Chile

It is with particular pleasure that I extend to you, Mr. President, my sincerest congratulations, and those of my Government, on your election as President of the General Assembly. Your election will ensure that the business of the General Assembly will be conducted skilfully, impartially and very efficiently at this important moment for the General Assembly, when it will have to make decisions that may be vital to the future of our Organization. The General Assembly session that we are now beginning is a particularly important one in that its purpose is to ensure that in the future multilateral activity will be assured of validity, effectiveness and credibility. With the United Nations having completed more than 50 years of existence, we need new ways to view the world, without forgetting the many achievements made and the valuable experience gained both from successes and from failures. This is an appropriate time for us to renew our commitment to multilateralism as the guiding principle of international relations and the essential tool to resolve crises and problems that are beyond the ability of any State, however important or powerful it may be, to resolve on its own. This is particularly important in the face of a growing unilateralism that has recently emerged as a feature of the international scene. The new international reality makes it essential for States to act together so as to confront energetically and resolutely the problems of the environment, organized crime, arms control, human rights, democratization, poverty, unemployment, social fragmentation and many other issues. Chile has consistently contributed to the Organization and, to the limits of its ability to do so, will continue to lend its strong support to the great work of the United Nations in all its forums. I wish to speak first of the issue of the Security Council and its reform process. I stressed before the General Assembly last year the importance of greater involvement by Member States in the decisions of the Security Council in order to strengthen its legitimacy and 25 give it the necessary political backing for the actions it undertakes. We reiterate once again the desirability of revising the composition of the Security Council and its working methods. In this connection, we appreciate the arduous work conducted by the Working Group on this issue, which has served to clarify the various positions and to allow a proper appraisal of this enormously complex subject. I wish especially to pay tribute to the outgoing President of the General Assembly, Mr. Razali Ismail of Malaysia, for his keen sense of responsibility and his courage in taking the initiative to make specific proposals on these matters in order to ease the difficulties encountered within the Working Group and make it possible to analyse and discuss them in specific terms. My Government considers that any future composition of the Council must combine the requirements of its effectiveness with the need for an equitable representation of the developing countries that properly reflects the increase in the number of Members in the past 50 years. Where these fundamental issues are concerned, Chile supports and endorses the content of the Declaration on the strengthening of the United Nations and the reform of the Security Council issued by the Heads of State or Government at the eleventh summit of the Rio Group in Asunción, Paraguay, on 24 August of this year. In that Declaration we expressed the great importance we attach to the process of expanding and reforming the Security Council, which must result in a broad general agreement that will make it possible to correct the imbalances in its current composition, improve the decision- making mechanisms, make the conduct of its work more transparent and represent with greater legitimacy all States Members of the Organization. With regard to the total number of members of the Security Council, we believe that a membership of up to 25 would not impair its effectiveness, provided that the expansion met the requirements of responding properly to the increase in United Nations Member States since the last reform of the Charter and the undeniably growing importance of developing countries. Chile shares in the broad base of agreement on allowing the entry of Germany and Japan as permanent members of the Security Council. Nevertheless, there is also a conviction that this can take place only in the context of suitable regional representation, including other permanent members from Asia, Africa and Latin America. We support a process of regional consultation and consensus to fill these seats. This, however, does not exclude a possible role for the General Assembly in case there is an absence of regional agreement. In this connection, the Assembly will have to analyse carefully the proposals that have been put forward regarding rotation. These are undoubtedly attractive since they include a larger number of countries, but they could impair the effectiveness of the Council and increase tensions between permanent and non-permanent members. As far as the Latin American and Caribbean region is concerned, its fundamental responsibility is to fill its seats through a process that gives its members legal validity and political legitimacy. In this process, consideration must be given to all the possibilities that will allow for appropriate regional representation. Chile is prepared to accept any formula that reflects this. Serious consideration must be given to the possibility that only one of its members will occupy the permanent seat allocated to the region. The question of the veto will also have to be discussed in greater depth, taking into account many factors, such as legal ones relating to Charter obligations and the evolution of modern international law, and political ones, such as the evolution of the international situation, which are today very different from those prevailing at the time the United Nations came into being. The outgoing President of the General Assembly has made some very interesting proposals in this regard, which need to be carefully considered by Member States. Chile is concluding this year, with a sense of satisfaction, its participation in the Security Council after an absence of more than 30 years. Our decision to participate was motivated by the need to assume our international responsibilities, and we did so in the conviction that we could make a contribution. As a preliminary conclusion, I would like to emphasize that the rich contribution of the non-permanent members of the Council provides genuine balance and enables the Council to renew itself over time. Our experience has been a rewarding one, and we have sought to focus our contribution, beyond our natural interest in issues relating to the Latin American region, on a number 26 of areas in which welcome progress has been made, to which Chile has made an effective contribution. We welcome the important progress the Council has made regarding its responsibility in the humanitarian sphere, which has necessarily become a major aspect of the maintenance of international peace and security. This is the foundation of the presidential statement issued by the Council on the protection of humanitarian workers. The strengthening of this aspect of the Council's work was one of the main issues in which Chile participated. Motivated by our concern about this matter, we proposed a mechanism that establishes the modalities by which the Council communicates with the humanitarian agencies working in the field. Similarly, Chile has been particularly concerned that countries that have experienced severe conflicts should not be abandoned by the system once conflict ends. We have therefore insisted on the need for a United Nations presence in the field when peace-building gives way to overall reconstruction and development activities. With respect to sanctions, it has been demonstrated that, where authoritarian Governments are concerned, broad sanction regimes merely penalize the population without bringing about political change. We have noted the progress made by the Council in devising sanctions, as in the case of resolution 1072 (1996) on the situation in Burundi and the one recently adopted on UNITA in Angola, which are indeed capable of yielding the desired results without harming innocent populations. Lastly, Chile has attached special importance to African affairs while a member of the Security Council. We believed it important to assist the Council in taking decisions on the problems that region is facing at this historic moment when African countries are assuming their own responsibilities for regional problems, as has been apparent in the Organization of African Unity initiative in the Arusha process and the activities of the Economic Community of West African States, among others. We are aware that the reform process is not confined to the Security Council. The Secretary-General has told us clearly and lucidly that we are facing the most extensive and farthest-reaching reforms in the 52 years of this Organization's history. Accordingly, we welcome his comprehensive report of last July, entitled, "Renewing the United Nations: A programme for reform". We agree with his proposals aimed at transforming the leadership and management structure of the United Nations so as to enable it to act with greater unity of purpose, coherence and agility in tackling the problems. We wish to convey to the Secretary-General and his colleagues our gratitude for the report, which the General Assembly will have to analyse in depth, and Chile will contribute to the debate with interest and dedication and in an open spirit of consensus. In this connection, we agree with the Secretary- General's statement that the major source of institutional weakness in the United Nations is the fact that over the course of the past half century certain of its organizational features have tended to become fragmented, duplicated and rigid, resulting in their ineffectiveness in some areas and superfluity in others. As Chile sees it, the main obstacle to the reform process has been the fear of change that exists in the Organization, which has paralysed the process since it began here in the General Assembly four years ago. The time has come for all of us, the Secretariat and Member States alike, to show proudly our collective creativity, courage and realistic inventiveness. The period of bureaucratization in the United Nations must give way to the era of creation. Only through flexible and efficient management will we be able to give new impetus to the Organization and provide it with the proper tools for the true modernization the international community demands. Reform is not intrinsically an exercise in cutting costs or reducing staff. Its aim is to ensure a real and growing increase in the political effectiveness of the United Nations, from the Security Council and the way it deals with and resolves present-day conflicts in today's world to the Economic and Social Council and the development agencies. Many of the problems facing the Organization result from the fact that Member States have been remiss in responding to the need to adapt intergovernmental machinery to the new requirements of the international situation. This is perhaps one of the main aspects of the reform process we have embarked upon. Accordingly, it is essential to proceed further with the reorientation and restructuring of the Economic and Social Council in order to coordinate both the agencies and its subsidiary bodies so that it may engage in executive interaction with the functions of the General Assembly. In that way, it can regain its leadership position as a flexible and efficient organ and contribute effectively to answering the challenges on the economic and social agenda of the Organization. 27 Given this mandate of the Economic and Social Council, its future relationship with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund will be extremely important. In this connection, the establishment of a substantive secretariat of the Economic and Social Council seems to us an interesting proposal. Furthermore, the reform process should leave room for the progressive regionalization that is taking place within the United Nations system. In the review of the regional commissions to be carried out by the Economic and Social Council, there is a need to find mechanisms which, without affecting the regional mandates of each commission, can contribute to the definition and regional implementation of the major agreements and consensuses reached by the major conferences sponsored by the United Nations system over the past decade. We are following with interest the proposal to give to the Resident Coordinator of the Secretary-General authority over all United Nations bodies in the field. This new integrated approach, in which the funds and programmes will retain their autonomy, will contribute to the necessary cohesion and reduce the natural tendency towards divergence between the multidisciplinary agencies represented, thereby strengthening their activities. It also seems to us essential to evaluate the subsidiary bodies in greater depth, using as the main criteria their relevance and effectiveness, and to take the appropriate decisions. Accordingly, we are concerned by the recommendation to merge the Commissions on Narcotic Drugs and on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, since that would run the risk of limiting treatment of the problem of narcotic drugs merely to its criminal dimension, losing sight, in the process, of elements that are an inherent part of the drug issue, such as education and prevention. At the same time, the reform process must assign special importance to measures and mechanisms designed to accelerate economic and social development, especially in Africa, by supporting domestic efforts at economic restructuring, diversification of raw materials and increased food security being carried out by the countries of the region. We welcome the proposals designed to strengthen the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, both institutionally and substantively, since they seem to us to be of great importance for the future development of the Organization. The protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms, together with democracy and equitable growth, are the three pillars of present-day international society. As the Secretary-General himself has stated, they constitute an essential component of international peace and security. Any measure that contributes to strengthening the ability of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to take action will receive the firm support of the Chilean delegation. Similarly, we strongly support the initiatives by the Secretary-General with regard to the proposals for interaction between civil society and private enterprise, which have become major actors at both the national and international levels. The time has come for civil society, including the business community, to participate in the United Nations at a level that reflects the contribution that it has been making for some time. A series of measures have been recommended to us that are designed to make more flexible the procedures for deliberations in the General Assembly, to reduce the length of meetings, apply a thematic approach to topical issues, overcome delays and enable us to concentrate on the most essential matters. While technically these proposals appear to relate more to formal than to substantive aspects, we know that in fact they will not be simple or merely procedural decisions. In reality, their aim is to promote the capacity of this Organization to build consensus, so as to arrive at concise decisions in the shortest possible time. On financial matters, we endorse the proposal for results-based budgeting, with few institutional mechanisms having a major strategic impact. This seems to us an innovation will have far-reaching consequences for the Organization. We also support the idea of reallocating savings to economic and social activities through the establishment of a development account. 28 We have focused our statement on the great task of reform, which is difficult, complex and full of potential as well as of problems. We are determined to find the solutions that the United Nations requires if it is to discharge all its mandates and satisfy the demands and aspirations of an international community that is anxious to place in the Organization great hopes for the future. We are determined not to let this opportunity to restructure and renew the United Nations pass us by. The full cooperation of the Chilean delegation can be counted on in this effort.