YouSaid · the spoken record

Robin Cook

lines on the record: 45
first: 1997-09-24
most recent: 2000-09-24
sittings or episodes: 3
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

“Let us make sure that the Brahimi report does not gather dust on library shelves but is put into practice before we meet again next year. Let us show the determination and the conviction that the right in our Charter to be preserved from war is an equal right for the people of all our nations, large and small, rich and poor.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“Yet, in the same half century, people elsewhere in the globe have lived through violence and conflict which have broken their human rights and impoverished their standards of living. It is largely poor countries that now experience the scourge of war which our Charter sought to banish. The challenge for the United Nations is to ensure that the peace and security which have been enjoyed by many Member States are shared by all. None of us can prevent humanitarian catastrophe by acting alone. But this United Nations can, if we act together. The Brahimi report tells us what we need to do. As an organization, we publish many reports. Nobody could fault the capacity of the United Nations to produce reports. But we are not always as good at implementing them.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“I have been frank about where we must improve our capacity for peacekeeping and strengthen our will to halt conflict. But we should not underrate the immense achievement of the United Nations. Our Charter begins by recalling the untold sorrow to mankind inflicted by two world wars. It was a Charter written by ministers and officials determined to end war between States. And in this they were remarkably successful. External aggression between States is now unusual. But the benefits have been unevenly shared. The industrialized nations have enjoyed half a century of peace. That has provided the security and good order in which their prosperity has advanced at a rate without precedent in history.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“It needs to be made representative of the 100 or more countries that have joined as Members since the Security Council was set up. The United Kingdom supports a doubling of the permanent membership to include Germany, Japan and three countries from each of the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America. We also want more members among those who are elected, in order that the Security Council can be more representative of the General Assembly. For seven years, we have been debating this question. It is becoming an issue of credibility for the United Nations. How can we pretend to end conflict if we cannot end this disagreement among ourselves? A more representative, modern Security Council would speak with more authority when it challenges those who breach the peace.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“The United Kingdom has given strong support to the International Criminal Court, and we have just published our draft legislation to ratify the treaty setting up such a Court. The International Criminal Court will send a strong warning to any future tyrants that they will be called to account for their crimes before the bar of international justice. It will be one of the most powerful advances for human rights since we agreed 50 years ago to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And finally, we must strengthen the authority of the United Nations. In 50 years, there has been no new permanent member of the Security Council. The Security Council needs to represent the world as it is in this century, not the world as it was in the middle of the last century.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“I was astonished to read in the Brahimi report that this mighty international organization has only nine civilian police on its Headquarters staff, administering 8,600 civilian police in the field around the world. I am confident that every one of them is the very best, in keeping with the tradition of United Nations staff. But if we are serious about succeeding on the ground, we need a more serious back-up at the centre. Four times in the past 9 decade, the United Nations has been called upon to undertake a transitional civilian administration. We need a better, permanent, capacity here at the centre to support our operations in the field. The fifth task is to enforce the international law on crimes against humanity. If we are to have international justice, we must have an international court.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“And we must seek the help of the international economic agencies, including the World Bank, to fund and to reward with development aid the surrender of firearms. The fourth task is to provide the United Nations with the civilian resources to promote reconciliation and reconstruction. In Kosovo, and again now in East Timor, we have learned that the end of conflict is only the starting point. When the troops have brought peace, we need judges and administrators to bring justice and development. The peacekeepers must be followed by peace-builders. In particular, we need to muster the civilian police who can establish law and order in place of violence and conflict.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“Yet, over the past decade, the true weapons of mass destruction have been small arms, which have killed 5 million people in conflicts around the globe. Overwhelmingly, those killed were civilians rather than soldiers. And, overwhelmingly, they were killed in countries which do not manufacture firearms. We must make a success next year of the United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in all its Aspects. We need to reach agreement to mark firearms at the point of production so that they can be traced. The United Kingdom would support at that conference the presumption that military firearms should not be licensed for sale other than to legitimate Government bodies.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“Measures to ban conflict diamonds from international sale or to defeat the drugs barons must be key elements of any comprehensive strategy of conflict prevention. The third task is to take tighter control of the flows of arms which supply conflict. As an international community, we have put much effort into controlling weapons of mass destruction. The good progress we all made at the Review Conference of the States Parties to the Treaty on the Treaty on the Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) underlines the importance which each of us attaches to this strategic issue. The United Kingdom has ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, has reduced by half its planned strategic nuclear warheads, and has supplied greater transparency on our nuclear arsenal.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“By definition, any mission to restore peace is an admission of failure to prevent conflict. As well as coping with the consequences of conflict, we need to address the root causes of conflict: poverty, bad governance and the denial of freedom or of minority rights. I welcome the Secretary-General's intention to submit a report on conflict prevention early next year. It will be a natural companion to the Brahimi report. I hope it can enable us to develop an early warning system which will alert us to potential conflict and give our agencies the chance to offer help before it becomes a real conflict. Too often, internal conflict is fuelled by the external demand for the illicit trade in diamonds or the evil trade in drugs.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“But if those peacekeepers are to act with determination, then we must equip them with the capacity to do so. The United Nations needs a Headquarters unit capable of rapid deployment within a few weeks, not a few months, of a Security Council resolution. And each of us must develop the number of troops who are trained in the principles and practice of peacekeeping whom we can commit to the United Nations. That is why the United Kingdom has proposed a permanent staff college for United Nations peacekeeping. The United Kingdom has offered to host such a resource for United Nations peacekeeping, if that is welcome to other members of the General Assembly. The second task is to be more rapid and more imaginative in tackling tension before it results in conflict.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“8 But it is not the new size of our peacekeeping effort that demands changes. It is the different character of the peacekeeping challenge. It used to be the case that United Nations forces were typically deployed to observe a ceasefire between two States both of which wanted to end the fighting. Today, our peacekeepers are typically deployed within States, not between them, and often where one or more parties to the conflict is not seriously committed to peace. In those circumstances, United Nations peacekeepers need a robust mandate. As the Brahimi report puts it, where one side is violating a peace agreement, treating both sides equally can amount to complicity with evil. United Nations peacekeepers who witness violence against civilians should be presumed to be mandated to halt it.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“Too often, though, we have failed to save those who needed our protection from the suffering, the pain and the terror of brutal conflict. We must be frank in facing up to those failures if we are to learn their lessons. And we must be determined to improve the capacity of this Organization to keep the peace if we are to succeed in the future. I want to set out six tasks which we must address if we are not to repeat past failures. First, we must equip the United Nations with a more effective and more rapid capacity for peacekeeping. In the space of about one year, the number of troops on United Nations peacekeeping missions around the globe has trebled. The United Kingdom has forces operating in eight different theatres where peacekeeping has been authorized by the United Nations.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“This morning, though, I wish to focus my remarks on the central theme of the Millennium Summit and of this fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly. How do we equip the United Nations with the capacity in peacekeeping that matches the real demands for it around our world? In his opening address, the Secretary-General invited us to give a swift response to the Brahimi report on peacekeeping (A/55/305). The United Kingdom is happy to respond to that invitation by offering our support for the report's conclusions and pledging our commitment to its implementation. The report begins by reminding us that the United Nations was founded, in the words of its Charter, to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war'.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“But we failed at Seattle to make further progress on removing the obstacles to that trade. In the year ahead, we must launch a world trade development round which is fair to those countries whose main exports are agricultural rather than industrial. It is a world which faces a common threat to its global climate. We are each learning the alarming rate at which that climate is changing as the result of our own actions. Before the end of the year, we must try to reach agreement at the sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to bring into effect the Kyoto measures to stabilize climate change. Each of these is an important challenge. Each of them is a strategic priority for our work programme for the coming year.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“I am conscious that the central problem for all of us when we rise to speak to the General Assembly is that there are too many issues of concern to hope to address them all in one speech. There is no shortage of challenges to the United Nations as we meet for the first time in a new century to debate the issues of a modern world. It is a world united by the new technologies of communication. We have never had so much opportunity to share the know-how for economic growth. Yet our world has never before been so divided between rich and poor. In the year ahead, we must make sure that all the United Nations agencies and its international financial institutions work together in a coordinated way to promote development and to reduce debt. It is also a world bound together by growth in trade between our countries.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“And it must be founded on the clear principle that the only war we agree to wage is one in which our nations are united in combating conflict.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“I am conscious that the agenda I have set out is an ambitious one. But, in all humility, I have to say that it is less ambitious than the visionary programme set out half a century ago by the founders of the United Nations. As our Secretary-General said earlier this year, unless we can unite around the aim of confronting massive human rights violations, against crimes against humanity, then we will betray the very ideals of our founders. In the modern world in which we live — the modern world of satellite communications — we know instantly when such violations are taking place. We have the resources and the mobility to move our assets quickly in an emergency. Modern technology has made all of us each other’s neighbours. We now need to match that technology with an international doctrine that also reflects the modern world.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“The more of us that do so, the greater 35 will be the capacity of the United Nations in brokering a basis for peacekeeping deployment. But in Kosovo we discovered that it was less difficult to put together an armed force to end the military violence than to assemble a United Nations police force to keep civil order. Today, therefore, I can announce that Britain will follow up our standby agreement with the United Nations on troops with a similar agreement increasing the number of United Kingdom police officers available for United Nations troops. This will include a commitment to a rapid response squad, ready for deployment at short notice when it is urgently needed. We shall also be establishing with the United Nations a flagship training course in Britain to train police from around the world to play their part in our joint missions.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“The United Nations cannot do something except when we, its Member States, are prepared to provide the means. We need to ensure that the United Nations has a sound financial base, which requires all of us to meet our assessed contributions in full, on time. But we must also ensure that when peacekeeping forces are required, they are made available. Britain has signed a standby agreement earmarking forces we are prepared in principle to provide for emergency peacekeeping work. Such agreements enable the United Nations to plan for emergencies with greater confidence that we can rapidly put in the field the right skills, with the necessary equipment. A score of other Member States have signed similar agreements.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“We can all agree that the first responsibility for reconciling internal conflict rests with the State in which that conflict arises. But we also have a shared responsibility to act when we are confronted with genocide, mass displacement of people or major breaches of humanitarian law. To know that such atrocities are being committed and not to act against them is to make us complicit in them. And to be passive in the face of such events is to make it more likely that they will be repeated. Credibility, though, also requires us to demonstrate not just the consensus, but also the capacity, to act. We often hear demands that the United Nations should do something. Let us be honest — the United Nations is nothing more than the aggregate of its Member States.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“Just as few nations can stand alone in the modern world, there are now few major conflicts which remain only an internal matter with no impact on the rest of the world. If we are to respond adequately when conflict breaks out, then the United Nations needs to develop three strengths — credibility, consensus and capacity. If the United Nations is to have the credibility to press the parties to a conflict to a solution, it must be more representative of the modern world. A small increase in the size of the Security Council would be a modest price to pay for the big increase in its credibility which would come from a more representative permanent membership. But greater credibility would be pointless without consensus on when the authority of the United Nations should be invoked. Intervention must always be a last resort.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“What happens in one country can have a direct impact on the prosperity and the security — even the climate — of countries on the other side of the world. And we are also bound together by the consequences of conflict. In Britain 90 per cent of the heroin on the streets of our big cities is grown in Afghanistan under cover of the generation-long conflict in that land. In central Africa, the upheavals of population sparked by the mass genocide in Rwanda have destabilized the region and caught up half a dozen countries in the conflicts that have ensued. Across the countries of Europe there are now several hundred thousands of citizens of the former Yugoslavia who have fled to seek sanctuary from the repeated conflicts there.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“As my Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said in Chicago earlier this year, working out the conditions and identifying the circumstances when it is right in the modern world to intervene is the most pressing problem in foreign policy today. His speech demonstrated that Britain is anxious to play its full part in that debate. Our starting point is that our common interest in preserving the world from major conflict is greater than our individual interests as nations. Globalization is the long and rather ugly term which is used to describe how in today’s world we are interdependent with each other rather than independent of each other. We are bound together by our strengthening links in trade and investment, in travel and communication.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“We must encourage cooperation with those who manage those markets to cut off the supply of funds to those who are promoting conflict. Lastly, I strongly endorse the view expressed by our Secretary-General this morning that we must counter the culture of impunity. Those who break international humanitarian law, from Kosovo to East Timor, must know that they will be held to account by the international community. The international criminal tribunals have shown what can be done. We must build on their work by getting a permanent international criminal court up and running with all speed. But we will not always succeed in preventing conflict. We need, therefore, to be better equipped to restore peace when war breaks out.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“For decades, the United Nations, rightly, has focused on halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Yet in truth, in those same decades, the weapons that have killed masses in conflicts have been the most common of small arms. In Friday's debate in the Security Council, we will have the opportunity to take forward action to halt the illegal trade in small arms, to promote regional moratoriums on small arms and to limit arsenals of military firearms to legitimate Government agencies. 34 Fourthly, we must stop the illegal trade in diamonds and other precious commodities which pay for the small arms — and all too often the mercenaries — which sustain conflict. The markets for these commodities, especially the market in diamonds, are small and tightly located in a few centres.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“First, we must tackle the root causes of conflict, starting with the poverty that breeds it. War is becoming a poor man's burden. In the modern world, wealthy nations no longer experience the trauma of conflict on their soil. The soundest basis for peace is prosperity, and the best way we can prevent conflict is by promoting sustainable development. The forthcoming Millennium Assembly must make a reality of the commitment to halving the proportion of people in extreme poverty and reducing the number of nations in heavy debt. Secondly, we must promote human rights and good governance. Development of a nation will be more rapid where people have the right to develop their full potential. Conflict is more likely where governments rule without the consent of their people. Thirdly, we must curb the supply of weapons that fuel conflict.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“But we must also be frank about where we have failed. We have failed to deliver peace to many of the peoples of the world. We have not realized the vision of our founders, of nations and peoples within them living in peace with each other. We have averted world war. But we have not averted a world with too much war. That is why I want to support the excellent opening address by our Secretary-General by focusing my remarks also on what we must do if we are to replace failure to halt war with success in preventing conflict. The harrowing scenes we have witnessed this past year from Kosovo, from Sierra Leone, from East Timor and too many other places underline the urgency of improving our performance in preventing conflicts and also in stopping them once they have started. I propose five priority areas for action.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“We have helped double the literacy rate among women in developing countries. We have helped immunize 80 per cent of the world's children against some of the most lethal diseases. We have established the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the benchmark for freedom for individuals. And this General Assembly played a leading role in insisting on equal democratic rights, regardless of race, and in forcing an end to apartheid. Today the United Nations provides shelter and sanctuary to refugees in every corner of the world. As we meet this week, United Nations agencies provide homes, food, welfare, health and education to 19 million refugees — more than the population of most Member States. We should take pride in these achievements, because it will help give us the confidence to tackle the challenges that remain.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“It is just over half a century since the then British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, presented the Charter of the United Nations to our Parliament. He told our Parliament: “We are seeking not merely good relations between nations but between the human beings within nations”. The concept he saw expressed in the Charter of the United Nations was revolutionary. That responsibility for the security, freedom and development of people does not belong solely to each State acting individually, but to all nations of the world acting as a united body. Over the past 50 years, the United Nations has done much to discharge that responsibility. The United Nations and its agencies have led programmes around the world that have released the potential of individual human beings on every continent.”
1999-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 54 (1999)
“I attend it with both hope and with anxiety — hope that, if it modernizes, the United Nations can help us face the global challenges of the future; anxiety that, without modernizing, the United Nations will lose legitimacy and its effectiveness. We must not let that happen. There are too many children stunted by poverty, too many mothers fearful of war, too many people whose basic human rights are being abuse. The United Nations offers them hope. Let us commit ourselves this week to achieving a modern, reformed United Nations that will turn hope into reality.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“As the Secretary-General has pointed out Secretary-General has pointed out, the mothers from every culture weep when their sons and daughters are killed or maimed by repressive rule. Nor do human rights hinder economic development. The past two decades have demonstrated that political freedom and economic development are not in conflict but are mutually reinforcing. Free societies are efficient economies. Authoritarian rule more often produces economic stagnation. That is why Britain supports the Secretary-General’s proposals to integrate human rights into all the work that the United Nations does. This is my first General Assembly.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“The death of a dozen international policemen and envoys, among them a British diplomat, in the United Nations helicopter that crashed in Bosnia last week, was a grim reminder of the risks we ask our peace- builders to take. I pay tribute to their courage and salute them for their professionalism and their skill. The last area in which the United Nations must focus is human rights. As the world becomes smaller, and news and ideas travel faster, so the principle that certain rights are universal becomes even more compelling. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets out the right to freedom from the fear of violence and the right to liberty from the threat of unjust imprisonment. Those are rights to which every citizen of the world irrespective of race, creed or colour. They must not be limited to any one culture or any one continent.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“At the third session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Kyoto, the nations of the world must sign up to binding targets and then they must keep to them. The second key goal is peace — preventing conflicts before they happen, helping to end them when they do happen and helping to rebuild lasting peace after conflict. Each of these contributions to peace is equally vital. But it is the United Nations peacekeeping operations that have the highest profile, and with good reason. The blue berets have prevented worse conflict across the world, from Eastern Slavonia to the Western Sahara. Many have laid down their lives, not in the conduct of war but in the pursuit of peace.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Sustainable development will do more than just reduce poverty. Poverty is also one of the greatest threats to the environment. If we want to preserve the planet for future generations, we must make sure that development respects the environment and does not destroy it. The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development has made important progress towards this goal. But it is not a task any country can subcontract to the United Nations. We are all in this together. No country can opt out of global warming or fence in its own private climate. We need common action to save our common environment. 16 The new Labour Government has set itself the ambitious target of reducing Britain’s emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 per cent by the year 2010.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“As Britain’s contribution to achieving it, the mew Labour Governments has committed itself to reversing the decline in the British aid budget. Britain has also consistently urged faster action in tackling the problem of debt, and at the Commonwealth Finance Ministers meeting in Mauritius last week, British Chancellor Gordon Brown launched a new initiative to cut debt that will benefit 300 million of the world’s poorest people and help developing countries escape from the debt trap. But aid will not alone eliminate poverty. We need to continue breaking down the barriers that deny the poorest countries access to the world’s most lucrative markets. We need to make sure that producers in Africa are allowed to sell their goods to Europe and to America as easily as their producers can sell their goods to Africa.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“There are three key areas in which the United Nations has a vital job to do — promoting sustainable development, promoting peace and promoting human rights. Those are not separate challenges, but different faces of the same challenge. There can be no real and sustainable development or respect for human rights without peace. And there will be no permanent peace where there is only poverty and injustice. During every speech this week another 300 children will die before their first birthday, most of them deaths that could be easily and cheaply prevented. If the United Nations is to be relevant to its Members, then more than anything else it must enable people to lift themselves out of poverty. Britain supports the United Nations aid target.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“And it is not equitable that some Members pay their contributions while other Members do not. Britain pays in full and on time. Britain expects every Member State, however large or however small, to do the same. These three issues — institutional reform, Security Council reform and financial reform — are critical to the United Nations future. Let us commit ourselves to progress on all these issues by the end of 1997 and solutions by this time next year. Next time we meet, let us celebrate a modern United Nations that can face the future with confidence, rather than looking back on another year of agreeing about all the questions but not being able to agree on any of the answers. And then the United Nations will be able to get on with its job.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“They should have equal status in the international organizations of the world. Let us also put the United Nations finances on a sound basis. Speaker after speaker yesterday referred to the need for us to cooperate to defeat those who make fortunes from organized crime and to contain the drugs trade, second only in value to the oil trade. We cannot defeat those well- resourced menaces to the modern world through a United Nations that staggers from year to year on the verge of bankruptcy. We need a solution based on the ability to pay. The most equitable means of sharing the burden is to base contributions on share of global gross national product. But that measure will only be accepted as equitable if it is updated regularly to reflect the rapid changes to the world economy.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Japan and Germany should both be included in an expanded permanent membership, and there should be a new balance between developed and developing countries in a modernized Security Council. We are all agreed on the need for change; we have been discussing it for four years. It is time that we agreed that a proposal for change which has the backing of the vast majority of Members is better than a status quo which has the backing of none. It is not just all the countries of the United Nations that must be properly represented, but all the people of those countries. More than half those people are women. Britain welcomes the United Nations willingness to put gender perspective into all areas of its work. The new Labour Government attaches particular importance to strengthening the rights of women. Women do more than half the world’s work.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“We thoroughly welcome the Secretary-General’s commitment to reduce the number of documents by 25 per cent by next year. We want to see an end to the duplication between United Nations agencies, and I give my wholehearted support to the Secretary-General’s proposal for a Special Commission to look at the division of labour right across the United Nations system. 15 Another way in which the United Nations is out of date is its Security Council. We are all agreed in this Chamber that what was appropriate in 1945 is not what is right in 1997. The world has changed. Most of the countries represented here today did not even exist when the United Nations was formed. The Security Council must move on if it is not to lose its legitimacy.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“We demonstrated this commitment as soon as we were elected by rejoining the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and by confirming our intention to stay in the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). We were elected because we offered Britain modernization to succeed in a new century. We pledge ourselves to back modernization of the United Nations. We do so because we know that our country, like all other Member States, will benefit from a United Nations that is efficient, representative and properly funded. Let me take each of those in turn. Efficient does not spell cheap. But we do want to see the United Nations do the most it can with what it has got — a United Nations that no longer spends $150 million producing 2,500 tons of documents every year.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“The outstanding leadership shown by the Secretary- General is an important start. His proposals for institutional reform will retain what is best in the United Nations system but give it the flexibility and the efficiency it needs to respond rapidly to the new challenges of a new century. The member countries of the United Nations must support his commitment to modernization. We must each stop measuring each proposal for reform in terms of narrow self-interest and, instead, recognize that we all have a greater interest in supporting reform. Britain’s Labour Government is firmly committed to the United Nations.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Our countries are increasingly interdependent, and the challenges we each face are global challenges — challenges that we must face together: poverty, conflict, climate change, international crime and the drugs menace. These are all international problems that require us to behave as a united nations not just in name but in reality. And so the United Nations should have a bigger role than ever before. If it appears to be less relevant, it is not for want of challenge but for want of reform. The United Nations must modernize. It must be able to confront the new global challenges that all its Members face. It will need flexibility, competence and efficiency to meet the complex needs of the twenty-first century because the United Nations cannot give leadership to a changing world if we ourselves refuse to change.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“We inhabit a modern world in which we must accept change as the normal condition of life. Communication around the globe is becoming faster. The distance between our countries is becoming shorter. I travelled to New York at twice the speed of sound and I landed before I took off. Every word I say to the Assembly today will be sent to London down a telephone line and within minutes it will appear on the World Wide Web. Our countries today are intertwined as never before in a market place that is global. And our people have learned that their purchasing decisions have an impact on jobs and pay across the planet — from the fruit they buy at the supermarket to the fuel they use in their cars. Changes to the environment in one continent can produce changes to the weather in another continent.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)