YouSaid · the spoken record

Hurd

THE RECORD WRITES THIS SPEAKER AS HURD

lines on the record: 97
first: 1990-09-24
most recent: 1994-09-24
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

“We all, therefore, have a duty to repair, make good, build afresh. Next year we will look back rightly on the achievements, and the list of achievements is long. But it will remind us, and we will remind ourselves, of what has not yet been achieved. And I hope that will stir us to show the same vision, the same strength of purpose as the founders of the United Nations, with, I hope, results of equal value for the next 50 years.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“Drug trafficking and associated international crime are other threats to our security and well-being. We need to give new energy and encouragement to all those who are involved in developing cooperation against those threats. I mention this because I feel that we must give particular support to the United Nations International Drug Control Programme. This is the programme that has the responsibility for leading all the world’s efforts in this field. Once again, the United Nations is the best resource we have for tackling a menace that threatens the whole world. In conclusion, we can say confidently that the United Nations is indispensable. It is not a perfect glass palace, but it is the best building we have, even though the winds still blow cruelly through its gaps and its defects.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“We will work hard for a good outcome, both on enlargement and on transparency, where recent informal arrangements to improve consultation on peace- keeping between the Secretariat, the Security Council and troop contributors should be further developed. We should ensure that the Council is representative, while avoiding an enlargement so great that it puts at risk the effectiveness of the Council. If consensus can be reached, then clearly there are countries that, by virtue of their global interests and their contribution to international 8 security and United Nations operations, should be invited to accept the responsibilities of permanent membership. I have concentrated today on how we deal with crises and defuse tensions. But, of course, those are only some of the challenges that our Organization faces.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“It means that we now need to put these anomalies right. Moving to a system based on relative capacity to pay, with automatic adjustment for changing circumstances, would not mean very much change for most countries, but it would mean a fair, equitable basis on which the long-term viability and therefore vitality of the United Nations could be assured. A word about the Security Council. Reform is on the agenda - that is quite right - and I believe it is in the interests of the United Nations to sort out the question of enlargement in good time. We would like the momentum of discussion to be maintained. Next year’s fiftieth anniversary is a good milestone for the debate.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“It must be able to pay its peace-keepers, for example. We will not be able to build up the operations of the United Nations unless we act now to put the finances of the United Nations on a sound and sustainable footing for the long term. No radical change in principles is needed, but we do need a sensible updating of the way in which assessments are calculated. The existing system was adopted in 1973. Much has changed. No one now would propose that States with above average per capita incomes should enjoy an 80 per cent discount on their peace-keeping contributions. No one now would suggest that discounts for all the newly independent Member States should be absorbed by five countries in an open-ended arrangement. But that is the system. It means that some countries are paying too much and others too little.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“These centres will also need headquarters staff to identify and remedy logistic weaknesses, give advice on maps or communications and advise existing and potential troop contributors. These are not proposals for enormous new machinery. We need a framework within which existing resources, capability and know-how can be mobilized. We will strongly support such an effort. It needs further discussion - above all, among and with African countries. We would welcome such discussion soon, here in New York, to develop these ideas, other people’s ideas and take some practical decisions quickly. Finally, money. As you, Mr. Secretary-General, remind us, as you are bound to remind us, the United Nations at the moment works miracles with what we do not pay it. It simply cannot keep running on exhausted credit.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“I therefore propose that, under the auspices of the United Nations, a number of military staff colleges existing in Africa should become peace-keeping skills centres; that is to say, they should give training in doctrines and disciplines of peace-keeping, and in mediation and conflict resolution. The physical capacity also needs to be strengthened if intervention is to be rapid when it is needed. That requires United Nations logistics basing centres, like those already existing in Europe, to store equipment and ensure that it is quickly available, with rapid mobile logistics teams, earmarked by Member States, to help to maintain that equipment in good running order and to give training and on-the-spot maintenance support. Again, the lesson of Rwanda is clear.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“The OAU has its own experience of pre-emptive action, and it would clearly need to be the focal point of an enhanced effort in Africa. I am proposing that the United Nations should help the OAU and African countries to share this expertise and establish agreed mechanisms for preventive diplomacy in Africa. But, thirdly, that will not always be enough. Peace- keeping skills will continue to be in demand. We must build up the necessary capabilities in Africa. Many African countries already make a major contribution to peace- keeping - Ghana, Egypt, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia, to mention just some. But we all know the United Nations has not been able to deploy in Africa with the necessary speed and effectiveness.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“We need a mechanism to pull together information and analysis of events like these, to take a regular forward look at potential troublespots and decide whether preventive diplomacy needs to be triggered. 7 Then, secondly, it means a capacity to react, that is to say, to intervene diplomatically before warfare breaks out. We do not have that capacity now. Britain and France - we announced this last year - have offered help, making available experienced diplomats and offering equipment and support. There needs to be an institutional framework. In Europe we have the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which operates to agreed principles and has intervened, for example, in Ukraine, Moldova and the Baltic States to try to help parties to resolve disputes before there is recourse to fighting.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“By setting up a coherent structure of support systems, running from early warning and preventive diplomacy right through to humanitarian and peace-keeping deployment on the ground, we can make sure that the skills and resources can be put into action as soon as the need arises, and not months later. What does that mean? It means, first, an early warning system. Not all conflicts can be foreseen. Some are triggered by assassination or a coup d’état or other sudden events. More often, surely, we can see trouble brewing: competition for land and resources, ethnic or religious rivalry, the gradual breakdown of law and order, ill-judged responses by central governments.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“Africa, in the light of experience, should be a priority. Africa’s need for peace-keepers is plain to see: nearly 40 per cent of all United Nations peace-keepers are deployed in Africa. Africa needs peace. There can be no doubt of that, because it is only in peace that Africans will succeed in finding their own solutions to their problems. The remarkable events in South Africa earlier this year showed that. The efforts of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to develop a coherent approach to the prevention of conflict are welcome. They deserve our full support. But the OAU has warned that its resources are not enough. I believe that the United Nations must respond.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“We need to work hard and fast to overcome obstacles which are essentially practical. We British will continue to contribute practically. We have 4,000 British men and women in blue berets, from Georgia to Rwanda, something which would have been thought inconceivable even 10 years ago. We have the seconded British experts at United Nations Headquarters. The speed with which the Department of Peace-keeping Operations has adapted to cope with ever- increasing demand has been impressive. The development of the professional military staff at United Nations Headquarters has been particularly welcome. So has the trend to bring more seconded staff in alongside United Nations personnel. But it will be vital also to help to strengthen our ability to respond quickly in areas where it remains weak.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“That, tragically, took far too long. That is the latest lesson we need to learn from. It is not now, it seems to me, a question of will, because there is a far greater readiness than there used to be to contemplate intervention on the ground to mitigate or prevent humanitarian disaster. It is not so much the will, the intellectual willingness; it is the resources, the know- how, the ability to respond swiftly, which are still not enough. You, Mr. Secretary-General, have pointed this out over and over again, and I should like to pay tribute to the patience and persistence with which you have rammed home this lesson and sought not merely to tell us the truths about it but to persuade us into practical action and remedy. I agree with what you have said on many occasions.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“But allowing their role to drift from peace-keeping to taking sides in a war carries high risks to the troops themselves, to the political process they support, and to the ability of the United Nations to put in peace-keepers elsewhere. It undermines the willingness of Member States to contribute troops. So in making their decision to contribute to a United Nations operation countries need to be confident that their troops will be supporting peace and not becoming a party to war. Rwanda put this to the test, and we were found wanting for a response for the time being. The issue was not really whether the United Nations should have sent an intervention force to stop the fighting - which it clearly could not - but whether it could find the means, the men and the equipment, for a force to protect the civilian population.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“But it often will not be enough. We have to be prepared for the demand for peace-keepers to continue. There are practical ways in which we can respond better to that demand: first, by ensuring that we learn the lessons from our experiences in peace-keeping; secondly, by taking practical steps to improve our capacity to keep the peace, especially in Africa; and, thirdly, by reforming our financing system. I should like to say a brief word about peace-keeping. It is often impossible to predict at the outset of a mission what demands or dangers United Nations troops will encounter. Within limits, they must be ready to improvise.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“We all know that there is scope for improving the performance of the United Nations here in New York and, more critically, where the United Nations and its agencies are in action on the ground. The steps taken so far are a beginning, but only a beginning. Machinery cannot run on thin air. The United Nations can only run on the fuel that we, its Member States, supply to it. So where it has failed, we must not pretend that the failure lies with the system. It lies with 6 us. The failure of the United Nations is our failure, and so it is for us to take action. For example, the sufferings of the Rwandan refugees will not be helped by Member States’ holding their heads in their hands. Their hands should be ready to provide from their pockets what is needed to remedy such suffering. Preventive diplomacy is the ideal.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“But despite this difference, we have joined a dialogue with the Argentine Government on fisheries and petroleum development. We look forward to resuming discussions in the near future with the Argentine authorities on a new agreement on fishing and on the development of possible hydrocarbon resources in the South Atlantic continental shelf. We are also discussing the welcome Argentine offer to remove mines from the Falklands. It seems to me that that is the rational and logical path to the wider progress of which the President of Argentina spoke. I return to this Organization. It is often the target of criticism because it cannot solve every problem laid at its door.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“And we certainly hope, sincerely hope, that the progress that we have achieved together will not be reversed. We are quite clear about British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands and the other British dependencies in the South Atlantic, so we were concerned at the recent incorporation into the constitution of Argentina of the new clause to which President Menem referred. It seems to us that in these Falkland Islands, as in Northern Ireland, we must heed the wishes of the people concerned. Indeed, any other course for us or for the United Nations would be inconceivable. This body has heard those wishes of the Islanders expressed, most recently by their elected representatives who visited the United Nations for the debate in the Committee of 24 last July. So we have a difference.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“There is a settlement plan, the settlement plan of the Contact Group, on the table. Those who refuse it, those who continue the warfare, must be isolated, must be put under sustained - indeed, increased - pressure. Those who cooperate with the international peace plan effectively, in deeds and not just in words, should have that cooperation recognized. I need to say a few words in response to the remarks made yesterday by the distinguished President of Argentina concerning the dispute over the Falkland Islands. President Menem was right - and I am glad that he mentioned it - when he referred to the increasing cooperation between the United Kingdom and Argentina in several areas. Indeed, this cooperation nowadays characterizes our bilateral relationship.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“We have said before that if the Bosnian Serbs do not join the peace process and agree the map presented by the Contact Group, then our present approach may become exhausted. Lifting the arms embargo may become unavoidable, as we said at Geneva in July, and in those circumstances UNPROFOR would have to withdraw. But it would not be a good policy. Indeed, it would be a policy of despair, a policy that, as in Shakespeare’s King Lear, "Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea, "... "That things might change or cease". (King Lear, Act III, scene i, l. 5) A real solution to the conflict, as always, lies with those who are doing the fighting. We from outside must continue to show all the parties that the way forward is political agreement and not more military action.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“UNPROFOR can operate only if it is able to keep lines open to all the parties to the fighting. It could not continue if leading members of the United Nations were rearming one side; UNPROFOR would then be identified as a party to the war. It is not mandated or equipped for that purpose. Our Secretary-General has endorsed that view, and the Commander of United Nations forces in Bosnia has rightly said "We have not come here to fight a war from inside white painted vehicles". So I welcome the decision of which we heard yesterday from the Bosnian President, the decision to accept that now is not the moment to lift the arms embargo. And that Bosnian decision allows UNPROFOR to continue its mission.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“And I can understand those who believe that reverting to a fight, even a fight to the death, would be 5 preferable to the tangle of negotiations and compromise that sometimes seems to stretch ahead for ever. Nevertheless, I do not agree with that opinion. We should value, we should build on, the advances that have been made, we should value the lives that have been saved by the reduction in fighting on the ground. We can now see perhaps more clearly that the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) has been essential in protecting civilians and in preventing the Bosnian Serb army from making further advances. Who here can believe that Gorazde, or Srebrenica or Zepa would still be in the hands of the Bosnian Government if it were not for the bravery and commitment of UNPROFOR troops?”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“As is common in our society of mass media, the headlines have been dominated by the reversals, and some of them have indeed been tragic. In Rwanda the efforts of the United Nations failed to avert genocide. In Somalia it looks as if our efforts have been effectively spurned by a people whose need for help seemed, and seems, self-evident. A word about Bosnia. There has in recent months, mercifully, been more peace in Bosnia. It is a fragile, uncertain, inconclusive, often interrupted peace, but it is still better than what went before. We necessarily discuss Bosnia all the time. The debate in particular in this building about the United Nations arms embargo has at times seemed to rage more fiercely than the fighting on the ground. Certainly the diplomatic efforts have been frustrating.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“In part of my own country, we may - and I fervently hope we shall - see killings cease, see fears slowly dissolve, as a result of the process started by the British and Irish Governments in the Downing Street Declaration on Northern Ireland. In Europe - in Cyprus, in the former Yugoslavia, in Georgia -the United Nations has helped at least to contain if not yet to resolve deep-rooted conflicts. The world’s most intractable problems continue to be laid at your door, Mr. Secretary-General, like infants laid at the door of some medieval monastery. It is not surprising that, for all the efforts of 77,000 men and women serving in United Nations peace-keeping operations in the field, our Organization has had failures as well as successes to its name.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“But the builders cannot afford to be discouraged - and we are all builders. They have to repair; they have to rebuild; they have to hope that gradually in what they build the advances will outnumber the retreats. There have been recent advances that have been dramatic - beyond expectation. No one who was present at the Union Buildings in Pretoria this May could fail to be moved at the birth of the new South Africa. The goodwill and the cheerful determination of all South Africans on that occasion were a marvelous refutation, it seemed to me, of the cynicism that so often weakens our work. And we have seen the same as the peace process gathers strength in the Middle East.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“The threats to international peace and security are more diffuse and perhaps less serious than they were, but not less real and not less tragic for those caught up in them. To some extent, disappointment comes out of exaggerated expectation. There is still a tendency to think of the United Nations as if it were some great palace of world order which descended splendidly from heaven 50 years ago. If that were our view, then every broken pane of glass in that palace, every door, every pillar fouled or damaged would be a disgrace and a scandal. But, of course, in reality world order does not descend from heaven at the moment when a Charter is signed. It is not like that at all. World order is built painfully, gradually, brick by brick. Sometimes the wind and the weather destroy what has already been built.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“I should like first to congratulate you most warmly, Sir, on your election as President. The Assembly could not have made a wiser choice. I wish you all good fortune and success in your mission. In a few months we shall commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the United Nations. The United Nations is the fullest expression man has yet achieved of the age-old desire to escape from war and establish an enduring peace. When the United Nations was founded in San Francisco 50 years ago the threat of nuclear war between the super-Powers had already begun to cast a shadow across the world. That shadow has now lifted, and we all live and sleep more safely as a result. Yet as we approach the anniversary we are all more conscious of the suffering and destruction that still disfigure parts of almost every continent in the world.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“Few tasks are more important than improving the way the United Nations works if we are to secure a more stable world. We have lived through the events of these last few years. They have been dramatic and exhilarating, they have changed the political and strategic landscape, but they have not removed from us our responsibility to work constructively for a better United Nations. This better world order will not happen because we make a few speeches or pass a few resolutions. It will be constructed steadily, brick by brick, learning always the right lessons from the past, developing steadily our international institutions and our international relations. It is fair to say that in the last four years, with its ups and downs, we have come a long way, and I believe that, together, we have the will and the wisdom to continue along that road.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“People will always continue to turn to the United Nations, even if they will always expect more of us than is conceivable. We are discussing, in that context, reform, and we in Britain welcome the debate on Security Council reform. We are discussing positively the enlargement of the Council. This will be complex, as our debate already makes clear, because there are many currents and cross-currents of view. I do not doubt that if there were to be consensus on enlarging the Security Council there are some countries which, because of their global interests, their contribution to international security, their contribution to United Nations peace-keeping, could undertake the full range of responsibilities of a permanent member and can certainly be expected to do so. I have concentrated simply on this Organization for the reason which I gave.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Obviously, it would be able to afford more operations if it ran the existing ones more economically. Without thrift, without financial probity, the authority of the United Nations will weaken and vanish. So we welcome the Secretary-General’s recent additional senior appointments at the level of Assistant Secretary-General, covering administrative and financial affairs. We support proposals for a system of inspection with teeth, which can match more delegated financial authority to the field. I mention these three areas - peace-keeping, preventive diplomacy and finance. If we can tackle these three areas constructively and vigorously, there is no reason why even under present strains the authority of the United Nations should not grow as strikingly as the burden of expectations now placed upon it.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Of course we should all pay our assessed contribution in full and promptly. We do so. So do most of our European partners, the Nordic countries and those with a long tradition of peace-keeping like Australia and Canada. But others, not entirely or always through their own fault, others who share the heavy burden of international responsibility, do not. The fact is, the United Nations will always be short of money. Even if everybody pays up in full and on time, the United Nations will still have to choose priorities within the resources available to it. That means - and will always mean - turning down some good causes, and reappraising and sometimes bringing to an end existing commitments. The United Nations needs to conduct a rigorous scrutiny of what it needs and what it spends.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Now, we have discussed this problem in particular with the French Government, and as an Anglo-French initiative we stand ready to provide the Secretariat with a list of such people, people who have experience in Government service - sometimes outside Government service - and whom we would be prepared to make available for particular missions. We would also be prepared to provide a certain amount of equipment where personnel provided by the United Kingdom were involved. We are ready to respond to the invitation of the Secretary-General in "Agenda for Peace" to provide information crucial to the task of preventive diplomacy. The British and French Governments are both committed to support him in this way, and we hope that others may join in a similar enterprise. All this work means a financial burden.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“But to be useful, of course, an emissary has to set about his work before the excitement of violence has taken hold. The Secretary-General has been energetic here. He has sent missions to several areas of tension - to Tajikistan and other regions of the former Soviet Union, to Macedonia, to South Africa and elsewhere. But in this as in other parts of the United Nations system money is tight. Many missions create an acute need for additional international staff with the necessary skills. I am thinking not just of eminent people, of retired ministers or distinguished ambassadors who can head such missions. The Secretary-General will find them when he needs them. What he needs from Member States is personnel at a more junior level with local experience and negotiating skills.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“So was Namibia. Our peace-keepers have been able to limit, though not stop, conflict and to assuage, though not bring to and end, suffering in Bosnia and Somalia. But the authority of the United Nations will suffer if it fails to approach new challenges realistically and flexibly. However important peace-keeping may be, successful preventive diplomacy would be better. I have just been reading the book published this week by our Australian colleague, the Australian Foreign Minister, Senator Gareth Evans. His new book, Cooperating for Peace, brings this point out well and is full of fruitful ideas. Defusing trouble 20 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session costs a great deal less than a military operation. You can field plenty of emissaries for the price of a battalion.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“We might look at getting certain nations with well- trained, equipped and available forces to provide the first wave of a peace-keeping force, allowing other nations the time to train and equip their forces to the required standard. A commitment to deploy early would of course need to be matched by a United Nations commitment to agree a firm end-date for the deployment, because exits can be as important as entrances. What we cannot do, we should not pretend to do. If we play a game of bluff, we can deceive and disappoint others, and sometimes we deceive and disappoint ourselves. Rarely can we attain our ends that way. It is empty to pretend that we can impose peace with justice on every disorder, every dispute, outside our national borders. But what the United Nations can do, it should do well. Cambodia, for example, is a success story.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“For example, the United Nations is already building valuable links with the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Many peace-keeping and peacemaking operations can be run more effectively by regional organizations or single countries on behalf of the United Nations. That depends on the nature of the problem and on the proposed action agreed by the United Nations. I am thinking, for example, of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Liberia, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Rwanda, and the European Community and NATO in the former Yugoslavia. Regional organizations can also be asked to help with training.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“We are not proposing here some new and heavy bureaucracy. On the contrary, we are talking about core staff: trained staff officers, United Nations civil affairs and, increasingly, humanitarian advisers, and chief administrative officers. The example of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), of a special envoy for all humanitarian and refugee aspects of an operation, is good. Then, there must be flexibility in running peace-keeping operations. The more comprehensive a bureaucracy becomes, the harder it is for it to stay nimble on its feet. Doctrinal and administrative difficulties in working with other international organizations can be overcome.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Once an operation is agreed, command and control relationships could be more clearly defined. Unity of command at the highest level is essential. Where the United Nations is charged with executing as well as authorizing a peace-keeping operation, all aspects of it should be handled by a single department in New York. That is why we have suggested the creation of an expanded planning and operations staff. This in effect is a general staff for peace-keeping. These men and women, civilian and military, would be able together to provide the necessary core of the United Nations strategic-planning chain. They would operate mainly here in New York, but also in the field. They would provide the United Nations with the nervous system for which its present staff is neither structured nor resourced.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“The standby force planning project has been started. A new Department of Peace-keeping Operations is responsible for all United Nations field missions. We can build on these improvements. Good organization involves clarity and sobriety in setting out our objectives. That means that any operation must have clear and achievable objectives linked to a political process which offers reasonable hope of a solution, and to which all parties should be committed. The mandate should be precise and finite. That means adequate support at Headquarters for planning and reconnaissance missions. It means that the Security Council must resist the temptation to become involved in the detailed conduct of operations. It means the mandate must not create impossible obligations for a force commander on the ground.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Or the United Nations military observer who spent his leave in Bangkok fund-raising for a water filter for a remote Cambodian village? Now, they happen to be British, but such servants of the world come from many countries. Forty-eighth session - 28 September l993 19 We in Britain are committed to our peace-keeping contribution. We now have over 3,300 men and women in blue berets around the world. In June the Secretary-General asked Member States to identify for him those areas of United Nations peace-keeping operations which needed strengthening and for our ideas on positive steps we could take. I look forward to his report drawing all those responses together. Useful steps have certainly been taken. There is now a 24-hour operations room, improving the ability of those here in New York to oversee operations around the world.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Let me follow that by looking briefly at the way we carry out peace-keeping operations, the way we deploy preventive diplomacy and the way we run our finances. Peace-keeping: United Nations blue-helmets are deployed on nearly every continent. We can reel off the statistics, but actually we hear too little of individual soldiers and small detachments. Who knows, for example, of the single military observer in a remote part of Cambodia who found himself not only acting as the local arbiter of family disputes but also providing a local, much appreciated, medical service using a handbook called When There is No Doctor, who kept on securing supplies from his wife in Germany and the field hospital in Phnomh Penh for his Khmer community?”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“I suppose there are few more lonely or more demanding jobs than that of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and the present Secretary-General certainly has the misfortune to hold his office in interesting times. He has already given and continues to give a firm and effective lead. He needs and deserves our support. The United Nations is unique. It alone conveys the word of the international community. Only the United Nations has the legal powers to translate those words into action for the maintenance of world peace. We need, as President Clinton said yesterday, to look at tasks closely, to ensure that they are properly defined and that the resources are there to meet them. We may on occasion have to accept that a mandate should not be given because in reality it cannot be fulfilled.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“I hope that within the next few weeks the European Community will move into a new phase of working together on a common foreign and security policy once the Treaty of Maastricht is ratified by all 12 member States. Our President, Willy Claes, the Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium, has just illustrated that point. But one of our main aims as European partners must be to support and strengthen the role and the work of the United Nations, for the United Nations is not "them"; it is us, all of us. We have to take responsibility for it and its failures. If we want the United Nations to work better, it is up to us to give the Secretary-General the support he needs in thoughts, words, deeds and money.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Inevitably, we have to cope as best we can with what we have. A man, after all, may take some shelter in an unfinished building. I do not believe that an international organization like ours, which is not a colonizing Power, will ever be able to guarantee solutions to civil wars or even to that pernicious variant of a civil war which we see today in Bosnia. But if there are no guarantees of success, the United Nations can be helped greatly to improve on its record. With greater experience, greater resources for preventive action and effectively coordinated humanitarian efforts, it can act before the situation gets out of control and the demand grows for the implementation of sanctions and for peace enforcement.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“If America and its allies are not to exert themselves as a joint imperial Power, imposing on other countries and sustaining laws and rulers of their choice, then the answer can only lie in reforming and making much better use of the international institutions to which we belong. They were mostly built after the Second World War for one purpose and are now, after the end of the cold war, being hurriedly adapted for another. The British architect Norman Foster has just been given the responsibility of designing in Berlin the new parliament house for a united Germany. If his plans are accepted, he intends to include the old Reichstag building alongside the line of the Berlin Wall in a splendid new structure reaching across the old Wall into East Berlin. There is a parable here for us as well as for Germany.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“In the 10 tragedies that I listed, the United States has intervened with troops only in one, Somalia - and that now on a reduced scale and under the United Nations - because the United States, quite rightly in my view, is not prepared to send its troops all over the world, as Rome once sent its legions all over Europe, to fight, to pacify and to rule. There are British, French, Spanish and other European troops in Bosnia today under the command of the United Nations. But their role is to save Bosnian lives - they do that daily - implementing United Nations decisions. Likewise, they are not imposing a European imperium on that country.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“18 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session Some of these tragedies are illuminated by the haphazard light of television. In those cases, millions of our citizens, in all our countries, share feelings of sympathy, indignation and horror. But other tragedies equally foul are played in a darkened theatre: no television, no audience, little pressure. But all these tragedies are a reproach to those of us who are convinced that it is possible slowly and painstakingly to construct a more decent world. How do we do that? Not, it is clear, by the remaining super-Power using its superiority to impose its own solutions by force.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“What happened in 1989 was not the birth of a new world order, it was the collapse of one super-Power and the end of communism as a threat to world peace. The tragedies of the world have continued. Indeed, they have probably increased since 1989. "Tragedy" is a better description than the usual, and overworked, term "crisis", because "crisis" implies a threat to world peace. Now that the cold war is over and super-Powers no longer exert themselves on behalf of clients, it is no longer a crisis in that sense - a threat to world peace - if Sudan, Bosnia, Angola, Liberia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Somalia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and others are racked by civil war. But these are appalling tragedies for those who are killed or driven from their homes, and indeed for all of us, because we are all diminished when the bell tolls.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Never has there been a time when the United Nations has been so discussed, so misunderstood, so needed. The international task of this decade is managing disorder. I believe it is possible. But it demands cool heads, low voices, and an understanding of what we can and cannot do. It demands concertation between all countries that take on part of the responsibility for steering the world through channels which are certainly strewn with rocks. This concertation takes place in many forums, but nowhere with greater legal and political authority than here at the United Nations. We can now see the events of 1989 in their true perspective. They did not usher in a new world order. I think we have to be sober about this.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Mr. President, may I first of all congratulate you on your election, and on the dignified and effective way in which you are already presiding over this Assembly. You have a burdensome job and we wish you all good fortune as you discharge it. I have sometimes heard speakers from this rostrum patrol the world in their speeches in the general debate, dealing at length with one continent after another. Indeed, I have done so myself in past years. There is much to describe: events in the Middle East and South Africa are particularly encouraging, and developments in Russia, as we have just heard from Mr. Kozirev, are particularly important. But today it seems to me that in the time available, the focus of interest should not only be on distant events or distant tragedies, but here, in this building, on this institution.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)