I wish first to extend
sincere congratulations to Mr. D’Escoto Brockmann on
his election as President of the General Assembly at its
sixty-third session and to express my appreciation for
the work done by his predecessor, Mr. Srgjan Kerim. I
would also like to thank the Secretary-General for his
report (A/63/1) on the work of the Organization, and I
welcome his comprehensive approach to threats and his
focus on recently emerged challenges.
It is an honour for me to address the General
Assembly for the first time as President of the Republic
of Cyprus. Maintaining the effectiveness of multilateral
diplomacy and strengthening the relevance of the
United Nations has been one of the cornerstones of the
foreign policy of the Republic of Cyprus since it won
its independence in 1960.
The United Nations is important to the
international community and particularly important to
Cyprus. It is an essential institution for our global
survival and for the further development of humankind
in a balanced and fair way in increasingly difficult
conditions. Our peoples look to the United Nations as
the best forum for addressing such global problems as
poverty, climate change, rising energy and food prices,
diseases, natural disasters, human rights abuses and
many other pressing global problems. Either we do
things together in a collective, coordinated way or the
problems will persist and become even less
manageable.
This week, two important issues are being given
particular attention — the achievement of the
Millennium Development Goals and the special needs
of Africa. I applaud the focus being given to both,
highlighting the imperative need for collective action
by the international community. However, we must
match our words with deeds.
Cyprus emerged from colonialism as an
impoverished independent State in 1960. Despite the
fact that Cyprus has suffered greatly, we have managed
to improve our economy. Today, Cyprus is firmly
committed to the achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals and maintains an emphasis on
Africa in its overseas development assistance projects.
Our approach is to focus on a small number of
countries, concentrating our efforts on infrastructural
development in the health and education sectors.
Cyprus is gradually intensifying its efforts by
increasing the level of assistance to additional
countries.
Small States have higher stakes in multilateral
diplomacy and in a fair and functional system of
collective security, based on the principles of sovereign
equality and respect for territorial integrity.
There is no clearer example of that than Cyprus
itself. From the earliest days of its independence,
Cyprus was forced to appeal to the world community
for support in defending and preserving its
independence, its sovereignty and its territorial
integrity. It became a victim of foreign interference,
which sowed the seeds of domestic problems for the
new State. Those difficulties were exploited in the
service of strategic interests alien to our independence
and our territorial integrity. The culmination was the
military coup instigated by the military junta of Athens
and the Turkish military invasion of July and August
1974.
However, Cyprus survived. The will of the
international community for Cyprus to survive is found
in the plethora of Security Council and General
Assembly resolutions — most of them, regrettably, not
implemented. However, the moral support and resolute
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stance provided Cyprus with a sword and shield that
have ensured that it has remained and will continue to
remain an undivided independent country with a single
sovereignty, single citizenship and single international
personality.
In addition, the resolutions of the United Nations
on Cyprus contain two other important elements. They
provide for a process of negotiations in the form of a
good offices mission of the Secretary-General and,
very importantly, they define the legal and political
framework on which the discussions for the federal
architecture of the Cypriot State will be built. Both of
those elements are crucial. I firmly believe that our
success in the new effort that is now beginning will
depend upon respecting those essential conditions.
The President returned to the Chair.
With regard to the process of the Secretary-
General’s good offices mission, it entails negotiations
with the Cypriots themselves in which they are the
principal players. They are the owners of the process.
The Cypriots themselves must build the State they
envision for their society. The role of the Secretary-
General and of the international community is to assist
and to support. We are grateful for that. Good offices
are not arbitration; they are not mediation. Recent
experience has shown that any attempt to impose —
and even to import — non-Cypriot-inspired and
improvised models will meet with rejection by the
Cypriot people.
The relevant Security Council resolutions are also
important for the new effort because they provide the
legal political framework within which the effort must
take place. That framework prescribes a bizonal and
bicommunal federation with a single international
personality, single indivisible sovereignty and single
citizenship. The federal institutions will embody the
principle of political equality as defined by the relevant
Security Council resolutions, in terms not of numerical
equality but of effective participation by the Greek
Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities in all organs
of the federal State.
It is important to remind ourselves that a bizonal
and bicommunal federation has been the only mutually
agreed basis since 1977. It was reaffirmed as recently
as a few weeks ago. It represents a compromise, and
indeed the only possible compromise, on which a
political arrangement can be built. The relevant
resolutions of the Security Council and the
Constitution of Cyprus exclude partition, secession or
union with any other country.
The kind of solution we agree to must take into
account not only our history and international legality,
but also the kind of society we are and the kind of
society we want to bequeath to our children. In that
society, all Cypriot children must be born free and
equal. Human rights and the fair satisfaction of human
needs must take precedence over strategic
considerations dictated by political expedience.
A new intensive effort started on 3 September
with the aim of overcoming the impasses of the past
and achieving progress that will lead to the
reunification of Cyprus under mutually agreed terms
and the withdrawal of foreign troops after 34 years of
division and foreign occupation. If that effort is to
succeed, there is a need for political will on the part of
Cypriots, as well as the positive engagement of other
important players, which for historical reasons have
been part of the problem and need to become part of
the solution.
For my part, I want to assure the General
Assembly from this rostrum that my political will to do
what is necessary to solve the problem is firm and
deep-rooted. My origins are in the Progressive Party of
Working People of Cyprus and in the popular
movement of the island, which prides itself on a long
history of struggles, and indeed sacrifices, in defence
of friendship, cooperation and peaceful coexistence
between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. On the
other hand, I am one of those Cypriots who was deeply
and directly affected by the foreign military invasion of
1974, because I myself and my family are internally
displaced persons — refugees in our own country. The
role of Cypriots is to agree on what they want. We
must try to achieve that with the leader of the Turkish
Cypriot community, Mehmet Ali Talat. I believe that
we can achieve it.
But that is not enough to achieve a solution.
Turkey should contribute to the process in a positive
way. Turkey still maintains over 40,000 troops and tens
of thousands of settlers in Cyprus and can, without a
doubt, determine the outcome of the issues under
discussion. We believe that the solution should benefit
everybody and will benefit everybody. It would allow
Cypriots — Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots
alike — to live together and work together in an
independent, prosperous country within the family of
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the European Union, without the presence of foreign
armies and illegal colonists and under conditions of
security and respect for their identity and their rights.
Our world faces many problems, which are
becoming increasingly complex. It is our conviction
that those problems can be solved and that new threats
can be prevented only through effective multilateral
collective action. Peace must prevail — a true peace
based on respect for international law and not the right
of might. A response to the problem of international
terrorism will be effective only if our world becomes
less unjust. If hunger and poverty are not tackled, if
regional disputes are not resolved on the basis of
international legitimacy, and if global wealth is not
distributed more fairly, peace cannot grow strong roots.
The United Nations is an achievement of our
fathers and a necessary tool for ensuring a more stable,
fair and prosperous world. Ultimately, the United
Nations is only as successful as we, the Member States,
allow it to be. I wish our community of nations a
successful sixty-third session of the General Assembly.