YouSaid · the spoken record

Jack Straw

lines on the record: 68
first: 2001-09-24
most recent: 2005-09-24
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

“The fundamental purpose of the United Nations remains today what it was at its foundation: to remove the scourge of war, to reaffirm the worth of the human person and to promote social progress and better standards of life. In this changed and changing world, it is the responsibility of us all to ensure that this Organization has the powers and the resources to achieve all these aims.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“We already have international instruments to regulate chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. We in the European Union have a comprehensive arms control regime. But I suggest to the General Assembly that the time has now come for this Organization to embrace the idea of an international arms trade treaty, which would build on and strengthen existing initiatives. It was in the killing fields of Europe, in two successive wars, that the twin ideas of the United Nations and of the European Union became imperative. Today, the European Union’s commitment to the United Nations is profound; it has never been stronger. And it is reflected in what we give in voluntary donations and to the regular budget and peacekeeping operations.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“In July, the European Union again suffered the horror of a major terrorist atrocity. This time the target was my country, the United Kingdom: its capital, London. But none of us is safe from the threat of terror. International terrorism requires an international response; otherwise, we all pay the price for each other’s vulnerabilities. The ratification of a comprehensive treaty on terrorism is, therefore, at the highest priority. But the threat from terrorists and the political instability they bring is made worse by the easy availability of weapons in what has become an anarchic, unregulated international trade. These same weapons fuelled the killings in Rwanda and in Bosnia a decade ago and are fuelling the conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Darfur today.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“So, we will listen very carefully to and reflect on this afternoon’s speech by the new President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. On Iraq, the European Union now has a comprehensive programme of engagement and has put behind it divisions over the military action two and a half years ago. We are supporting the goal of a peaceful, prosperous, democratic and stable nation. We are also giving very active support to the Quartet’s efforts to secure a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, with two States living side by side. We salute Prime Minister Sharon’s brave decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, and we salute President Mahmoud Abbas’s work to build the first stage of an effective, viable State of Palestine.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Equally, it has been our active foreign policy that has placed us in the lead with regard to Iran, especially on the nuclear dossier. With our High Representative Javier Solana and my French and German Foreign Minister colleagues, we have made detailed proposals for the relationship between the European Union and Iran to be based on cooperation and respect for international norms and treaties. Our proposals envisage a high-level, long-term political and security framework between the European Union and Iran, in which we would work together in political, economic, scientific and technological areas, including the civil nuclear field, in return for Iran providing guarantees about its intentions and capabilities concerning nuclear weapons.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“We in the European Union have seen the vibrant Muslim communities in our own countries, and from that experience have seen how Islamic and Western cultures can be partners in a global society. Everyone knows that the Arab peoples want prosperity, freedom and democracy every bit as much as anyone in Europe or America. So the fact that the Arab world has the lowest scores in regional measurements of democratic practices, civil freedoms and good governance is not some cultural inevitability, but a temporary failure of human will. In that regard, the international community has a clear responsibility to encourage regionally led political, social and economic reform. The European Union strongly supports such reform and will continue to do so.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Three United Nations Development Programme Arab Human Development Reports have now set out clearly how limited economic prospects and stunted political freedoms have led young and talented people towards alienation and disillusionment. The answer, however, does not lie in easy stereotypes about some clash of civilizations. It is only the terrorists and the preachers of hate who want us to believe that Islam and the West are fundamentally 28 different. Theirs is a philosophy of mistrust and despair, and we reject it utterly. Indonesia and Turkey — to name just two — are both striking examples of how countries with predominantly Muslim populations can embrace democracy and modernity.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Debt relief, trade reform and development aid are all vital, but none of them can work alone. Fundamental to making poverty history are the Governments of the developing world themselves. And where Governments fail, their own peoples are the victims, as United Nations Special Envoy Anna Tibaijuka’s damning assessment of the situation in Zimbabwe only too graphically shows. Sub-Saharan Africa is not alone in having yet to achieve its potential. The American author Thomas Friedman, in his recent book The World Is Flat, highlights an extraordinary anomaly: it was the Arab peoples whose forebears devised algebra and the algorithms upon which our entire digital age is based, but those peoples are now right at the rear of today’s technological revolution, with, for example, fewer than 2 per cent of those populations having Internet access.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“For the first time in our history, mankind has the ability to realize the potential of individuals in societies of all kinds and in every region through an open exchange of goods, investment, technology and, above all, ideas. Not least in all of this, it is the rise of India and of China that is reordering the world economy. Hundreds of millions there and elsewhere have been lifted out of poverty. A new global market has been created that ignores the divide — which seemed so fundamental for so many decades — between East and West. Currently, not everyone has the chance to share in all of that. Much of sub-Saharan Africa remains blighted by poverty, disease and conflict. The European Union has now set a clear timetable to achieve the 0.7 per cent target for aid.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“People could suddenly see partners where before they had only glimpsed adversaries. And as that very visible barrier was noisily being breached, a revolution in information technology was quietly erasing the barriers of distance and time. Continents and cultures are now cabled together and bound by trade and services in a way that was unimaginable even a decade ago. In this new world, we can no longer safely tolerate the general threat that can come from a particular human tragedy, wherever it takes place. To a greater extent than ever before, we share the same world: the same threats and responsibilities, the same opportunities and interests. And precisely because the boundaries of our world have contracted, the horizons — the ambitions — of many people around the globe have infinitely expanded.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Of all that was agreed at the summit, I believe it will be the agreement on our “responsibility to protect” that will be seen in the future as having the greatest significance of all. If we follow through on the responsibility to protect, then never again will genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity be allowed to take place under our noses with nothing done. The responsibility to protect is, of course, a reflection of our common morality. But it is also a recognition that the world in which we now live is too small for us to be unaffected by, or indifferent to, the innocent victims of murder and oppression. This shrinking of the world has been as sudden as it has been profound. When the Berlin wall fell, a generation of ideological certainties was swept away.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“To be sure, we had shown the right convictions in words, but shamefully, we had failed to act. The lesson of that massacre — and of the even greater horror of Rwanda a year before — was that we all needed better means to turn our collective will into decisive action. I think that we in the European Union have learned in the intervening period. Today, the Union is on the ground as a military, police or civilian presence in Bosnia, in Aceh, in Iraq, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, with the African Union, in Darfur. I also think that the United Nations has learned the lessons of the past decade. At the summit this week, we agreed on the further steps that we need to take for the Organization to be even more effective.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Let me begin, Sir, by paying tribute to your predecessor, Jean Ping, for his extraordinary work — above all on the world summit, but also throughout his year as President — and by offering my congratulations to you on beginning your year in office. I should also like to express, on behalf of the European Union and all its member States, our deepest sympathy and solidarity to the people of the United 27 States, particularly those in the Gulf states, in their hour of need. In early July, my first duty in the presidency of the European Union was to go to Srebrenica to mark the tenth anniversary of the massacre there, the worst in Europe since the end of the Second World War. More than 8,000 people, mainly Muslim, were taken away and killed as the international community just stood to one side.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“The United Kingdom is determined to play its full part in that endeavour.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“The United Kingdomís chairmanship of the G-8 next year will focus on tackling climate change and on Africa, on which the Independent Commission for Africa will be producing recommendations as to how best we can support the radical agenda for change and development designed by Africa itself through the New Partnership for Africaís Development and the African Union. Our presidency of the European Union will help us to lead efforts for a successful outcome in the Doha Development Round, and for building the European Unionís crisis-management capabilities. More than ever, global security is our shared responsibility. In the year ahead, as we continue to 36 adapt to todayís threats and challenges, we must find renewed determination and political will to make collective security work.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“Along with the Russian Federation and other partners in the Security Council, we also wish to look at ways to ensure the speedier extradition of such individuals. We, the United Nations, have over the last year begun to show a new determination to come together and to make collective action work. A year from now, we will meet again here to review the recommendations of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, as well as the Millennium Development Goals, and to set the United Nations agenda for the next decade.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“It does not apply to anyone who has committed a war crime, a crime against humanity or other serious crime; nor does it apply to anyone who is guilty of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. We must never stoop to the level of the terrorist ó to torture, mistreatment or unjustified incarceration ó nor will any country within the European Union be party to the return of suspects to such conditions, nor to face the death penalty. But we cannot let terrorists exploit a protection designed for the persecuted, not the persecutors. We in the United Kingdom shall therefore be working closely with Russia on its important draft Security Council resolution, to see how best we can prevent those who commit, support and finance terrorism from sheltering behind a refugee status to which they are not entitled.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“The threat of terrorism confronts democratic, properly functioning States with an acute dilemma, namely, how to fight those who recognize none of the values for which we stand while remaining true to those values. Our commitments under international conventions express many of those values and the importance that we attach to them. But equally, those conventions cannot be allowed to shelter those involved in terrorism. The conventions were designed to protect citizens from abuse by States, not by terrorists. The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees protects those with a well-founded fear of persecution. I am proud that the United Kingdom and so many other nations have offered that protection when and where it was required. But as the 1951 Convention itself sets out, asylum is not an unqualified right.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“One of them is Kenneth Bigley, a British engineer held hostage by terrorists who have already barbarically murdered his two American comrades. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families. We continue to do all we can to secure Mr. Bigleyís release. I know - how could I forget - that opinions have differed over the rightness of the military action taken in Iraq 18 months ago. But I warrant that no nation is in favour of the terrorist insurgency now occurring there. For we all recognize that what is being attempted by the terrorists in Iraq is an attack both on the Iraqi people and on everything for which the Organization stands: safety, security and human rights. We have to come together to defeat the terrorists and their despicable aims.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim, people of no religion or any religion, and of every or no shade of political opinion, all have died through the terroristsí bullet or bomb. My friend Sergey Lavrov spoke eloquently a moment ago about the tears still wet for the terrible, unspeakable massacre of the young and innocent that took place in Beslan. Sergey, your tears are my tears; Russiaís tears are the worldís tears. We are all in the fight against terrorism together. Today in Iraq we are seeing again the depths to which the terrorists plumb. The vast majority of the victims of terrorism in Iraq are Iraqis. Our thoughts and condolences are with the Government and people of Iraq and with their families. But some of the victims of terrorism in Iraq are foreigners who are helping Iraqis to build a more stable and prosperous country.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“We have to act quickly in response, because prevention is far better than cure. We should look to work more closely with regional organizations, as we are doing with the African Union in Darfur. We need more discussion on the criteria as to when the international community might have to intervene with military force in extreme circumstances. We must get better at engaging for the long term in countries recovering from conflict, 35 coordinating our efforts in response to locally agreed priorities. My third point is the urgent need to combat global terrorism, a menace directed at us all. If we have learned anything in the three years since 11 September 2001 it is that international terrorism is indiscriminate in its targets and merciless in its hatred.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“No longer - we all said - could or should the world turn away from unspeakable barbarities like that of the Holocaust. But we have not always lived up to those high expectations, as the tragedies of Rwanda and Bosnia ten years ago reminded us. Today we must resolve to do so and to engage in situations of humanitarian catastrophe or grave violations of international humanitarian law and to act in the face of other threats to international peace and security. The principle of non-interference has to be qualified by a duty to protect, especially where Governments are failing in that duty. We therefore need, for example, to be ready to support greater use by the Secretary-General of his powers under Article 99 of the Charter, to bring threats to peace to the Security Council's attention.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“We all represent independent, sovereign states. But even as we founded the United Nations we recognized that sovereignty was a trust in the hands of a nationís government: there to be respected, not abused, from either without or within. The Charter set out arrangements so that an abuse from without could be dealt with through the inherent right of self-defence recognized in Article 51 of the Charter. But it also said that an abuse from within which threatens the peace could and should be dealt with by the Security Council, under the powers enshrined in the other articles of Chapter VII of the Charter, and by the many conventions concluded within the United Nations framework, including, for example, the 1948 Geneva Convention.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“As the Secretary-General highlighted in his speech this week, we have to do more to entrench the rule of law and justice, especially in States recovering from conflict. The United Kingdom will pursue work on the Secretary-Generalís report during its Security Council presidency next month. We could also use the United Nations better, to agree to monitor and help implement globally accepted norms of good governance. And we need to act together quickly on climate change, perhaps the greatest long-term threat to our world in terms of stability and security. We have to implement Kyoto - and I greatly welcome what my colleague, His Excellency Sergey Lavrov had to say on that today - and agree to emission reductions beyond 2012. My second point is the need to build a new consensus on the scope of collective action.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“Let me highlight three areas which to me seem particularly important: first, our approach must be broader and must tackle threats to the most vulnerable, including poverty, disease and environmental degradation; secondly, we must build a new consensus by expanding the scope of collective action; and, thirdly, we must deal with the threat of terrorism, which menaces us all and everything for which we stand. Let me now take these three points in turn. First, there is the need for a broader approach which addresses the complex and interdependent nature of security today. Here, we have to do more to meet the Millennium Development Goals and to promote sustainable development, especially in Africa. We cannot have security without development or development without security.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“The United Kingdom has long supported the case for expanding the Security Council to, say, 24 members, and for including amongst the permanent members: Germany and Japan, two countries which between them contribute 28 per cent of the budget of the United Nations; India, which represents one sixth of the entire worldís population; and Brazil, which just missed permanent membership back in 1945. But we should not see an expansion of the Security Council, or other institutional change, as a panacea. The biggest need is to adapt our common understanding - the United Nations jurisprudence, if you like - and its operational effectiveness so that we can respond more quickly and more thoroughly to todayís new threats.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“The United Nations has adapted in the past - with the development of peacekeeping, a greater focus on individual rights and the setting of global targets for 34 development - and I am confident that it can adapt in the future. Of course, institutional change is part of that. At the United Nations foundation, one eighth of its members could expect to be elected members of the Security Council at any one time. Today that proportion is less than one eighteenth.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“Today the greatest threats to our security often come not from other functioning sovereign States, but from terrorist organizations, from failing States and from man-made shocks to our environment like climate change, which can exacerbate State failure and breed internal instability. The High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change appointed by the Secretary-General is preparing its recommendations on ways to address the various challenges. We should remember in all this that we have one great advantage. Though its institutions and the founding text of the Charter has hardly changed in 60 years, the United Nations is not an organization set in stone, but a set of living institutions based on a shared will to make collective security work.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“I am proud that just a few months after the difficult times of early last year, France, Germany and the United Kingdom came together to work, as we continue to do, on the Iran dossier before the International Atomic Energy Agency. I recognize, of course, the frustrations which all of us feel, not least over the Israel-Palestine conflict, where the clear path to peace set out in the road map and endorsed by the Security Council remains elusive. But all in all we have shown the will to make collective action work, though we know, too, that we need to go further. In particular, we need to get better at tackling threats which have changed dramatically since the founding of the United Nations.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“Over the last 12 months we have dealt with new crises such as that in Darfur in the Sudan, where we have set clear tasks for both the Sudanese Government and the rebel groups. We have tackled the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Great Lakes; mobilized international support for the new Iraq; and addressed a long list of hugely important subjects which rarely receive the coverage they should in the media ó Haiti, Georgia, Timor-Leste, Bougainville and Western Sahara. We have shown in those actions the unity of purpose which is one of the strongest weapons in our hands to defeat the evils which today affect the globe. And the search for consensus has not been confined to the Security Council.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“Mr. President, I offer my congratulations and those of my country on your election as President of the General Assembly at its fifty-ninth session. Eighteen months ago, the United Nations faced divisions more serious than any since the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. We all worried whether the strength and unity which we had built up since the end of the cold war could survive. Then last year we watched, as Secretary-General Kofi Annan stood at his now famous fork in the road. In the year since, almost instinctively, we have decided to follow our Secretary-Generalís directions. This Organization has not been plunged, as some predicted, into paralysis; instead, I have felt a powerful if unspoken determination to make the United Nations work, and to work more effectively, to fulfil its central task: to secure peace around the world.”
2004-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 59 (2004)
“We all share a world in which international terrorists strike down the innocent, regardless of faith or nationality, and we are all less secure when weapons of mass destruction are in reckless hands. We do not have the luxury simply of rejecting unilateralism, while proposing no multilateral means of confronting and dealing with these threats. The British Government is profoundly committed, as it always has been, to the ideals of the United Nations. To us, the importance of this Organization has always been its ability to put those high ideals into effect. We will work wholeheartedly with the Secretary-General and the international community to ensure that the United Nations retains and strengthens both its idealism and its effectiveness.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“A bigger and more representative Council, however, will not of itself make it easier to make the tough choices which it has to face so often. The most important ingredient is the political will and determination of the members of the Council to take effective action. The most important part of the Secretary- General’s speech on Tuesday was about the choices now confronting the United Nations. He was right about those. We have indeed come to a fork in the road. 32 Down one route lies a world in which the United Nations strengthens its role as the collective instrument for protecting our peace and security; down the other route lies a world in which collective action becomes a synonym for “inaction”. We must not take this second route. The Secretary-General’s speech was a challenge to all of us.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“We must also make a real success of the Millennium Declaration. We have to overcome the setback of Cancún and secure a positive outcome to the Doha Round. These and other shared problems require collective responses, as our Secretary-General so eloquently said here in his speech on Tuesday. A key to this is to ensure that the United Nations itself remains an effective global forum capable of delivering results. The Secretary-General posed some difficult questions two days ago. I welcome his initiative to seek the advice of a distinguished group to make proposals on reform. I welcome, too, his parallel commitment to modernizing the United Nations and its agencies. For our part, the United Kingdom is committed to making the Security Council more representative. The issue is not whether but how to do this.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“Much good work on proliferation is being done by United Nations agencies, particularly the International Atomic Energy Agency, but it is extraordinary that the Security Council itself has not addressed the issue of proliferation for over 10 years. In our judgement, it is time that it did. Problems of internal conflict, on the other hand, are regularly on the Security Council’s agenda. The United Nations has unrivalled expertise and experience in this area and has achieved great things in countries as far apart as East Timor and Sierra Leone, but nation- building is a collaborative effort, requiring the resources and commitment of Member States if the United Nations peace-building is to be effective. We therefore need new mechanisms to help prevent conflicts and then to help States before they collapse.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“This can be the only fitting memorial to the thousands who have died on both sides since the beginning of this appalling conflict. The breadth of the issues being tackled by the United Nations and its agencies demonstrates the continued relevance of this institution. The Counter- Terrorism Committee has given the United Nations a focus for its work following September two years ago, but we must now build upon that work, giving the Committee the expertise and the remit to reinforce the capacity of Member States to tackle and to overcome terrorism. We also know that proliferation is one of the greatest threats we face alongside terrorism.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“Iraq is, sadly, not the only territory in the Middle East where the international community faces great challenges. Three months ago, we all had high hopes about the work of the Quartet of the United Nations, the European Union, the Russian Federation and the United States in Israel and the occupied territories. It is tragic that these hopes were blown apart on 19 August by the terrorist atrocity in Jerusalem, which came only a few hours after the terrorist atrocity against the United Nations in Baghdad, but the international community has to stay united on both the means and the ends in the Middle East. There are no alternatives to the road map and there can be no alternatives to the outcome the entire world wishes to see — two States, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“I hope very much that we can agree a new Security Council resolution to strengthen the United Nations role in Iraq. In managing this transition, we should be guided by three central principles: first, the transfer of powers must reflect realities on the ground in Iraq, particularly the need to ensure security; secondly, the Iraqi institutions must be sufficiently robust to take on increasing responsibilities; and thirdly, the exercise of executive powers and responsibilities must be based on good governance, involving representative Iraqi authorities and coherent constitutional arrangements. In other words, the timetable should be driven by the needs of the Iraqi people and their capacity progressively to assume democratic control, rather than by fixing arbitrary deadlines.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“And let us also not lose sight of what has been achieved and what is taking shape. Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror is over. The apparatus of torture and oppression which claimed hundreds of thousands of 31 lives is at an end. Instead, we have the beginnings of a representative Government run by Iraqis for Iraqis; new ministries providing daily services to the people; a free press; the freedom for members of all religious communities to worship as they wish; hospitals and schools in operation; bustling traffic on the streets and highways; and a start to real economic regeneration. We shall stay in Iraq as long, but only as long, as it is necessary to meet our clear responsibilities and to restore sovereignty to the Iraqi people as quickly as we can in an orderly manner.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“Saddam Hussein would have been emboldened by our failure to act; every dictator would have been encouraged to follow his example; and the authority of this United Nations would have been gravely weakened. Yet, whatever the arguments of the spring, we have now to come together again for a common purpose. As the Security Council has recognized in its three resolutions 1472 (2003), 1483 (2003) and 1500 (2003), we have a shared interest in helping Iraqi citizens to embrace the rights and freedoms which they have been denied so long and for which this institution was founded. Yes, the security situation does present formidable challenges. Terrorists who despise freedom are seeking to plunge Iraq into chaos. They have inflicted terrible blows on the Iraqi people, coalition soldiers and international aid workers, but ultimately they will fail.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“Yet, earlier this year, sadly, we divided on when and what action was necessary to deal with the Iraqi threat. Of course, I acknowledge the controversy over the military action which the United Kingdom, the United States and others took and the heavy responsibilities we now bear, but I firmly believe that the decisions we took were the right ones. The authority of the United Nations was at stake. Having given Saddam Hussein’s regime a final opportunity to comply with the United Nations, what would have happened if we had simply turned away? Would the world be a safer place today? Would Iraq be a better place today? Would the United Nations be a stronger institution today? The answer to each of those questions is no.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“Sergio Vieira de Mello and the United Nations personnel who were killed or injured in the blast in Baghdad on 19 August were committed to bringing the ideals of the United Nations to the people of Iraq. They paid the ultimate sacrifice for their dedication. We mourn their loss, but we will not weaken in our resolve to help the Iraqi people rebuild their country on the principles of justice and security. What, I think, makes Iraq so important was the way in which it tested the role and purpose of this institution over more than a dozen years. Throughout that period, the international community remained in agreement that the regime of Saddam Hussein posed a Chapter VII threat to international peace and security by its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction programmes and its unparalleled defiance of the will of the United Nations.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“I begin by paying a tribute to Dr. Akila Al-Hashimi, a senior member of the Iraqi Governing Council, who died earlier today. I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Al-Hashimi earlier this year in London and later in Baghdad, and I was struck by her courage and her dedication to the Iraqi people. Dr. Al-Hashimi was murdered by those who would deny the Iraqi people the democratic, prosperous future they so richly deserve. The best service that we can render her memory is to defeat the terrorists and to ensure that her vision of a peaceful, free Iraq prevails. Of course, we owe this service to all those who have fallen in the cause of peace in Iraq.”
2003-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 58 (2003)
“All of us who believe in those principles of international law and justice have a duty to ensure that they are both upheld and enforced.”
2002-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 57 (2002)
“At the end of the cold war we had all hoped that future generations would be able to enjoy a world where cooperation rather than conflict was the hallmark of international affairs. That goal is still within reach, if we are united in tackling State failure, in the war against terrorism and in confronting those threats of weapons of mass destruction. The tasks facing the founders of this institution were no less intimidating. Yet their combination of high values and hard-headed realism created the greatest instrument in history for the avoidance of war. Our founders' achievement has been formidable. But the Organization now faces new and emerging threats. We have to confront those threats and be ever alive to the challenges which are out there to peace and justice across the world.”
2002-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 57 (2002)
“We have to be clear to Iraq and to ourselves about the consequences which will flow from a failure by Iraq to meet its obligations. And yes, in dealing with the threat posed by Iraq we must also tackle those other international challenges outlined so eloquently by Kofi Annan in his address. Over the past year we have seen a further deterioration in security in Israel and in the occupied territories. There has never been a greater need for international involvement in the Middle East peace process to secure the outcome we all want to see: two States, Israel and Palestine living side by side within secure and recognized borders, based on Security Council resolutions 242 (1967), 338 (1973) and 1397 (2002). In Kashmir, we should continue to urge both India and Pakistan to act with restraint, and to seek to resolve that long-running conflict.”
2002-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 57 (2002)
“If we do, we will find that our resolutions are dismissed by aggressors everywhere as mere words. We have spent 57 years 13 building this Organization beyond a talking shop. We cannot now let that work be undone. There are times when hard choices have to be made. On Iraq, we have now reached such a moment. If we fail to deal with this challenge, the United Nations itself will be seriously weakened. And that would make the world a much more dangerous place. As President Bush spelled out in his powerful speech to the Assembly here on Thursday, we have to be resolute in the face of Iraq's defiance and secure the will of the United Nations. We must require Iraq to re- admit inspectors, with unfettered access. We have not just an interest but a responsibility to ensure that Iraq complies fully with international law.”
2002-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 57 (2002)
“Every society, from the smallest village to the global community represented here in the General Assembly, must have rules, and every member of that community must accept responsibility for respecting and maintaining those rules. Without this, the very concept of community breaks down. So those of us who believe in an active international community cannot stand by and do nothing while Iraq continues to defy the will of the United Nations. All of us who believe in the United Nations have to make up our minds now about how to deal with Iraq. The authority of the United Nations itself is at stake. We cannot let Iraq do grave damage to this Organization and the international order which it represents. We cannot let Iraq go on defying a decade of Security Council resolutions.”
2002-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 57 (2002)
“That exception is Iraq. For two decades, Saddam Hussein's regime has defied and frustrated every attempt to enforce the international rule of law. Iraq is the only country to be condemned by the United Nations for breaching the Convention on Chemical Weapons. Iraq has fought wars of aggression against two neighbours, and has launched missile attacks against five countries in the region. Iraq has used poison gas against its own people. Saddam Hussein has persistently mocked the authority of the United Nations. No country has deceived every other country in the world as systematically and cynically as Iraq. And no country presents as fundamental a challenge to the United Nations as Iraq.”
2002-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 57 (2002)
“There has been an overwhelmingly positive response. But, as we recall those who lost their lives on 11 September last year, we cannot relax our collective determination. Alongside the threats from failing States and from terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction poses the greatest current threat to global security, and nowhere is the case for universal support for the enforcement of United Nations law stronger than in the field of weapons of mass destruction. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention comprise one of the world's most significant bodies of international law. For the past three decades, this corpus of law has ensured — with one infamous exception — that no States have resorted to these, the world's worst weapons.”
2002-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 57 (2002)