YouSaid · the spoken record

Farouk AL-SHARA’

lines on the record
209
first
1994-09-24
most recent
2004-09-24
sittings or episodes
10
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. “In doing so, Syria was prompted by its conviction that the possession of such an overkill weapon by any State in our highly sensitive region would be a major cause for concern, not only to the peoples of the region, but also to the world at large. At the time, Syria expected that its early signing of the NPT would be an incentive to Israel, sooner or later, to sign in turn and would dissuade it from possessing nuclear weapons. Regrettably, we were to discover that our expectations were not justified. Israel, as yet, has neither adhered to the NPT, nor agreed to open its nuclear installations to international inspection.”

    1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)

  2. “These are positive measures which we hope will continue and expand to encompass other issues, in the forefront of which is that of Lockerbie disaster and Libya, so that political dialogue will become the most appropriate option inresolving disputes between States. In the same vein, we hope that the United Arab Emirates and Iran will be able, through amicable dialogue, to reach a satisfactory solution to the question of the disputed islands that would preserve the rights of both parties and consolidate friendly relations between the two neighbours. Syria was one of the first States in the Middle East to sign, as early as 1968, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).”

    1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)

  3. “It is no exaggeration to say that such elements and subjective motives have already played a role in obstructing international efforts to address a number of serious crises, particularly those in which human suffering has reached levels that defy description and stymie the imagination, as in the cases of Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda, not to mention Afghanistan, where the shortsightedness of the conflicting parties has overwhelmed all wisdom and prudence. On the other hand, however, we must commend the United States of America for resorting to political dialogue with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and with Cuba instead of continuing to pursue its policy of confrontation against them.”

    1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)

  4. “Organized crime now has its own international networks, its secret transnational organizations are estimated to be in the thousands. Such organizations have the ability to break the most rigorous of laws by all the illegitimate means available to them, including the smuggling of nuclear components and their scientific designs. The indispensable international cooperation needed to meet such varied challenges cannot achieve the desired results if certain of its principal parties take to evoking the spirit of the cold war by calling up the past instead of looking forward to the future or if they act under the influence of some racist background that inspires their propaganda or election campaigns.”

    1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)

  5. “Those challenges may initially appear to be of a minor nature, but they may well grow and spread like a plague. In many continents, dozens of civil wars have been spawned from the womb of the cold war. The causes of these wars are many: national, ethnic, religious and tribal. Their victims are hundreds of thousands, while the refugees and displaced persons they uproot are in the tens 17 of millions. The number of those who live below the poverty line in the world today has reached almost one fifth of the inhabitants of the globe. About 90 per cent of those live in developing countries. A phenomenon that seems truly odd and surprising is the spread of organized crime to countries where such a phenomenon was never known before.”

    1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)

  6. “In this context, developing countries pose the following question: If colonialism is truly a thing of the past and if the cold war is indeed over, what other reasons are there to prevent the developing countries from actively participating in the restructuring of the United Nations and from taking the share they are democratically entitled to in the Security Council’s membership? We hope that the answer will not be a negative one and that the cold war will no longer be waged in new innovative forms and under different pretexts. That would be in no one’s interest and would serve no useful purpose, either in the short or in the long term. Today’s world, North and South, East and West, faces unparalleled challenges that require the cooperation of all Member States in facing up to them.”

    1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)

  7. “However, the question that could take years before any agreement is reached on it is that which relates to the nature of the required reforms, the criteria for choosing the new members of the Security Council and, first and foremost, the right of veto: whether to expand it or abolish it altogether from the Charter. More than two-thirds of the current Members of the United Nations did not participate in drafting the Charter of the United Nations, either because they were languishing under colonialism or because, after independence, they were thrust into the cold war, for which the United Nations was an important arena.”

    1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)

  8. “This great accomplishment will remain forever a source of inspiration and optimism for us all that all forms of racism are inevitably doomed to extinction. The commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations will raise fundamental questions about the role and achievements of the Organization and the obstacles it has faced and continues to face. In our opinion, the most important question will focus on the reform and restructuring of the United Nations to make it more democratic and thus more capable of responding to the major changes that have taken place on the international scene, particularly since the end of the cold war. It seems that none of the Member States objects in principle to the idea of introducing reforms to the United Nations, including the enlargement of the Security Council’s membership.”

    1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)

  9. “I should like to congratulate Mr. Essy on his election to the presidency of the forty-ninth session of the General Assembly and to express our appreciation of the great responsibilities he will be shouldering, together with the Secretary-General, in preparing for the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. I also take this opportunity to salute, on behalf of my country, Syria, the long and arduous struggle of Africa against the system of apartheid in South Africa. This struggle, recently crowned with the establishment of a united, democratic and non-racial Republic of South Africa, is a triumph not only for Africa but also for humanity and the international community as a whole. It is especially a triumph for the United Nations as it is one of its most important achievements.”

    1994-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 49 (1994)