India

At the outset, Madam, let me join previous speakers in welcoming your election as President of the General Assembly at its sixty-first session. On India’s behalf, I would like to assure you of our constructive support and wholehearted commitment to work with you to achieve both the larger goals of the Charter and the more specific goals of the reform of this Organization that were set out in last year’s World Summit Outcome Document. The topic of this general debate is “Implementing a global partnership for development”. It is difficult to contest its relevance or topicality. Today, whether we look at issues such as international trade, international financial mechanisms, methods to improve economic and social well-being, or even the various threats to peace and security that challenge our collective existence, one common theme that emerges is the lack of an effective and equitable global partnership. This is an imperative even for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The important annual report of the Secretary- General highlights several successes in moving ahead with United Nations reform. During the previous General Assembly session, the Central Emergency Response Fund, the Peacebuilding Commission and the Human Rights Council were established, and the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy was agreed upon. We have also gradually moved forward on management and budgetary reforms. While these are certainly important — indeed, critical — if we are honest, we must acknowledge that significant unfulfilled tasks and challenges lie ahead, particularly with regard to unaddressed issues, including the reform of the architecture of our multilateral bodies that oversee security, trade, financial flows and development. Without this reform, the discontent associated with globalization will only deepen. Without it, there cannot be substantially enhanced and assured resource and technology flows to developing countries, which are necessary for real economic transformation and for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It is sometimes argued that private sector investment is today replacing the traditional reliance on aid and development assistance. While we appreciate the important role of private sector investment, it cannot replace public investment in developing countries, whose absorptive capacities are often limited and where the physical and social infrastructure is often weak. Official development assistance (ODA) remains an important means to 7 06-53952 augment public investment in areas such as human capital development and rural infrastructure, which rarely attract private sector investment. The process of increasing the available pool of resources for investment in the social and economic infrastructure of developing countries can be promoted at one level by developed countries, expeditiously reaching the target of setting aside 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product for official development assistance. At another level, there is also a need to develop innovative sources of financing. We must evolve a broader understanding of ways to encourage the least developed countries to get out of the debt trap by extending debt-cancellation programmes, without insisting on conditionalities, such as encouraging privatization, which, applied indiscriminately, may recreate the original difficulties that necessitated recourse to debt in the first place. The impasse in international trade negotiations is disappointing, to say the least, considering the hopes raised after the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference and at the Group of Eight Summit in Saint Petersburg in July. Early resumption is desirable, but adherence to the existing mandate is imperative — the mandate of the Doha Declaration, the July framework and the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration. When agriculture was brought into the ambit of negotiations at the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the developing countries were given a clear understanding that trade-distorting agricultural subsidies would be phased out in a time-bound manner. Minimizing the vulnerabilities of poor farmers must be our collective priority. Demanding market access from developing countries, which displace low-income and subsistence farmers to satisfy commercial interests, cannot be supported. Proportionately lower overall tariff reduction commitments, operable, effective development instruments for special products and a special safeguard mechanism are essential if we are to ensure food and livelihood security and meet the rural development needs of developing countries. The overarching principle of special and differential treatment therefore remains a categorical imperative, and is the underlying basis of the position of developing countries. In our view, there exists an overwhelming logic for giving the United Nations a role in providing direction to the comprehensive reform of the international financial and trading systems. These reforms must be aimed at building an international architecture that reflects the realities of the twenty-first century and is able to create an environment that effectively supports national efforts to eradicate poverty. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have given hope to the poor and the underprivileged of the world, and these goals are to be achieved by 2015. In this context, the World Bank must remain steadfast in its mission to build a world free of poverty, and its strategy must remain embedded in the historical development-centric approach. The Outcome Document of last year’s World Summit emphasized that enhancing the voice and participation of developing countries in the Bretton Woods institutions remains a continuous concern. The bridging of this voice deficit requires fundamental reforms in the quota structure which are long overdue and absolutely necessary to enhance the credibility and legitimacy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The quota reforms have to begin with the revision of the formula so as to reflect the relative economic strengths of countries in the twenty-first century. The United Nations should encourage immediate steps being taken to initiate the second stage of IMF quota reform, involving a basic revision of the quota formula and the subsequent increase of quotas for all under- represented countries. All of this must be done in a time-bound manner. Change is the law of life. The acute dissatisfaction heard in many statements is the result of institutions having been prevented from changing. What is true in the economic field is equally true of the architecture of our international security system as reflected in this unique Organization that is supposed to reflect the collective will of our world, a system which remains mired in the past. Recent tragic events in Lebanon and the stasis in the peace process in the broader Middle East have highlighted the growing failure of the institution designated by the Charter as having primary responsibility for issues relating to peace and security. It is widely accepted that the Security Council can no longer be regarded as reflecting the changed international environment that has emerged since the time of its creation. The Security Council must not 06-53952 8 only be more representative but also more effective if it is to be able to satisfactorily perform the role mandated to it by the Charter. At the same time, the Security Council has needlessly diverted its attention to issues and areas that go beyond its mandate. For instance, the inclusion of items on its agenda which have nothing to do with peace and security represents an encroachment on the roles mandated to other United Nations bodies. In order to ensure that the international community exercises real ownership of the process of securing our world, it is essential that comprehensive reform of the Security Council be undertaken and that its membership be expanded in both the permanent and the non-permanent categories. It is no accident that the Secretary-General’s report refers to the enhancement of legitimacy and the urgent need for reform to ensure the Security Council’s relevance and credibility. The revitalization of the General Assembly is intertwined with the reform of the Security Council. It is no coincidence that its reform too has long been frustrated. A strengthened and more effective United Nations presumes a revitalized General Assembly that exercises its role and authority in the areas of responsibility assigned to it by the Charter. These include its effectively addressing topics such as international law and human rights, financial, budgetary and administrative matters, as well as the global economic architecture and important issues related to development. I now turn to one of the most crucial issues of our times: the problem of terrorism. While this phenomenon has become increasingly global, our collective response to it has remained rather inadequate. The multiple ways in which terrorism challenges the core principles of humanity and the mandate of the United Nations are underlined by the outrages perpetrated in India over the last few months. Barely two months ago, on a single black day, more than 200 lives were lost and more than 1,000 were injured by dastardly bombings in Mumbai and elsewhere in India. These and other such outrageous incidents were clearly designed to spread maximum terror among ordinary people. Ours is not the only country to be singled out for vicious and senseless acts of murder. A strong response to terrorism requires broad-based international cooperation, denying to terrorists the space that has been available to them and increasing the capability of States to address terrorist threats. It requires sustained and specific cooperation by a variety of national, regional and global agencies. Earlier this month, we joined in the adoption of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (resolution 60/288), even though, ideally, we would have liked the United Nations to convey a far stronger message in order to counter terrorism. We must collectively and unanimously reject the notion that any cause can justify terrorism. No cause can ever justify the targeted killing of innocent men, women and children. The international community must signal that it will no longer tolerate the actions of the sponsors and abettors of terrorism, including States which wilfully fail to prevent terrorists from utilizing their territory. We hope that the Strategy will provide the impetus to unite the international community in its fight against terrorism via practical measures that facilitate cooperation by way of extradition, prosecution, information exchange and capacity- building. We went along with the Global Counter- Terrorism Strategy, but the comprehensive convention on international terrorism, which remains a work in progress, would have provided the requisite legal framework upon which a counter-terrorism strategy could have been based. It cannot be beyond our collective ingenuity to reach an agreement on such a comprehensive convention, even though we have missed the target of doing so at the sixtieth session of the General Assembly. We must work together to finalize and adopt the comprehensive convention, at least during this session of the General Assembly. The existence of nuclear weapons continues to threaten international peace and security. In our view, the best non-proliferation measure is universal disarmament, and the international community needs to take immediate steps to eliminate the threat of the use of nuclear weapons. We have to revive momentum for achieving what the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi called a nuclear-weapon-free and non-violent world, to be achieved, through negotiations, in a time-bound manner. India will be presenting a working paper at this session of the General Assembly on the issue of nuclear disarmament, on which we look forward to working with Member States. In recent years, new dangers have emerged due to the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction-related materials and technologies to non- 9 06-53952 State actors and terrorist groups. The international community must work together to meet those challenges. India’s record in that regard is impeccable, and we have instituted effective measures to ensure that the technologies we develop are not leaked in any way. It is true that the developing countries bear the heaviest burden from pandemics, epidemics and chronic diseases. The scourge of HIV/AIDS, malaria, avian influenza and tuberculosis seriously threatens the future of many developing countries by robbing them of the most productive segment of their society — their young people — thereby affecting the future of those countries. An enhanced global collaborative effort is called for to confront the proliferation of challenges affecting the lives of the majority of our citizens. We also need to address the central issue of the special needs of the developing countries, especially in Africa, and of the vulnerable small States. On our part, we will continue to expand our programme of South- South cooperation also through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, through Team 9 — our special programme for West African countries — and by means of the connectivity mission in Africa, as well as through assistance, capacity-building and technology transfer aimed at reducing the vulnerability of small States. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who embodied our commitment to the United Nations ideals, said that “in a world of incessant and feverish activity, men have little time to think, much less to consider ideals and objectives. Yet, how are we to act, even in the present, unless we know which way we are going and what our objectives are?” Confronted as we are by the globalization of threats and by the limitations of our international system to address such challenges, the need for a comprehensive reform of the United Nations has never been more imperative. We need to enfranchise the United Nations to meet the challenges of our time by reinforcing its role and authority as the core of real multilateralism. We look forward to working closely with other Member States, under your leadership, Madam President, to press ahead with essential reforms at the United Nations and to implement an effective global partnership for development that encompasses everyone and enables every individual to live a life of dignity in a clean, safe and healthy environment.