First, I would like to
express my great respect to the leadership of the
General Assembly as it guides the Organization
through global issues and challenges.
When I stood at this podium 10 years ago, the list
of issues to be urgently addressed was about the same,
yet the mood was different. The Kyoto Protocol had
just been signed and preparations for the Millennium
Summit, including the drafting of the Millennium
Development Goals, were under way. The international
community, guided by the principles and the leadership
of the United Nations, showed the will and the
ambition to resolve global issues.
But did we manage to turn that collective will
into principled and decisive actions? I have to admit
that many nations, big and small, have many more
concerns today than they did a decade ago. Today we
feel less secure. The very structure of the international
system seems to be fracturing, depriving us of the
protection provided by international law and
international institutions. In my region, in Eastern
Europe and in the eastern neighbourhood of the
European Union (EU), that is more obvious than
anywhere else.
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Take energy security: oil supplies to Lithuania
have been cut off without warning, and we do not stand
a chance of conducting a normal civilized dialogue on
how to fix the problem. Gas supplies were interrupted
to our neighbours Ukraine and Belarus. In that light,
and on the eve of closing down our only independent
power generator, we have very serious reason to worry
about the possible risks for the future of our economy.
I would also say that other countries of our region also
have concerns about unreliable energy supplies. Such a
situation threatens the stability of the entire region. The
United Nations cannot be a mere passive observer if,
and when, universal values and international law are
under threat. Too often, we remain observers in the
face of mounting security crises.
What happened to Georgia a few months ago is a
case in point. The United Nations largely failed to react
to an act of aggression against a small nation that has
been a Member of the United Nations since 1992.
Perhaps we failed to react because one of the interested
sides to the conflict is a permanent member of the
Security Council, which has the responsibility to
protect both the letter and the spirit of the Charter of
the United Nations and various United Nations
resolutions.
But maybe we also failed to react because our
faith in the United Nations has weakened. It is the very
essence of the Organization’s mission to protect human
life and human rights, but too often voting on human
rights receives less and less support from Member
States. Today, there are still about 26 million internally
displaced persons in the world, including in the Sudan,
Somalia, the South Caucasus nations of Georgia and
Azerbaijan, and other places. Last year alone, we faced
serious crises in different corners of the planet,
including in Myanmar, the Sudan and Zimbabwe. The
world needed United Nations leadership, but the
Organization has not acted accordingly. That is because
some States hide behind technicalities or the shield of
national sovereignty, thereby paralysing the United
Nations.
It is quite evident that the United Nations cannot
continue with business as usual. It needs reform and a
greater role in areas that will determine the future of
the twenty-first century, such as energy, information
security, anti-terrorism, the fight against
fundamentalism and the like. How long will we
continue with cold-war-era security definitions, closing
our eyes to the less visible, but no less dangerous
dangers of the twenty-first century? When 17 years
ago, following the Soviet occupation, my country
regained independence and joined the United Nations,
we were told that never again would Molotovs and
Ribbentrops dare to decide the future of other nations.
Next year we will mark the seventieth anniversary of
the shameful Molotov-Ribbentrop secret protocols.
But Lithuania and other nations of the former
Soviet Union still have to fight against the revisionism
seeping down from the Kremlin’s towers and the
blatant claims that there was no occupation of the
Baltic States and that there was no Holodomor in
Ukraine, where millions of people were starved to
death by a ruthless dictator. Should not an alarm bell
ring across the entire international community when
we see such bold attempts to cover up crimes against
humanity?
Today, my nation is commemorating the Day of
Genocide of Lithuanian Jews. That tragedy is a
powerful reminder to us all of the vulnerability of
freedom, but it also teaches us that sincere efforts to
admit one’s crimes help nations to reconcile and create
a truly peaceful, secure and stable area. Therefore, on
this solemn day we not only remember but we also
learn.
If we are to reform the United Nations in a
meaningful way, perhaps we should have a better look
at the experience of European nations after the end of
the Second World War and the end of the cold war.
Based on that experience, it is obvious that we need to
strengthen democracy at home in order to have good
governance and responsible leadership. Perhaps
responsible leaders will not protect us from all global
challenges, but they will at least seek cooperation with
their people and other nations to resolve their
persisting problems.
It is only through integration that truly indivisible
security can be achieved. Indivisible security has
special meaning and importance for smaller nations,
which have all too often fallen victim to the redrawing
of maps. It is my conviction that the interaction of, and
cooperation among, different organizations — like the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
EU, NATO and the Council of Europe — have been,
and should remain, the foundation for security and
stability in Europe. There are difficulties and
deficiencies; but there is no alternative, and new
alternatives are not needed. I am therefore deeply
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worried by new calls to revise the institutional
structure of European security, rather than to abide by
commitments undertaken before the whole
international community.
Security based on cooperation should remain the
basic principle of different European organizations and
of international relations as a whole. The philosophy of
the balance of power, which is again growing popular
in some capitals, has no place in contemporary Europe.
And because security is indivisible, it is in the interest
of the international community that the United Nations
should play a greater role in strengthening preventive
diplomacy and making the principle of the
responsibility to protect work.
The United Nations also has to be more
responsive to emerging threats, such as unreliable
energy supplies, fundamentalism and cyber attacks. It
does not matter if the world is unipolar, bipolar or
multipolar. Human life and human rights remain at the
heart of our world. Only such a world can create a truly
viable architecture among States — an architecture
based on trust, openness and respect for human rights.
But did we see efforts to create such an architecture in
the Georgia-Russia conflict? What we saw instead
were renewed attempts to divide the world into zones
of influence or privileged interests. That should be
unacceptable to the international community in the
twenty-first century. Division and exclusion are bad
remedies for conflict resolution. Conflict resolution in
South Ossetia, Abkhazia and elsewhere should
therefore be the responsibility of the international
community and international institutions, not of one
participating side, which hardly remains impartial.
We also have to maintain commitments to value-
based policies. It is through our commitment to change
and reform that Lithuania has become what it is today:
a consolidated democracy, a strong reformed economy
and an active contributor to international peacekeeping
missions from the Balkans to Afghanistan.
I believe that we, the peoples of the United
Nations, have to renew our commitment to universal
values and principles, so that we march together and in
the same direction and our steps become stronger. I
believe that we must learn those lessons well, so that in
another 10-years’ time we can celebrate not only the
fulfilled promise of the Millennium Development
Goals but also the fulfilled promise of creating lasting
peace and an era of progress, prosperity and human
integrity. It is because the United Nations consists
primarily not of the sum total of votes but of universal
principles that those principles shall be a guiding light
for us in the years to come. I still believe that that is
the core mission of the Organization. I care deeply
about it.