YouSaid · the spoken record

Mukherjee

lines on the record: 54
first: 1994-09-24
most recent: 1995-09-24
sittings or episodes: 2
sources: un-general-debate

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“16) We must ensure that we set aside smaller matters, that we do not allow the objective to get clouded and that we move forward together in harmony and for the benefit of all the people of the world.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“In the last five decades we have played an important role in shaping the United Nations agenda, taking the lead on the crucial issues of decolonization, disarmament, human rights and environment, among others. On this historic occasion we pledge our continuing commitment to the United Nations efforts to chart a new course for the collective benefit of all humanity. As we attempt to do so, I am reminded of Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech to the General Assembly in November 1948, in Paris. He said: “The objectives are clear; your aim is clear; and yet, in looking at that aim, we lose ourselves often, if I may venture to say so, in smaller matters and forget the main objective that we were looking at. Sometimes it seems that the objective itself gets a little clouded”. (Plenary Verbatim Records, Third Session, General Assembly, 154th meeting, p.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“In India we make considerable efforts to pay our contributions promptly and in full. We believe that all Members must pay their assessed contributions in full and on time. Further, those in arrears must announce a schedule for settlement. There can be no progress in the on-going efforts for financial reform unless this is done. The fiftieth session of the General Assembly is a historic one. It is our responsibility to rejuvenate the United Nations, give it the tasks we want it to do, and the means with which to do them. We set up the United Nations because we felt that all of us stood to gain from it. In the dark days of the cold war and in the friction between North and South, we seem to have lost this vision. Since the inception of the United Nations, India has been committed to the principles and objectives of the Charter.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“India has consistently supported the peace-keeping activities of the United Nations. Indian troops have participated in all major peace-keeping operations, ranging from the Congo to Cambodia, Somalia and Mozambique. We are currently participating in United Nations peace-keeping operations in Rwanda, Angola, Haiti, 16 Liberia and Kuwait. We have also offered a brigade of troops to the United Nations stand-by arrangement. India will continue to contribute to United Nations efforts to maintain international peace and security. If the United Nations is to become a leading player on the world scene, it must be given the means needed to do the job we entrust to it. Clearly, setting out on a second 50 years with a crippling financial crisis is not the best way to do so.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“The United Nations has in recent years devoted itself almost exclusively to peace-keeping, which is important, but not the central issue of our times. It is judged, naturally, by its record in these operations. There have been successes and failures, and both provide the reason and the need for introspection. India believes that United Nations peace-keeping operations must be based on the principles evolved over the last 50 years. Operations guided by these principles have usually done well. Where these have been abandoned, failure has been common. Over the past year this truth has gained broad acceptance, and the Special Committee on Peace-Keeping Operations is now trying to collate these principles. It would be desirable for the General Assembly at this fiftieth session to agree on them. India will contribute to this work.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“The members of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries have put forward a comprehensive proposal for the reform and restructuring of the Security Council. India believes that, to truly reflect the expanded membership of the United Nations, developing countries must be included as permanent members. New permanent members should be chosen not arbitrarily, but on objective criteria. In the League of Nations it was argued that one country had a special right of entry into the Supreme Council. When that was forced through, one or two of the other aspirants left the League, starting its decline. We should not repeat that tragedy. On objective criteria, some countries will clearly qualify for permanent membership. We believe India will be among them.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Developing countries find it hard to identify with the agendas and priorities of the United Nations; they feel that it now represents the privilege of a few rather than the interests of the many. If the majority of its Members become disenchanted with it, what role can the United Nations effectively play? For the United Nations to be more effective, the General Assembly must be given new life and breathe that life into the other bodies of the system. The legitimacy and effectiveness of the Security Council must be enhanced. An expansion of both permanent and non-permanent members is a must if the Council is to become a truly representative body acting on behalf of the Members of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace and security.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“That is precisely why the United Nations system cannot promote and protect human rights by a unilateral prioritization of individual freedoms or a proliferation of intrusive mechanisms, or by diverting funds from development activities to human rights activities. The priorities of nations will differ. The United Nations must balance the promotion of all human rights — civil, cultural, economic, political and social — preserve and propagate the values of every society and promote tolerance for diversity and cross-cultural interaction. Politicizing the human-rights agenda and using it to target countries is undesirable. The United Nations will become responsive to these global issues and effective and efficient only if it also becomes more democratic in its functioning.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“The existence of nuclear weapons poses a threat to peace and security. Only global nuclear disarmament can guarantee that there will never be a nuclear war. Therefore, despite the unfortunate legitimization of nuclear weapons through the indefinite extension of the NPT, India will continue to work with like-minded countries for the early elimination of all nuclear weapons. We hope that at this session the Assembly will finalize dates for the fourth United Nations special session on disarmament, in 1997. Human rights have always been a preoccupation of the United Nations, but their protection and promotion of such rights in each country is the primary responsibility of the government. The universality and interdependence of all human rights are also beyond question.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“We are glad that negotiations are in progress, but we also note that nuclear-weapon States agreed to a comprehensive test-ban treaty only after acquiring the know-how to develop and refine their arsenals without the need for tests. In our view, the comprehensive test-ban treaty must be an integral step in the process of nuclear disarmament. Developing new warheads or refining existing ones after a comprehensive test-ban treaty is in place, using innovative technologies, would be as contrary to the spirit of the comprehensive test-ban treaty as the NPT is to the spirit of non-proliferation. The comprehensive test-ban treaty must contain a commitment binding on the international community, especially the nuclear-weapon States, to take further measures within an agreed time-frame towards the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free world.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“It is useful to recall that when India and other developing countries proposed the NPT, a global balance of responsibilities was envisaged. Those who did not have nuclear weapons would not seek to acquire them; those who had them would not try either to refine or develop them or to increase their arsenals. This balance was never honoured, with the result that 25 years after the signing of the NPT the world is a much more dangerous place, 15 made so by the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the nuclear-weapon States. I recall this background because two years ago the international community at last agreed to negotiate a comprehensive test-ban treaty.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Our goal — shared, I believe by most of us here — is a world from which nuclear weapons have been eliminated. The nuclear-weapon States claim to share this goal, but their present objective is to retain nuclear weapons while making sure others do not get them. The logic of this is hard to understand. It cannot be argued that the security of a few countries depends on their having nuclear weapons and that that of the rest depends on their not having them. What makes the NPT such a pernicious document is that it legitimizes this illogicality, and now that it has been made permanent it has made the possession of nuclear weapons by the nuclear-weapon States immutable and has made the goal of global nuclear disarmament that much more difficult.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mahatma Gandhi said that the use of the atom bomb for the wholesale destruction of men, women and children was the most diabolical use of science. We were therefore appalled that, instead of stepping back from the road to nuclear ruin, the nuclear- weapon States sped faster and faster down it. As they accelerated, India tried unsuccessfully to put on the brakes. In 1954 we called for an end to nuclear testing. In 1965 we proposed principles for a non-proliferation treaty. In 1982 we called for a convention to ban the use of nuclear weapons and for an end to the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. In 1988 we proposed to the United Nations a comprehensive action plan for a world free of nuclear weapons.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Democracies that developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries either suppressed democratic rights until they became rich, or grew rich on the ruthless exploitation of colonies. When they shed their empires after the Second World War democracy became development in Europe only in the uniquely generous embrace of the Marshall Plan. The myth that democracies do not wage war is destroyed by the history of colonial rule and its wars, leading to the conflagration of the First World War. The United Nations should, therefore, take these propositions as objectives, not as givens. Democracy should lead to development; democracies should be peaceful. I want to touch briefly upon two other global issues which affect our lives — disarmament and human rights.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Whether it tries to violate the territorial integrity of a country, as in India, in our State of Jammu and Kashmir, or to unseat duly constituted Governments, as in Afghanistan, the acts of States sponsoring terrorism are, in fact, acts of war. Democracies, as open societies, are particularly vulnerable to terrorism. The United Nations welcomes the global trend that has made democracy the norm of governance, but has done nothing to defend democracies from extremist and other threats. Instead, it comforts itself with the mantras that democracy is development, and democracies do not wage war. These neatly package all the world’s problems and absolve the United Nations of any further responsibility: establish democracy everywhere and, automatically, development and peace will follow. Both propositions are historically untrue.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“An empire of terror is being built up with arms and money sent across borders; its foot soldiers are drawn from the bigoted, its leadership from ruthless, unprincipled men and, regrettably, some women. At every summit in recent years, whether of the non- aligned, the Group of Seven, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), or the Commonwealth, Heads of State and Government have reaffirmed their resolve to defeat all forms of terrorism. However, in the United Nations, where we are all represented, we have been unable to speak in such forthright terms. We must do so at this fiftieth anniversary. To appease terrorism now will be as dangerous as appeasing xenophobia was in the 1930s and ultimately as destructive of both peace and democracy, because terrorism, as I said earlier, is war by other means.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Terrorism is the black plague of our times and it has been made more dangerous by the mystique with which the media has endowed it. It is argued sometimes that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. This is specious logic. In 1922 Mahatma Gandhi suspended for several years the freedom struggle in India because, in an incident in the small village of Chauri Chaura, a mob burnt some policemen to death. In Gandhi’s view, the view of the ultimate freedom-fighter, the means must sanctify the ends. What ends could possibly justify the barbarism of taking an innocent foreigner in India hostage and beheading him in cold blood? Foreign mercenaries did this to the Norwegian Hans Christian Ostro last month.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“On the one hand, over the past decade several million illegal immigrants have come into India. We know to our cost the political, economic and social strain this causes. However, we do not accept a racial basis for discriminating against legal migrants. We do not accept that nationhood is based on race, any more than it is based on religion or any other exclusive attribute. The waves of migration that have washed over India have made us a multi-ethnic society; we have been culturally enriched, not impoverished. We urge the international community not to let the forces of xenophobia rise again. Sovereignty has never been threatened by fresh blood freely welcomed; it has been threatened by the forces of racist intolerance. 14 This brings me naturally to the other force that now threatens the sovereignty of so many nations.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“The third element in the trinity of mobility in the international economy is migration. At present 125 million people live outside their countries, but more than half of them move between developing countries; this is not, therefore, as it has so often been misrepresented, only a problem for the developed world. It is disturbing, however, that those who insist on unfettered and truly global flows of capital and trade also insist on restrictions being placed on the movement of labour. Economic arguments are given to justify this, but there are also claims that large migrations disturb the way a society thinks of itself as a unified cultural or ethnic entity. The President returned to the Chair. It would be honest to recognize these fears as racist. India is a model of how these fears can be overcome.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“This of course implies that transnational corporations have an appalling and exploitative standard of behaviour, but when, in the 1970s and 1980s, the United Nations tried to develop a code of conduct for transnational corporations, we were told that transnational corporations were models of virtue. How do these two views cohere? The problem posed by these global economic forces is enormous. Trade is the oxygen of our economies, but cross-border trade between transnational corporations constitutes one third of world trade and almost 15 per cent of gross global product. No developing country, or group of developing countries, can match this commercial strength, augmented, of course, by the enormous weight of financial flows, which can make or break a country’s financial structure.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“If, indeed, there is a genuine interest in protecting the environment and the interests of labour in developing countries, why are the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) being sidelined in this exercise? The answer must be that there is no provision in these bodies for the coercive, retaliatory action which would be available under the sanctions regime of the World Trade Organization. However, the industrialized countries say that environmental and labour standards must be harmonized upwards, because otherwise transnational corporations would go where these standards were the lowest.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“This can either mean that the problems UNCTAD addresses — development strategies, poverty alleviation, resource transfers and debt, and the transfer of technology — have been settled, or are now irrelevant. Neither is true. These continue to be burning issues for developing countries, and if the United Nations chooses to ignore them it will not serve the needs of its Member States. The United Nations must assume its Charter responsibility to supervise and coordinate global economic policies. In the World Trade Organization efforts have been made to link trade to environment and labour standards. The World Bank, in its World Development Report 1995, warns about “the proliferation of protectionist demands, many of them under the guise of demands for fair trade and a level playing field”.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Like the United Nations, the World Trade Organization gives equal weight to the votes of all its members, but it would be a pity if the World Trade Organization cut even the tenuous links between the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the United Nations and, decided instead that global economic policies would in the future be coordinated between it, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, where the system of weighted voting makes the voice of the developing countries irrelevant. At the same time, several studies commissioned to coincide with this anniversary claim that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) no longer has a useful purpose.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“For us, the single most important task is development, and we expect this to be the highest priority on the international agenda, as it is on our domestic agendas. Sadly, it is not. The Agenda for Development looks lamentably like an appendix. Can we, at this session, pledge ourselves to honour the commitments, freely negotiated but never implemented, which will make development possible in 13 the South and make the world, for all of us, a better and more peaceful place? It is just as important for the United Nations to have a say in the decisions that guide the international economy. Chapter IX of the Charter gave it the task to promote higher standards of living, solutions of international economic, social, health and related problems, and universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Far from enfeebling sovereignty, it is the task of the United Nations to nurture it in a world that has made the powerful more dominant and the weak increasingly powerless. We must never forget that this Assembly is an assembly of our nations united. The United Nations rests on the commitment to it of sovereign nations. There is clearly an enormous need for global action to deal with complex issues which have no territorial limits or borders. This is the task of the United Nations. Developing countries which represent the majority of the United Nations, obviously want it to focus on the issues of most pressing concern to them. That is not only fair: that would be the democratic thing to do.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Most Members of the United Nations joined immediately after emerging from colonial rule, with their economies destroyed, and dependent on foreign languages for communication, on imperial capitals for support and on donors for subsistence. This is hardly the stuff on which absolute sovereignty is built. It was, in fact, one of the great virtues of the United Nations that it gave fledgling nations space to exercise the sovereignty so cruelly circumscribed elsewhere. Therefore, the United Nations should not claim a unilateral right to intervene in the affairs of its Members. Sovereignty can be diluted only with the voluntary consent of nation States accepting obligations that are non-discriminatory or, in exceptional circumstances, where State authority has collapsed.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“The United Nations welcomes this and urges the recalcitrant to change, but is itself sapped by undemocratic systems and institutions. The third is the scourge of war increasingly replaced by the scourge of terrorism, which, for the countries that sponsor it, is war by other means. The United Nations, set up to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, ignores it, as the League of Nations, to its fatal peril, ignored the threat of xenophobia. These are complex and titanic forces. We, therefore, cannot accept, either as a statement of fact or as a basis of policy, the view that all this meant was that the days of absolute sovereignty were over. Sovereignty has never been absolute.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“Whenever the United Nations has acted on principle, responding to the felt needs and priorities of the majority of its membership, it has done well. When it has pursued narrow agendas or succumbed to special pleading, it has not. If we were setting out tasks for the United Nations today, what would be the major trends and challenges we would expect it to address? The first is the international economy, transformed by global movements of trade, capital and labour; driven by forces which can break developing economies; regulated — if they can be at all — in forums outside the United Nations, which is therefore marginalized in this most momentous of contemporary developments. The second is an opening up of political systems, with democracy the norm of national governance.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“No such drastic measures are needed for the United Nations, not least because it has spent much of its first 50 years meditating in a concrete jungle. And the shadow of the woods of Bretton always loom over it. I do think, however, that as we celebrate, which we should, the survival of the United Nations, we should judge what it has done and what it now needs to do. The United Nations system has had remarkable success in helping to defeat colonialism and apartheid, on social issues like universal health care and women’s rights, and in banning, through global, non-discriminatory treaties, two of the three weapons of mass destruction. These are considerable achievements. But a clear pattern emerges from them.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“It gives me great pleasure to congratulate Mr. Freitas do Amaral on his election as President of the General Assembly at its fiftieth session, during which he will guide our discussions on what the future of the United Nations should be. May I also convey my thanks to the President of the General Assembly at its forty-ninth session, Mr. Amara Essy, who, as it were, tilled the ground which the new President will sow. A fiftieth anniversary is a climacteric, usually joyous but not necessarily so. In ancient India, this was around the time in a man’s life that he would be expected to withdraw into a forest, to spend the rest of his days in contemplation of past and future, it being the assessment of our ancestors that anything a man could usefully do he would have done by then.”
1995-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 50 (1995)
“As Mahatma Gandhi and sages before have taught and practised, truthfulness, charity, compassion, non-violence and treating others as we would wish ourselves to be treated are the values that really stand the test of time. These are the values to be inculcated in our great global Organization, the United Nations, to which we are all committed.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny?" If the protection afforded to its weak, its most dispossessed, people is the measure of community’s worth, as indeed it must be, then the millions of refugees, and the conflict, poverty, hunger and deprivation that afflict so many regions of the world today bear stark testimony to the loss of some vital ethical underpinning. If the world today is to redeem a future that seems increasingly mortgaged to greed and hatred, we must recall once again that it is the nobility of our means, and the ends we pursue, that determine our rewards. Our welfare will be determined only in accordance with the values and principles we abide by.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“Many years ago the father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi, had asked what test should guide human endeavour. His conclusion, after long years of struggling on behalf of India’s many dispossessed millions, was as follows: "I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test: Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is 16 going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it?”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“The international community must also provide the necessary succour to the victims of terrorism, whose numbers are swelling by the day. The closing years of the twentieth century will see human society poised at a critical juncture as regards the future. Will the end of the cold war mark the beginnings of a new, more stable global order, of freedom and well-being growing on the soil of cooperation, consensus and mutual respect, or will the world instead revert bit by bit to the mind-set which breeds anarchy and a return to centrifugalism and destruction, to end up once again in the tyranny of imposition and domination? Should we regress to the system of spheres of influence which has led to so many wars over the last two hundred years? These questions have still not been adequately answered.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“We urge that the question of human rights should not be made into a politically motivated slogan insensitive to the rights of those citizens. Since the toxin of terrorism is deliberately being spread by some countries - and none of us is immune - the international community must come together to defend itself. Terrorism is fast becoming a means, if not a weapon, of mass destruction. Many countries have suffered and many more could be affected. Terrorists have killed far more people in the last decades than the chemical and biological weapons which we have agreed to ban and destroy. Just as the international community decided that a convention was needed to outlaw those weapons, so it must urgently negotiate a convention to counter and eradicate terrorism. We urge the General Assembly to initiate serious thinking on this subject.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“It is true that much remains to be done on a worldwide basis to further international cooperation to promote and protect human rights. But the problem must be seen in perspective. In India, for instance, we grapple with the problems of development for 900 million people; in the north-west and in the north-east we face brutal terrorist movements, often supported from abroad, which have killed thousands of innocents, made refugees of hundreds of thousands within India, and threatened our sovereignty and territorial integrity. We will face these problems and defeat them. We welcome the support and advice of friends abroad, but we cannot accept the position that all human rights are a privilege of the terrorists. The rights of innocent and unarmed citizens must be protected.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“Several centuries back, an Indian thinker wrote: "Man is above everything else. Man is the highest truth. There is nothing above man." All human rights are sacrosanct in India, guaranteed by a secular Constitution, an independent judiciary, a free press, and public opinion vigorously expressed. India’s commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights has now received another institutional impetus with the establishment of our National Human Rights Commission, which has begun to function effectively, with its findings published in its annual report. In keeping with our policy of transparency we maintain a sustained dialogue with important non-governmental organizations, which includes affording greater access to them. We have also invited the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit India.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“On the basis of any criteria - population, size of economy, contribution to the maintenance of international peace and security and to peace-keeping or future potential - India deserves to be a permanent member of the Security Council. The working methods of the Security Council must be reformed to enhance transparency and to express the democratic aspirations of the vast majority of Member States. We hope that the Open-ended Working Group on the question of increase in the membership of the Security Council will duly reflect on these issues in its deliberations next year. Human rights are the new vogue. The profoundly humanistic traditions of the Indian civilization, with its emphasis on tolerance, harmony, non-violence and the inviolability of the individual, are in-built in our ethos.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“The number of non-permanent seats must also be increased to give Member States greater opportunity for participation in the work of the Council. A selective, piecemeal expansion of the number of permanent members would not be prudent. The Security Council is not a corporate board, where equity shares determine the voting power, nor can it be likened to the Bretton Woods institutions, which reflect the wealth of nations. The United Nations is based on the principle of 15 the sovereign equality of nations. Its primary objective remains the maintenance of international peace and security. These elements must find expression in the composition of the Council, which must be able to address the challenges of the twenty-first century. Durability and resilience, rather than expediency, should determine the time frame of any expansion.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“The United Nations needs a Council that is effective, but it cannot be effective if the impression grows that it represents entrenched privileges and that its agenda could vary from those of the general membership. The democracy and good governance which are urged upon all States cannot stop at the gates of the United Nations. The present-day composition of the Security Council reflects the power balance of the immediate post-war period. Since then, the membership of the world body has increased many times over. There is also a greater diffusion of power. To give the Council’s actions greater legitimacy, moral authority and political effectiveness, it is imperative to expand the membership of the Council. Developing countries must be included in the category of permanent members to reflect the universal character of the world body.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“Prudence must be exercised in the use of regional organizations in peace-keeping operations. It is the capacity of the United Nations for peace-keeping that must be strengthened. We have responded positively to the Secretary- General’s appeal for the strengthening of the United Nations capacity for peace-keeping by designating a brigade for the stand-by arrangements that are being put in place. It is true that the work of the Security Council and its role in the United Nations are of the greatest importance. There is therefore all the more reason that the Council should be representative of the international community and have maximum legitimacy.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“Peace-keeping operations should be considered only at the request of the Member States involved. The resources for peace-keeping activities should not be at the expense of resources for development activities of the United Nations. There should be no hesitation in ending those operations which have been overtaken by events or become inconsistent with their mandates. It is also important to ensure that the distinction between peace-keeping operations and other activities of the United Nations, including humanitarian assistance, is maintained at all times. While coordination between these activities at the field level is important, their integration could irreversibly alter the basic purposes of these distinct activities and detract from their effectiveness.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“The poverty of many nations makes this a problem to which there are no easy answers. If there are circumstances which justify armed multilateral intervention, by the same logic should not the United Nations have the right to enforce the equitable sharing of resources among nations? The Non-aligned Movement, at the meeting of its Foreign Ministers in Cairo this year, suggested some guiding principles for peace-keeping operations of enduring significance. All means for the peaceful settlement of disputes chosen by the conflicting parties should be exhausted before coercive measures are considered. Peace-keeping operations should strictly adhere to the principles of the Charter, in particular the principles of full respect for the sovereignty of States, their territorial integrity and non-intervention in their internal affairs.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“For the 45 years of the cold war, the Security Council was forced into immobility, but when the cold war ended, it found itself shouldering a stupendous task. As if to make up for years of inactivity, it has rushed into many areas. We must ponder the consequences of the decisions taken over the last few years, which have on occasion sent United Nations peace-keepers in pursuit of objectives whose nexus with peace is rather tenuous. New doctrines justify armed United Nations intervention under circumstances that are not quite defined - not yet at any rate. These initiatives are well meaning but they do not seem to address the problems from the right end. The ultimate human right is the right to live - the right to food and shelter without which life is impossible.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“14 The United Nations must also re-order its priorities so as to counter several disturbing centrifugal trends which we see emerging. What the world needs is support for the nation-State system on which the United Nations was built. In June this year, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and President Yeltsin, representing two of the largest pluralistic nations in the world, issued the Moscow Declaration on the Protection of the Interests of Pluralistic States. In this Declaration, which has been circulated as a document of the General Assembly, Russia and India have put forward principles which, if acted upon, will, we think, promote greater harmony in the world. Against this background, there are a few questions for the Assembly to consider.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“Faith in the multilateral system will be shaken if countries use their trading strength and bilateral pressures to weaken and distort agreements to which they have just become parties. The themes of the World Summit for Social Development focus on the critical issues of poverty eradication together with social integration and the need to increase avenues for productive employment, without which we will not have the broad-based, self-sustaining social and economic development that is the only guarantor of peace and security. If the Summit is to succeed, we must agree upon the commitments for additional resources dedicated to national programmes around the world. We should not be sidetracked from this goal by new concepts which do not command consensus, and do not address the fundamental needs of development.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“A global convulsion will come if we continue to disregard the development imperative. The problems of development are global problems and must be addressed by all of us. We must set a substantive agenda for development, commit ourselves to it and implement it. The World Trade Organization, which should soon come into being, must promote what we expected but did not quite achieve so far in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) - non-discrimination, consensus and transparency in the international trade regime. We hope that the multilateral trade negotiations will stimulate economic growth in our countries and in the world economy. It will not if the carefully negotiated consensus, to which we committed ourselves at Marrakesh, is destroyed by the introduction of new conditionalities.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“We hope that States Parties will use that occasion to refashion the Treaty into a real instrument for global disarmament. Quite apart from the NPT, it is essential that we examine a detailed implementation process of total and global disarmament, which has been accepted in principle, though in words only thus far. Last June in Cairo, the Foreign Ministers of the non- aligned countries, at India’s suggestion, proposed that a fourth special session on disarmament be convened. We think the time and the circumstances are right for the General Assembly to plan for this special session for next year, or as soon as possible. But disarmament alone will be inadequate. We are rushing towards another precipice, where the disparities in wealth between nations would trigger violent revolution within States.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“For almost 50 years, we have lived in fear of general and complete extinction instead of global and complete disarmament. Those who had biological and chemical weapons have given them up under universally binding commitments. We must now go one logical step further and exorcise the greatest evil of all, namely, the weapons of mass destruction. We have had global discussions on nuclear disarmament before, but now that the cold war, which spawned these weapons, is over, and the previous adversaries have been drawn into a partnership for peace, this is surely the time to agree - in regimes which are global, comprehensive, verifiable and non-discriminatory - on steps to make the world a safer place. Another opportunity will arise when the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) comes up for review next April.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)
“The Secretary-General’s Agendas have reminded us of what we should focus on, namely, disarmament, development and peace. I put them in that order because true peace can only follow disarmament and development. The cold war was not war, yet certainly not peace. In its wake, we have seen how, most frighteningly, poverty, disease and a host of miseries affect the cause of peace. They had been there all the time, but were not seen by the jaundiced eye of the cold war. In the new post-cold-war context, therefore, the nexus of disarmament and development with peace becomes crystal clear - indeed inescapably clear. We have to start with disarmament. The slaughter in Rwanda has taken place during the forty-ninth anniversary of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)