YouSaid · the spoken record

Manglapus

THE RECORD WRITES THIS SPEAKER AS MANGLAPUS

lines on the record

52

first

1989-09-24

most recent

1991-09-24

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

1. “The record of the United Nations must contain in detail the ongoing story of the ascent to dignity and freedom of humanity en masse. Let the nations of the world applaud the people of the world. For this, indeed, is the quarter century of the people.”

   1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

2. “And one last salute to Prince Norodom Sihanouk, that great Asian - noble by blood and by principle - who now leads the Cambodian delegation to this assembly of nations. All of these are triumphs of the people. Since 1973 the people of the world have been speaking and they have been winning. In the last two years the General Assembly has passed resolutions on human development proclaiming that human beings are the goal - not simply the means - of development. Gross national product statistics are meaningless if they answer only the questions of how well-fed, how well-housed, how well-clothed the people are. The statistics of our computerized bureaus must also respond to the demanding enquiry: how free are these people?”

   1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

3. “Our great neighbour, the People's Republic of China, has declared its determination "to implement the policies of reform and opening to the outside world". And this very United Nations has stretched its arms open in welcome to even more of the gallant peoples of the world. The Philippines extends a special welcome to our Pacific neighbours to the East - the Republic of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. We salute also our two neighbours to the North - the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea - whose brotherly simultaneous ingress into our company may soon produce the resurrected unity of a single great nation. We salute those three brave nations of the Baltic Sea - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - who are back at last in their rightful place in the community of nations.”

   1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

4. “Nations are the vital constituents of this Organisation and, of course, the Organisation must never violate the sovereignty of those nations. But I have shown, I hope, that these very nations, united, have not abdicated, but refurbished their own sovereignty by urging themselves and "all peoples ... every Individual and every organ of society" (resolution 217 A (III). seventh preambular paragraph) to promote those values «-hat are nothing if not the very stuff of constitutional democracy. Let the United Nations leadership ensure that every assembly in the United Nations, every council, every court, every organ, shall re-immerse itself in this original mission. There is a responsive, eager world awaiting this leadership. Large land masses have opened themselves to the world - in Eastern Europe, in Africa, in Asia.”

   1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

5. “But we would be mocking history if we did not recognize that the final verdict that tumbled the walls was rendered by a world of peoples - peoples wishing to end the shackling of their minds, their souls, their political institutions and their economies. The cooling winds of liberalization blew themselves into a gale of democracy which even now is still huffing and puffing at the residual ramparts of involuntary servitude. If the United Nations intends to design a global strategy for peace that will not only dwell on the surface of the issue - or even just below it - but will strike at its roots, it must return to its own roots, recall its resonant declarations and re-sensitise itself to its commitment to the rights of human beings.”

   1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

6. “Thirteen years before the Declaration of Human Rights, there was already an auspicious portent for it in the Charter that gave life to the United Nations in 1945. The Charter opened its preamble with a reaffirmation of "faith in fundamental human rights" and, at the first opportunity, in Article 73 b, in dealing with States in gestation, enjoined the United Nations to develop "free political institutions" in the lands under its trust. Indeed, in trust territories there is always the happy, challenging prospect of fresh beginnings. But so are these post-cold-war times a challenge to fresh beginnings. Many factors spelled the end of the cold war.”

   1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

7. “It Is all there: the right to life, liberty, speech, property, movement., assembly, social services, non-discrimination, participation, down to the specific of "periodic and genuine elections", all essential and standard items in national bills of rights. The General Assembly "proclaims" these rights as "a common standard for all peoples and all nations" and enjoins "every individual and every organ of society" to "promote" them. The United Nations proclaims and promotes democracy and along with it, transparency and restraint. Article 19 gives "everyone" the right "to seek, receive and impart information" and Article 21 identifies the basis of government authority - the "trill of the people", which is also the ultimate restrainer of official abuse.”

   1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

8. “It is wrong to say that the United Nations is only the theatre of States, the agora of International Ideas, the conciliator of multilateral contradictions; for it is more than those categories, however unique, historic and invaluable they may be. The United Nations, I submit. Is above all, indeed, a proclaimer and promoter of values; and let us not evade the words at this Juncture - the United Nations is a proclaimer and promoter of democratic values. What else is General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1940, what else is this Universal Declaration of Human Rights, what, else Is this ringing document, but the inventory of constitutional democracy?”

   1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

9. “Electronic transparency could lead to moral, official and diplomatic transparency, and that process could mobilize the restraining forces in society. We must agree with another recent remarkable editorial of The New York Times which warns that outsiders should not redesign the internal policies of nations. But it adds that there is "every reason to proclaim and promote democratic values". The counsel was directed to America. But shall we leave it to America alone to shepherd the values of the world? Can we not find other proclaimers and promoters of democratic values? How about the United Nations?”

   1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

10. “It is the same people that are keeping America sober in Its triumphal hour. Indeed, constitutional democracy is not a synonym for peace, nor is it a hard-bound warranty against international violence. But where can we find a more productive forum for peace? Where can we find a more fertile context for transparency and restraint.? Today the once theoretical paper dreams of constitutional accessibility and openness have become hard reality. Democratic constitutions have found a new ally: technology. The same laboratories that are enhancing the science of discriminate demolition have already made it possible for humankind to be the instant witness to tragedies of all kinds and in all places. Those scenes can horrify people into demanding openness from their leaders, but the people must be free to make the demands.”

    1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

11. “In our direct democracy, we respect our Senate but we also respect our people. Senatus Populusque Romanus: the Senate and the people must rule together. Is there a relevance in this to the mission of the United Nations? Ours has become a unipolar world. There are misgivings about this new global condition. It is asked, now that the bipolar balance is gone what is to restrain the solitary super-Power from overstating its duties as keeper of the new world order? The ultimate restraint on the, super Power is Its very system, in which the people are supreme. It was the people in America that pulled this country from a war in South-East Asia which they perceived to be Irrelevant. It. was the same people that cheered America to a precision victory In a Gulf war that they acclaimed as inevitable.”

    1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

12. “The power of the people is enshrined in the Philippine 1987 Constitution not only in general preambular terms but in operative provisions that have made us a direct, as well as a representative, democracy. One of the drafters of that document put it this way: "The fact that the people elect representatives is not an act of complete trust in those representatives; the people retain the right to review their decisions." Our direct democracy is not only on the village level: it is national. "Direct democracy", says one of our Senators, "is superior to representative democracy." At this very moment the people of the Philippines are gathering signatures for a national referendum on the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Security which we have signed with the United States of America and which has been rejected by the Philippine Senate.”

    1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

13. “But "there is no substitute for the people", as Alexander Dubcek told me in Prague last year. The people and time are unconquerable allies. So it began, predictably enough. In Greece, where in four days of November 1973 the people, initially quelled by the army, succeeded in replacing dictatorship with democracy. The power of the people swept southern Europe, leaped to Latin America, Asia, eastern Europe and now southern Africa. Not only heroic individuals but people, masses of people, are changing the face of the Earth, The Philippines could claim a modest share in the propulsion of this momentum of the people. A New York Times editorial has characterised scenes of Muscovites during the recent coup as "reminiscent of Manila's people-power revolt".”

    1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

14. “We solemnly marked the fortieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in that year of 1988 during which there began the process for the final solution of the Cambodian crisis. That historic congruence in time, I submit, reminded the negotiators that the process, if it was to be successful, could only culminate in the universal human right of free democratic elections. That right, happily for history, is about to be implemented in Cambodia. We must felicitate the South Africans and the Cambodians on these two human triumphs which are part of an ennobling, victorious, current human momentum that we have so far failed to celebrate. It is the mounting momentum of the people and it has been in progress for a quarter of a century. People have been crushed before, and their momentum has been many times aborted.”

    1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

15. “We are, for instance, at the moment in the middle of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, the International Decade for Eradication of Colonialism, and also the World Decade for Cultural Development. We have already celebrated international years for the woman and the children of the world. Since 1973 there have been on record 21 such United Nations salutes. These celebrations establish the character of the United Nations - and sculpt the milestones of the performance of humankind in this semi-century. I submit that our Decade for Action Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, from 1973 to 1983, furnished ideological fuel for the popular movement in South Africa that extracted this year an official declaration, though not yet adequately implemented, to dismantle apartheid.”

    1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

16. “Guido de Marco of the Republic of Malta presided over the Assembly and led us to significant, indelible accomplishments towards the restructuring and reform of the United Nations. We congratulate Mr. de Marco as he yields the presidency to Mr. Shihabi. I am here to speak for my country, but permit me to note that while I speak for no other country I do stand here proud of our membership in, and this year of our being Chairman of, the Standing Committee of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), to which the Philippines is bound in ever-developing solidarity with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. The history of the Organisation has been marked with calibrations.”

    1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

17. “We meet today as the end a year that began with a crisis. The United Nations confronted that crisis and resolved it. Standing tall in the midst of that crisis, threatened but undaunted, welcoming assistance but marching out first, in the vanguard of its own defence and the redemption of its neighbours, was a proud nation called Saudi Arabia. It is fitting that the Assembly should now be presided over by a man from that nation, with an outstanding record of leadership in diplomatic engagements for his country, for his race, for his region and for the world. With Mr. Samir S. Shihabi as our President, we face a historic and most productive session. We had one such session last year, when Mr.”

    1991-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 46 (1991)

18. “Only last Sunday we filled this historic Assembly Hall with Beads of State, Heads of Government and the children of the world. Children read in many tongues from the ringing Declaration of the Summit of the child. There was something that was not declared about the child of today which I now respectfully submit once more to the Assembly. The third world now owes $lo3 trillion. Therefore every child in that world is born not only, as some theologies profess, with original sin but also with original debt, up to $1,000 at the moment of birth, which at 10 per cent compounded interest reaches $7,000 at age 21. In this glorious year of the child is it not time to redeem the original debt of that child? The Philippines will not renege on its obligations, but neither will it cease to live up to its obligation to plead for universal justice.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

19. “In victory and in order to nip at conception another monstrous aggression, the allies forgave debt. In victory and for peace, anything was possible. Again, last week President Mitterrand said verbatim, that if Iraq were to withdraw from Kuwait, "everything might become possible". May we not claim the same possibility for countries guilty of no devastation and no invasion, guilty only at most of some improvidence in borrowings and in fiscal management? Did President Mitterrand mean to include the condemnation of their debt as one of the "possible"? Before victory and in search of peace, before devastation even takes place, is it possible to be human and to speak of a tabula rasa. to give the world a fresh beginning?”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

20. “At Versailles, in 191S, the victorious allies of the First World War refused to condone the enervating obligations of the defeated Germans and Germany went to the radical right for a solution. That solution produced the Second World War. The Allies, again victorious in 1945, remembered Versailles. At London, they forgave 70 per cent of the German interest payments. At that time the principal on that debt amounted to $1.5 billion or roughly $8 billion in today's terms. The same bold visionary leadership that condoned that debt also conceived the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Sank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The allies condoned 70 per cent of the interest payments of a defeated nation whose aggressiveness had already devastated half of Europe and shaken the world.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

21. “The World Bank has primarily concerned itself with financing projects and, more recently, with programmes. Yet it is only in the contest of an aggregate panorama that the financial obligations of nations can be amply appreciated. It is now almost a decade that the debt crisis has been thundering across our planet. The assault is overwhelming us because our defences are isolated and our strategies fragmented. We propose a global counter-attack by forces that will transcend geography and ideology. If the whole world can be summoned to confront the invaders in West Asia, why may we not summon this same world to confront that invader from the nether world of international finance, that monster created by debtor and creditor alike? Are we not entitled to marshal the cerebral talents of nations for this confrontation?”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

22. “Is it possible to fix standards rather than leave the answer to the strengths and weaknesses of negotiators and financial markets? They must agree to alternative adjustment programmes to promote growth that will suit both planned and free economies. The Philippines profoundly appreciates the relief it is receiving through the operations of the Brady Plan, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But the makers of policy must develop new modes to carry but global solutions, for the present mechanisms are not equipped for such a momentous mission. The IMF traditionally approaches short-term problems, like balance of payments, with an average span of 18 months. But the structural and financial horizons of transnational debt can span a generation.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

23. “I do not speak for a country in arrears when I make this plea in behalf of all the debtor nations of the world. The Philippine debt is inherited from a dictator. But it is an inherited obligation and we honour it. The Philippines is a faithful payer of principal and interest. We indulge in no radical posturing. We impose on ourselves no unilateral moratoriums. To service our debt our country must divert over 40 per cent of our annual budget for payments on our debt and almost a third of this is for foreign debt service. Since 1986 we have sent out annually $1.7 billion more than we receive. How shall we resolve debt? It is valuable to reschedule debt. But it is even more precious and human to forgive debt. The makers of policy must agree to resolve the question: Who is entitled to debt relief and debt forgiveness?”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

24. “But perhaps we should be hearing more suggestions that this crisis - with its Chinese character combination of danger and opportunity - might be an occasion, after territorial sovereignties are restored, to attune that region to the marching beat of our new worlds democracy, freedom and peace for all. This is a rallying call for all to bring peace to West Asia. The call is for all and why not? It is the concern of all when one nation invades another, when hundreds of thousands of workers are displaced, when fuel costs bring poor economics to their knees. But many of us are already prostrate on our knees and it is not just the West Asian crisis that has brought us down to this abject position. Time and again we have come to this Assembly for relief.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

25. “We have accepted the Security Council resolutions and implemented them, even as we have joined other Asian Governments in appreciating the positive attitude of the Iraqi Government towards the evacuation of our workers, and even as we appreciate the assistance to our evacuees by Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, by Spain, Japan, New Zealand and by the United Nations agencies, particularly the International Organisation for Migration and the United Nations Disaster Relief Organisation, which have been doing their work with the assistance of the European Community and the United States of America. The United Nations and with it the significant Powers of the world are joined in confronting this threat and in searching for a formal for peace.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

26. “We hear of violations of borders, of threats to territorial integrity, of mass displacement of human beings, of disruption of the oil market, of devastation of economies and of destruction of lives. These are grave acts and the Philippines has from their inception joined the United Nations in their condemnation.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

27. “The region is West Asia and North Africa and it is time to recognise then as objective absolutes. The people of Mast Asia and North Africa must be no different from those of Eastern Europe and Latin America in their human aspirations. Their demand, if self-articulated, would be irrevocable freedom and peace. Last week. President François Mitterrand spoke to this Assembly on guarantees for "the democratic expression of the Kuwaiti people's will". Why, indeed, should the rhetoric of national responses to the crisis in that region be devoid of any mention of those values while the rest of the world is awash with the tidal wave of democracy and peace?”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

28. “We see the rise of the new democracy in Nicaragua; e cease-fire in democratic El Salvador; a political solution in democratic Guatemala; a referendum in Western Sahara, the promotion of a consensus among guarantor Powers in Afghanistan. The inventory of the Secretary-General's successes is long indeed. Then, is only one sombre cloud in the world and it hangs over that region we have come to call the Middle East. Perhaps the first step towards understanding that region is to give proper recognition to its objective geographic position. The region called the Far East once possessed only a relative colonial Euro-centric identity until it cam· into its own as East Asia. Why "Middle East"? Middle between what? The term was coined only in 1902 by a Western expansionist.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

29. “Efforts for peace have failed before, but where they have succeeded persistence has been a dominant ingredient. In Eastern Europe and in Latin America the people never gave up. In Cambodia the leaders never gave up. The Jakarta meetings and the Paris Conference, Ali Altas and Roland Dumas never gave up. The permanent members of the Security Council never gave up. There is that third factor. It is the United Nations. This perseverance of the United Nations", in the language of the Secretary-General's report of September 1990, has produced peace and democracy in Namibia a quarter of a century after the General Assembly resolution and a dozen years after the Security Council action. We sense the coming death of apartheid in the wake of peaceful United Nations initiatives.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

30. “It is the confluence of three historical factors that has produced this pioneering prospect for universal peace. The first in the rise of the power of the peoples of the world. One by one, these peoples have spoken, and this is their simple but non-negotiable demand: "We want democracy. We want peace." That was the message of our Philippine people-power revolution of 1986. And since then it has resonated through the public places of the world, toppling dictators and defenestrating repressive ideologies It is never people who propose war; it is Governments. Therefore peace, universal peace, will be possible only when all the peoples of the world are free and when it is their voice that commands the structure of every Government. There is a second factor in the success of the peace process.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

31. “It seemed useless to try to unravel the intricate ideological and historical intertwining in that unhappy land, or to find a graceful exit for the intervening Powers. Those Powers had fostered surrogates, and those surrogates had found their own domestic differences aggravated by policies designed in distant foreign capitals. Yet all these impossible dreams have in this concluding year found either actual, or at least inchoate, reality. The democratisation of Eastern Europe, though not yet total, is real. For the first time in history, all of continental Latin America is democratic. The initial instruments for peace in Cambodia have been executed, and the intervening Powers are finding their graceful exits and divided nations are being remedied today Germany; tomorrow, we hope, Korea.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

32. “And everyone knew it would have to be a nuclear war, which no one could win. The idea of a totally democratic and therefore peaceful Latin America was once thought to be an empty illusion. There were too many odds against it. There was that theory, for instance, long ago proven bankrupt but still persistent, that democracy is an invention that suits only the developed West. And there was that super-Power policy, now happily, amended, to encourage military dictators because it is easier to deal abroad with one man than with a messy democratic regime. The dream of a successful settlement in Cambodia and therefore of peace in South-East Asia was until only a month ago thought to be impossible.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

33. “There were many accomplishments during his time not the least of which was the eighteenth special session of the General Assembly, which produced a significant consensus declaration on economic co-operation - so important in our guest for peace. It is a year since we last met. Each year of events has its own character. We may call this year, 1990 - this first in the United Nations Decade of International Law - the year of the reality of freedom and the possibility of peace. Some may think this characterisation naive in the contest of the threat to peace in a critical area of the world. But the facts are there. The dream of one democratic Europe was once thought to be an absurd fantasy. For the only formula was thought to be the destruction by war of monolithic repression.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

34. “On behalf of President Corason Aquino and the Philippine delegation, I extend to you, Sir, and to the people and Government of the Republic of Malta, warmest felicitations on your assumption of the presidency of the General Assembly at its forty-fifth session. Your country reflects the rich Mediterranean blond of races and cultures and is therefore a microcosm of this Assembly, over which, with much deserved honour, you now preside. Likewise, I should like at this point to thank His Excellency Joseph K. Garba of Nigeria, the outgoing President of the General Assembly and to congratulate him on work well done.”

    1990-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 45 (1990)

35. “Is not this the moment for the debtors to extend the hand of collaboration to the creditors, in a Commission, as the draft decision puts it, "of eminent persons from the academic, political and financial sectors with knowledge and experience in international finance, trade and development, to develop innovative approaches and evolve specific proposals related to all types of debt in order to solve the debt problem of developing countries in a manner consistent with their sustained growth and development"? (A/C.2/43/L.19, para, (a)) Let the Commission be the next feather in the United Nations cap. It will be a timely and elegant feather. A world of hungry debtors awaits its pinning in the United Nations cap.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

36. “At an annual rate of interest of 10 per cent compounded, these human beings at the age of 21 will each owe $7,000, and if they marry at that age, husband and wife will begin their married life with a joint burden of over 314,000. Is not that a challenge worthy of 15 9 Members of the United Nations to take up? Is not this campaign worthy of being launched now, now that the momentum of flexibility has stirred the ranks of the lenders?”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

37. “There are still other feathers perhaps soon to be pinned on that cap - for United Nations campaigns on drug abuse, on the environment and on terrorism. Can there be United Nations campaigns any more urgent than those against these universally recognized evils - drug abuse, abuse of the environment, terrorism? I submit that there can. There is a conventional theological faith that every human being is born with original sin. There is a new theology, a theology of bondage, not liberation. Today a human being is born not only with original sin but also with original debt. To quantify it, the third world now owes 41.3 trillion to creditors, so every child in that world is indebted up to 41,000 at the moment of birth.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

38. “It could ask the question*, if rich countries have often been ready to underwrite slum clearances, cannot they launch a programme to underwrite power equipment on concessional terms for the development of a slum-cleared economy that in time will develop the capacity to repay these concessional loans? Let the world take note that the most outstanding success of the United Nations is the United Nations itself. The United Nations cap is full of feathers these days. There is a feather for putting Namibia irreversibly on the road to independence and to becoming the 160th Member of the United Nations. There is another feather for the Secretary-General's mediating a cease-fire and bringing fighting between Iran and Iraq to an end. There is a special feather: the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize for the United Nations peace-keeping forces.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

39. “Are not meaningful reductions possible only when there are new facilities that are not caught up in the inertia of the international bureaucracy or of strongly held philosophies and interests? Otherwise, will the focus ever go beyond sub-Sahara? Should not the Government major actors of the plan be mobilizing their leverage and adjusting their financial regulations? Is it enough to lay out the bare bones, which lose their flavour in the broth of rhetoric? Should not the Commission be advising not only on how to persuade creditors to reduce debt but also on how to help debtors produce in order to pay debt? There is, for instance, the generation of power - power produces goods? goods pay debts. The Commission could stimulate power-generation and raise the power capabilities of debtor countries.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

40. “The Commission will come to life, not as a challenge to the creditor nations, but, indeed, as a tribute to them and as a move of collaboration by debtor nations in that new openness which creditors have begun to display. The Brady plan sees forgiveness as essential to revitalizing adjustment and making us credit-worthy again. The Brady plan can jump-start the stalled engines of development of debtor nations. The Brady plan is a beginning, and it must answer still other questions. Is there no criterion, for instance, with which to judge the application of debt-reduction or relief, except that they should be pursued? Must we wait until all the physical levels of production and productivity potentials are obliterated for the debt to be written off or forgiven?”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

41. “It is the flexible and creative mind of Secretary Brady, bending with the international reality, that has given us this new horizon. It is, indeed, thank God, the new age of flexibility. I saw it happening in the Soviet Union, too, last month, when I met with Mr. Gorbachev in Moscow, where flexibility is pronounced perestroika and glasnost, and includes the ability to change, to admit past imperfections and to dream of new perfections. Let us aid this new flexibility, let us speed its momentum by providing it with global underpinnings, underpinnings which can emanate only from the peaceful processes of the United Nations and the instruments that awaken its talent to create. One such instrument could be the proposed Advisory Commission on Debt and Development.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

42. “Because of the plan, our Philippine negotiators may soon sign with private banks a debt-relief agreement that could be unprecedented. It will be voluntary, for the extent of debt relief is determined by the willingness of commercial banks to agree to substantial discounts on debts repaid. It will be a substantial debt reduction, possibly up to half of the debt to banks which choose to exit from our borrowing programme. And there will be new resources - up to $1 billion from the hard core of institutions that will continue to support us. I spoke to the Assembly last year of our poor. They are still poor, and they are still there, but they may now look hopefully to new horizons. Flexible minds make new horizons possible.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

43. “A week later, as I negotiated in Washington a review of the Philippine-United States military bases agreement, the same Secretary of the Treasury began to show flexibility. He agreed to the Philippine position that a portion of United States compensation money could be used for a debt-re duct ion component of the bases compensation package. It was for us - and perhaps for all international debtors - a historic breakthrough, a budding promise of universal relief. Four months later the bud blossomed into a full-fledged plan. On 10 March 1989 United States Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady announced that plan, which allows - nay, encourages - the financing of international debt reduction and debt service by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

44. “The Assembly must adopt it, for the time is come when original rigidities are yielding to flexibilities. In 1987 Japan suggested IMF-funded bonds to buy out debtors' loans. At the 1988 Toronto summit France proposed the forgiveness of debts of the poorest of the poor in the sub-Sahara. At the forty-third session of the General Assembly last year, French President Francois Mitterand proposed an IMF-guaranteed conversion of loans into bonds to reduce financial charges of debtor countries and urged creditor countries to finance this scheme. Last year, as we were delivering our opening statements in this Hall, the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States - at the annual IMF-World Bank meeting in Berlin - was standing firm against the use of international aid funds for private-debt reduction.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

45. “It commands that "The Commission shall take into consideration the various existing studies and recommendations on the subject, including the views of the Secretary-General set out in his report entitled 'Towards a durable solution of the debt problem and those expressed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in the Trade and Development Report, 1988." (ibid.). Finally, it gives this Commission a life of three years and commands it to submit annual reports to the General Assembly. A commission of this kind was proposed by the non-aligned summit in Belgrade early this month. The Assembly must adopt this draft decision, for the global attack on debt must be pressed. The Assembly must adopt it because you yourself, Mr. President, have articulated the economic, political and social consequences of the international debt.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

46. “The draft decision calls upon this forty-fourth session of the General Assembly "To establish, under the aegis of the Secretary-General, an Advisory Commission on Debt and Development composed of eminent persons from the academic, political and financial sectors with knowledge and experience in international finance, trade and development, to develop innovative approaches and evolve specific proposals related to all types of debt in order to solve the debt problem of developing countries in a manner consistent with their sustained growth and development." (A/C.R/43/L.19) . The draft decision provides that "Debtor and creditor interests shall be represented in the membership of the Commission, which shall take into account the need for appropriate geographical representation and regional balance.! (ibid.) .”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

47. “And so I called last year for the formation of an international debt and development commission in order to recapture that original vision. The Group of 77 responded quickly, and two resolutions were drafted. The first called on the Secretary-General of the United Nations to continue using his high offices towards a common understanding on a solution to the international external debt. That resolution was passed by the forty-third session of the General Assembly with only one member voting against, and one abstaining. This year the second resolution, submitted as a draft decision by Tunisia on behalf of the Group of 77 - the one calling for the establishment of the commission on debt and development that I had the privilege of proposing last year - is on the agenda of this Assembly.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

48. “They are poor, I said, because they have inherited an external debt from the dictator - now $30 billion - and in order to service it their country must divert about 20 per cent of its annual budget and send out annually $1.7 billion more than it receives. All these years the countries of the North have insisted that one may not talk of debt relief beyond the boardrooms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Yet international debt forgiveness became a reality just about the time the IMF and the World Bank were born, for both these institutions were conceived by the same bold, victorious, visionary leadership that, remembering the stubborn mistake in 1919 at Versailles, forgave in 1947, in London, 70 per cent of the German debt.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

49. “In those four bloodless, spectacular days of February they raised, under Corazon C. Aquino, the new peaceful rallying cry of people power, which even now is resonating, sometimes unsuccessfully, always gloriously, in the streets of nations in transition on more than one continent of this earth. I said they are poor not because they multiply too fast. And they know that in rich nations it is the building of cities and industries, not the extermination of human instincts, that has reduced this multiplication. I said they are poor not because their nation does not grow. For our country does grow. Now that we are free again, although we remain harassed by the extremes of right and left, we have kept to our democratic course and our economy is growing again: last year by 6.8 per cent, last semester by 5.3 per cent.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)

50. “For, I said, our countrymen now cover the earths 2 million of us in the Americas, half a million in the Middle East, a quarter of a million in Europe, half a million in Asia and the Pacific - seekers all of toil and life, teachers of nations, physicians of men, builders of industry, designers of modules that challenge the stars and settle on the moon, men and women of skill and diligence, like those of Europe who settled America and here built a new world. I said they are poor not because they do not know how to fight for their rights. For they were the first in Asia to shed their blood against Western colonialism and produce their own republic. Ninety years later, they were the first nation in the world to mass by the millions to confront guns with rosaries and bring down a dictator without the shedding of blood.”

    1989-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 44 (1989)