by our own representatives, resulted in achieving a settlement that political representatives and, especially, citizens in both the newly established States considered then and still consider to be a positive solution. Our experience affirms that it is the domestic politicians, in particular, who should be the driving force of negotiations rather than international teams or former political figures from abroad. The mandate of the negotiating parties must be rooted as firmly as possible in domestic conditions and local traditions.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“I would like to congratulate President Jeremić on his election to serve as the highest representative of the General Assembly at its sixty- seventh session. In recent decades, his country has gone through a difficult period. I am sure his experience as the Serbian Minister for Foreign Affairs who saw the consequences of one kind of peacefully negotiated settlement and armed international intervention will benefit this year’s General Assembly and contribute to making our deliberations less formal and more practical. Mr. Tanin (Afghanistan), Vice-President, took the Chair. The Czech Republic firmly believes that international disputes and conflicts can and should be settled by peaceful, not military, means. We have been systematically demonstrating that for a long time.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“I wish the President every success in his office and assure him that the Czech Republic will continue to be an active Member of the United Nations.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“Nuclear power is a stable, legitimate and, in some countries, irreplaceable source of energy today. Let me conclude by saying that the Czech Republic continues to support the much-needed reform of the Security Council. The world has changed considerably since the United Nations Charter was signed. New countries must take greater responsibility for this Organization and for its financing. This year the Czech Republic holds the presidency of the Executive Board of the United Nations Development Programme, which supports projects in 177 countries. We support that Programme but want to stress that in order for developing countries to develop, all kinds of unnecessary barriers, standards, regulations and other constraints in the developed world must first be removed.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“What happened in Japan in March this year was a serious natural catastrophe, and there are certainly lessons to be learned from it. The main lesson is obvious. Even coastal locations, which are seen as seismically stable for urban planning, can be affected by earthquakes far away under the sea. Nuclear power plants should be built in locations that are the least prone to damage by natural disasters. Yet after the tsunami hit the Fukushima power plant, some Governments decided not to build new nuclear power plants and some even to abandon nuclear energy as such. Speaking for the Czech Republic, we consider that what happened in Fukushima did not by any means question the arguments for nuclear energy. These arguments are strong, economically rational and convincing.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“We should not forget that there is a complementarity between freedom and trade. Our relations — and now I speak especially about us, the European Union member States — with the countries of North Africa should be based on free trade, which means on trade with a minimum of regulation and arbitrary standards. Prosperity in the countries of North Africa is a guarantee of stability and is also a precondition for preventing growing migration to the countries in Southern and Western Europe. I should also like to mention another issue that I see as crucial, that of nuclear energy. I welcome the fact that the Secretary-General called for a special meeting on this topic. The Czech Republic pays the highest possible attention to nuclear safety and security and supports the further development of nuclear energy.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“When the Iron Curtain fell in Europe more than 20 years ago, I used to talk about three mutually interconnected preconditions for successful transformation: a clear and transparent concept of where to go, a feasible strategy how to get there, and to be able to motivate the citizens of the country to 11-51185 8 promote it. I still do not see these preconditions in some of the countries of North Africa. By saying that, I want to stress that the systemic change cannot be agreed upon or prearranged at international conferences. It cannot be mediated or passively acquired as a foreign investment. It is a domestic task and a sequence of policies, not a once- for-all policy change. There is something we can do, however. We can and should increase our efforts to cooperate with the countries of North Africa.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“It requires that both sides take an innovative approach and overcome some old, inflexible and rigid schemes of thought. It requires both sides to negotiate and to find a balanced solution that will last. Such a solution cannot come through unilateral steps, neither those forced by the United Nations nor the steps taken by one side of the dispute only. The Czech Republic successfully completed the transition from communism to democracy, and, based on that experience, we wish the countries of North Africa to make progress in the same direction. We know it is not an easy path. To remove several leading politicians is not the crucial aspect of the much-needed systemic change.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“Nineteen years ago the dissolution of Czechoslovakia was negotiated peacefully from within, without any need for external mediation. Our experience tells us that if a solution to any country’s aspirations to sovereignty and freedom, or a solution to a dispute among countries, is to be lasting and acceptable for the citizens of those countries, that solution must primarily come from within the region itself and from the negotiations of the countries concerned. In the same spirit, the Czech Republic is convinced, with regard to the most important issue of this session of the General Assembly, that it is necessary for the two sides in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to find a way forward themselves. I agree with President Obama that there is no shortcut to ending a conflict that has endured for decades.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“Allow me to congratulate you, Sir, on your election to the very important post of the highest representative of the General Assembly at its sixty-sixth session. A few days ago New York City and the entire world remembered the tenth anniversary of the tragic events of 11 September. I should like to use this opportunity to pay homage to all the victims and to the firefighters and other rescue workers who died in connection with the 2001 attacks. We should not forget them. The main topic suggested for the sixty-sixth session — the mediation of disputes by peaceful means — is at the very core of the United Nations Charter, and I can assure members it is also at the core of the foreign policy principles of the country I have the privilege to represent, the Czech Republic.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“The United Nations exists primarily to enhance friendly relations among its Members and 10-55109 6 to look for solutions to problems that cannot be confined to national boundaries. I wish you every success in your office, Mr. President, and I would like to assure you that the Czech Republic will continue to be an active Member of the United Nations.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“They are countries with different political, economic and social systems; different neighbours; different historical experiences and geopolitical positions; and, more importantly, different levels of income, wealth and development. This is precisely what makes the United Nations unique and irreplaceable. Instead of increasingly becoming a source of funds for various, sometimes very dubious non-governmental organizations that — without any accountability or control — seek to profit from United Nations activities, the United Nations should strive to be an efficient body in which States and their peoples are represented. Its task is not to push for global governance and play the central role in it.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“In April, my country hosted an important event during which the President of Russia and the President of the United States signed the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. We see the Treaty as an important step forward and as a visible sign of our efforts to make our complicated world safer. Let us hope that it will be taken further in the foreseeable future. We do not dispute the right of any country to use atomic energy for peaceful purposes, but it must do so in a responsible way. It is not possible for some countries to ignore agreed and respected international standards, to threaten stability in their regions and to increase the dangers of proliferation. The United Nations is a unique forum at which small and big countries alike are represented.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“Developing countries must not be forced into agreements on ever more ambitious targets in the fight against climate change, particularly at a time when the developed countries themselves are far from meeting those targets. The United Nations should not have an all-encompassing agenda. It should not turn away from political topics towards scientific ones. It is here not to determine what science is, but to engage its Member States in rational and reasoned debate about political issues. The most harmful political debate we have witnessed in the past couple of years is about the climate and global warming. We should not give up on elemental values and principles that most of us share, and this brings me to the second issue I wish to mention here today — nuclear non proliferation.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“Nor does the solution lie in more bureaucracy, in creating new governmental or supranational agencies, or in aiming at global governance of the world’s economy. On the contrary, this is the time for international organizations, including the United Nations, to reduce their spending, slim down their administrations and leave the solutions to the Governments of the Member States, which are directly accountable to the citizens of their countries. Developing countries should not be prevented from growing economically. They need access to foreign markets and they need free trade. It was in this forum last year that I emphasized that we must pay attention to the costs and benefits of our decisions.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“I am afraid that we are moving in the wrong direction. The anti-crisis measures that have been proposed and already partly implemented follow from the assumption that the crisis was a failure of markets and that the right way out is more regulation of markets. This is a mistaken assumption. It will not be possible to prevent any future crises by implementing substantial, market-damaging macroeconomic and regulatory Government interventions, as is being done now. That will only destroy markets, and with them the chances for economic growth and prosperity in developed and developing countries alike. The solution to this or any other crisis does not lie in increasing protectionism, and it is a positive factor that most Governments have behaved quite rationally in this respect.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“I do not believe that the United Nations needs to search for a new mission. Its goals should remain those defined in the original Charter: to maintain international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among nations, and to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems. The United Nations should not diverge from these principles. It should not search for alternative or substitute projects to replace those that enhance peace, freedom and democracy. It should remain an intergovernmental platform, based on the plurality of views of its Member States and on mutual respect for their sometimes differing positions. Let me briefly touch on two issues that form part of the current United Nations agenda. The first is the worldwide economic crisis and the methods used to overcome it.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“It has been said here many times in the past few days that today’s world is very different from that of 1945, when this Organization was founded by 51 States. It now consists of 192. That is not merely a quantitative change; it is much more. My country is therefore deeply convinced that the structure of the United Nations also needs to be different, especially that of the Security Council, which should be reformed to reflect the geopolitical, economic and demographic reality of the twenty-first century. It is frustrating that discussions of such reform have gone on for the past 5 10-55109 16 years without results. It is time to come up with concrete results, and my country is ready to support them. Changes of this kind are necessary; on the other hand, some things must continue unchanged.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“First, I would like to congratulate you, Sir, on your election to the very responsible post of President of the General Assembly at its sixty-fifth session. I have the privilege of representing the Czech Republic, a country in the very heart of Europe that has been actively involved in United Nations activities from the very beginning and will continue to be so. We are actively involved in a number of United Nations bodies, and Czech soldiers and experts have participated in United Nations peacekeeping missions for many decades. It is in our interests for this Organization to remain a respected high-level forum, contributing to prosperity, stability and peaceful solutions to conflicts around the world.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“I do, however, want to emphasize that the measures proposed to combat climate change represent another heavy burden for both developed countries, which are falling into deep fiscal deficits now, and for developing countries. This is happening in a context in which rich countries, often pushing this agenda at international forums, are losing their ability to compensate poorer countries for the impact of those additional costs. The Czech Republic, as a successor State to Czechoslovakia, which was one of the founding Members of the United Nations, has always participated actively in all kinds of United Nations activities. It intends to do so in the future as well. It is in our interest that the Organization remains a respected high-level forum that contributes to prosperity, stability and peaceful solutions to the conflicts of today’s world.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“This issue has its important territorial and geographic aspects as well. We have to pay attention to the needs and interests of all kinds of countries — rich and poor, developed and developing. Global economic development will benefit from the removal of barriers, not from creating new ones, because barriers would substantially complicate poorer countries’ access to foreign markets, as well as their ability to develop by their own means. Economic recession and large increases in public debt have reduced the possibilities available to today’s world to meet such goals as combating climate change. I do not intend to go into details of this issue here now, but we should carefully follow it because of unfinished scientific debate and pay attention to the costs and benefits of our future decisions.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“In spite of them, the world has been — at least in the past two centuries — characterized primarily by economic growth and growing prosperity. When looking for an appropriate reaction to the problems connected with the current crisis, we should build on the idea that the crisis was basically a failure of Governments, not of markets. The manipulation of monetary policy in an attempt to artificially prolong the period of growth, the irrational subsidization of demand in the housing sector and the failures in financial-market regulation contributed substantially to the crisis. Let us not delude ourselves into believing that economic cycles and their consequences can be prevented by more extensive Government regulation or by aiming at global governance of the world economy.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“Secondly, international flows of private capital, which contributed so substantially to rapid economic growth in recent decades, are decreasing and becoming less reliable. Thirdly, a decrease in international trade will undermine the continuation of export-oriented strategies of many emerging markets. It would be a tragic mistake to fundamentally impair economic freedom in favour of State or supra-State regulation just now. Long-term experience shows us that it is thanks to free markets and free entrepreneurship that we enjoy the current material well-being and economic progress. Business cycles, accompanied by economic downturns, recessions and 23 09-52228 crises, did exist, do exist and will exist in the future.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“We also succeeded in avoiding a repetition of a massive protectionist reaction to the crisis. Protectionism in all its forms should be resolutely condemned here today. We see the first signs that the economic crisis has reached bottom, or come close to it. Nevertheless, we find ourselves at the beginning of a difficult and very complicated post-crisis period. There are many reasons for the fragility and vulnerability of this phase, but I should like to refer to just a few. First, attempts to increase aggregate demand led to unprecedented expansion in public expenditure and public debt. As a result, a large number of United Nations Member States are facing or approaching a debt trap. Those huge fiscal deficits will harm future economic growth.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“The financial crisis, which originated in the United States two years ago, quickly spilled over into most other countries and led to a severe decline in economic activity all over the world, a substantial decrease in international trade and capital flows and an increase in social and economic instability in a large number of countries on all continents. The United Nations — as a unique worldwide Organization — and its specialized institutions have become an important global platform for discussing alternative steps and policies that could, one hopes, help to overcome the crisis and diminish its impact. The measures that have been implemented to date have contributed to the fact that the world has succeeded in avoiding a repetition of the situation in the 1930s.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“This year, in our part of the world, we commemorate 20 years since the fall of communism, since the moment when my country — together with other States of Central and Eastern Europe — regained freedom and sovereignty, and was again able to resume the place in the community of free and democratic countries that it enjoyed when the United Nations was founded in 1945. In the 20 years that have passed since those historic events, we succeeded in building a stable political democracy and in transforming our economic system into a functioning free-market economy. I am mentioning this because I believe that our experience is relevant to the ongoing discussions about how to solve the economic problems that the world faces today. We are meeting at a time when the world is in the midst one of the deepest economic crises since the Second World War.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“My country, the Czech Republic, has always appreciated the role that the United Nations has played in strengthening security, stability and prosperity in the world. I want to assure Members that we will continue to participate in the activities of the United Nations. We firmly believe in the importance of this Organization and want it to be efficient and effective. For that reason, we support the reform of the Security Council so that it will more adequately reflect the political and economic realities of the world today, as some speakers have stressed here today. Changes are necessary and we are ready to start discussing them very seriously.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“Let us use the potential of this Organization as much as possible. Let us cooperate, let us listen to each other, let us negotiate to the last possible moment and let us try to understand others. The Czech Republic tries to follow those rules.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Reducing protectionism and lowering export subsidies is a far more efficient way to help developing countries than anything else. We should not allow developing countries to be blocked from their own economic growth by additional burdens imposed upon them that they will not be able to bear. At the conference on climate change held the day before yesterday, I resolutely warned against the unjustified alarmism of global-warming activists and their fellow-travellers in some Governments and international organizations, but even that potential problem, as well as any other, can never be solved without relying on freedom, free markets, free trade and other attributes of free society. Preserving the environment is very important, but we have to be modest in our attempts to control the complexities of the world.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Our task for the future is to minimize such cases. However, I do not see and hear the terms "freedom" and "democracy" as much or as often as they deserve. We hear other words more frequently: aid, government initiatives and interventions, social justice, positive rights, environment, resources, climate, problem solving, facing threats and global challenges among others. Here we have to be very careful. We should support meaningful activities, not programmes that in effect put constraints on local development. We should use natural resources efficiently and protect the environment, but not in a way that restricts human activity and harms economic development. We would help global development more by reducing barriers than by providing conditional aid.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Our communist past tells us that we should not do that. We also want the United Nations to be reasonably operational, but we categorically oppose that happening at the expense of individual Member States. We have to respect the views of individual member countries regardless of their size. It is crucial that every Member State has equal status and that its voice not be ignored. We have to go forward. The United Nations needs changes. We do support reform of the United Nations, because the Organization should reflect the current situation in the world more than the situation of the era when it was founded. Some changes are inevitable, and we should discuss them seriously. To our great regret, in the world at present we are witnessing many cases where there is a lack of freedom and democracy.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“The ambition of the United Nations is not, and should never be, the search for one obligatory, unitary view imposed by some of us on those who disagree. I did not use the term “platform” by chance and without purpose. By using it, I implicitly object to the alternative concept: the concept of global governance based on the indefensible idea that the world can be globally governed, masterminded, controlled, managed and/or even planned. To aspire to do that is something we can never accept. It is an ambition based on the abuse of reason and on the pretence of knowledge. Democracy is something else. There are some among us who prefer the operational efficiency - or the ability to act - of this Organization to the recognition of the existence of different views. They want to make decisions in an easier and faster way.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“It might be of interest to the Assembly that the slogan of the Czech presidency will be Europe without barriers. We mean by that the removing of both internal and external European Union barriers. I fully support that concept, as I strongly believe in the need to remove barriers that hinder economic progress, especially in developing countries. We consider the United Nations to be an extremely important and, in fact, irreplaceable platform. There is no substitute for it in the current world. It is a platform for meetings and consultations, for dialogue and, eventually, for reaching agreements on treaties among nations sharing the same or similar values and political stances. This unique platform is based on the plurality of views of its 192 Member countries and on our mutual respect for our sometimes differing positions.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“That can be proved by our own behaviour; witness the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992. Over the past several years, we have also multiplied our official development assistance. In the past 18 years, the Czech Republic has undergone radical and dynamic development, which was made possible by the fall of communism and by our rapid departure from that oppressive, inhuman and inefficient political, social and economic system. Our transformation strategy, based on the acceptance of political pluralism, parliamentary democracy and a market economy, was successful. A further important impetus to our development was our approaching the European Union and our entry into it three years ago. Today, the Czech Republic is a full-fledged member of the Union and will hold the European Union presidency in the first half of 2009.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“We are convinced that we have already demonstrated our devotion to freedom, democracy, international cooperation, economic development and respect for the sovereignty of countries belonging to the community of nations. My country served in the Security Council in 1994-1995. We tried to do our best. We were reliable and committed to hard work. I can assure the Assembly that we will now do an even a better job. We have always recognized the principal responsibility of the Security Council for maintaining peace and security. Since the 1990s, the Czech Republic has contributed to more than 20 United Nations peacekeeping missions and United Nations- mandated operations in the Balkans, Asia and Africa. We deeply believe in the prevention and non-violent resolution of disputes and conflicts.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“We take part in the work not only of the United Nations itself, but also of its specialized organizations and agencies such as UNESCO, the United Nations Development Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency and many others. We have always supported any meaningful initiative that leads to the increase of stability and prosperity in the world. I am proud to confirm that the Czech Republic has the ambition to be elected to the Security Council as a non-permanent member for the period 2008-2009. I believe that we can be trusted by the majority of Member countries and that we deserve their votes.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Allow me to congratulate you, Sir, on your election as President of the General Assembly at its sixty-second session. I also welcome the highly respected Secretary-General to the first session of the Assembly convened since he assumed his post. I would like to start by saying that my country is proud to be one of the founding fathers of the United Nations in its current form. The Czech Republic, a successor State of Czechoslovakia, participated actively in all kinds of United Nations activities in the past and it will continue to do so in the future.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)