I address
the General Assembly at a very special moment, not
only for the world but also for my country. I would
like to begin by reflecting on the words with which
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened this sixty-
ninth session of the General Assembly. He went over
many of the problems, tragedies and calamities that are
unsettling the world today, and I think, if I remember
correctly, that he literally confirmed that the turmoil,
as he defined it, that is upsetting the world today is
endangering multilateralism.
I sincerely believe that most of the problems that
the planet has today economically and financially, with
respect to terrorism and security, in terms of force and
territorial integrity, of war and peace, are the result
of the exact opposite: the absence of an effective,
practical and democratic multilateralism. That is why,
I would like to begin today in particular by thanking
and congratulating the General Assembly for adopting
resolution 68/304, on 9 September, by which it finally
decided by a wide majority of 124 votes to dedicate
itself to drafting a multilateral convention which will
be a regulatory legal framework for restructuring the
sovereign debts of all countries, a task that we needed
to take on.
I have been coming to the General Assembly since
2003, first as a Senator, and then, starting in 2007, as
President. We always came calling for reform of the
Security Council and of the International Monetary
Fund. Our point of departure was the experience we had
in my country, the Argentine Republic. Today, I would
go so far as to say in this international context that my
country, the Argentine Republic, is a triple leading
case in terms of economics and finance, terrorism and
security, and force and territorial integrity.
The first area is the economic and financial crisis
that spread throughout the world starting in 2008,
which persists to this day and which is beginning to
threaten emerging economies whose greater economic
growth we have supported over the past decade. The
2008 crisis was experienced by my country in 2001,
when the largest default on sovereign debt in living
memory occurred. At the time, the Argentine Republic
had accrued debt representing 160 per cent of the gross
domestic product, with the consent of multilateral
organizations, because when one is speaking about that
level of debt, the problem is not just that of the debtor,
but also of the creditors.
Starting with the dictatorship on 24 March 1976,
and through the neoliberal period, Argentina was a
favourite of the International Monetary Fund. In the
end, Argentina accumulated an unprecedented debt
that caused the country to implode, not just in economic
terms but also in political terms. We had five presidents
in a single week. At that point, nobody claimed
responsibility for what had taken place in Argentina.
Argentina had to resolve its problems as best it could,
and in 2003, a few months after taking office, a President
who had come to head the Government with only 22 per
cent of the vote came to speak at the General Assembly
(see A/58/PV.11) and maintained that it was necessary
to generate a model of development and growth for the
country so that the country could shoulder its debt.
He maintained, in a rather interesting metaphor, that
dead people do not pay their debts and that countries
have to live, develop and grow in order to meet their
obligations.
But he also said that the level of debt — 160 per cent
of the gross domestic product — was not our country’s
responsibility alone; that we as a country were accepting
responsibility for having adopted policies that had
been forced upon us; that while we were shouldering
our responsibility, we were also requesting and calling
for the multilateral organizations like the International
Monetary Fund and the creditors themselves, which
had lent money at usurious rates — at that time as high
as 14 per cent in United States dollars — which were
receiving payments in the Argentine Republic, to also
assume part of the responsibility for that indebtedness.
And with that man — who took over with 22 per
cent of the vote, with 25 per cent unemployment, a
54 per cent poverty rate and 27 per cent of extreme
poverty, without education, without health, without
social security, over time, with a model of development
and growth — we were able not only to create millions
of jobs, millions of people becoming integrated in
the social security system, including retirees and
pensioners, but also to invest 6 per cent of the gross
domestic product in education, and set aside enormous
amounts of money for the country’s infrastructure,
building roads, schools, nuclear plants, hydroelectric
plants, water, gas and electricity plants that now cover
the entire country, in an unprecedented programme of
social inclusion that has allowed to reduce poverty and
extreme poverty to single digits.
Today, the International Monetary Fund itself
recognizes that Argentina’s economic growth between
2004 and 2011 is the third-largest globally in terms of
quality of growth. Only Bulgaria and China are ahead
of us. In Latin America, we have the greatest quality of
growth and the best purchasing power for our workers
and salaried employees and the highest social security
deposits.
We have been able to achieve all of that while
also dealing with debt that others had generated. It is
worth repeating that our Governments were not the
ones that declared a default, nor were they the ones
that had assumed the debt; we were simply the ones
who shouldered the debt, as appropriate, and paid, from
2003 to today, more than $190 billion — I repeat, more
than $190 billion — by restructuring the defaulted debt
with 92.4 per cent of creditors through two debt swaps,
one carried out by President Kirchner in 2005 and the
other carried out by me in 2010.
What is certain is that we were successful. We
succeeded because 92.4 per cent of Argentina’s
creditors regularized their situation. We began to
make regular payments, and not only to them. We
also fully paid our debt to the International Monetary
Fund through so-called stand-by arrangements. We
were able to completely cancel our debt with the
International Monetary Fund. A few months ago, we
also concluded negotiations with the Paris Club on
a debt dating back to 1956. It was so long ago that I
was three years old when that debt was created and the
Minister of the Economy of my country, who discussed
the restructuring and renegotiation of the debt with
the Paris Club, was not even born. Yet we reached an
agreement with 19 European Union finance ministers
to finally restructure the debt. We are now paying the
first phase of $642 million.
This does not end there. We also regularized the
situation with the rulings of the International Centre
for Settlement of Investment Disputes at the World
Bank, which has begun hearings not for acts or actions
committed by our Government, but for the actions
of previous Governments that ended up in the World
Bank tribunal. We have also resolved that issue, just
as we arrived at an arrangement with Repsol when we
decided to regain control of our energy resources and
expropriated 51 per cent of the oil company’s shares. We
also restructured that debt and reached an agreement.
We have done all this with our own resources,
without access to capital markets because Argentina,
due to the default of 2001, was denied access to capital
markets. This represents a process of unprecedented
social inclusion. Why do I say “unprecedented”?
During the 1950s there were similar inclusion
processes in my country, but the difference is that we
initiated this process of inclusion after complete and
utter bankruptcy. At the peak of default, we were able
to overcome default, to include the people of Argentina
and to enjoy social growth with inclusion. And today
Argentina is extricating itself, and in addition we have
one of the lowest debt ratios in the world.
The other leading case to which I referred and now
wish to discuss is the emergence of the so-called vulture
funds. That is not a term used by any popular South
American leader or by any African ruler, although
African countries have also been major victims of
these vulture funds. One of the first global leaders to
mention them was the former English Prime Minister
Gordon Brown at the General Assembly in 2002. This
expression became the copyrighted shorthand for
something unworthy and immoral that kept countries
from addressing the genuine problems of education,
health and poverty. Today, with the support of the
judicial system of this country, Argentina is now being
assaulted by these vulture funds.
What are these vulture funds? They represent the
1 per cent of debt-holders that did not take part in the
2005 restructuring. They could not participate because
they had purchased bonds in 2008. As everyone knows,
these are specialized funds, as indicated by their
names, that purchased funds or shares of countries
that had defaulted on their debt or were about to do
so. Subsequently, they did not revert to the country in
question for the payment of that debt, but brought suits
in various jurisdictions in order to make exorbitant
profits. “Profits” is hardly the right word, because what
has been recognized in a judgment passed down here
in the jurisdiction of New York is that this 1 per cent
grew at a rate of 1,608 per cent in a five-year period.
Is there any business, undertaking or investor earning
1,600 per cent in just five years? That is why they are
called vulture funds. Today, they are obstructing the
recovery of that 92.4 per cent who trusted in Argentina.
I am therefore pleased that the Assembly has taken
the bull by the horns, and I hope that between this year
and next — before the General Assembly holds its new
session in 2015 — we will have arrived at a regulatory
framework to restructure sovereign debts. The point
is to engage in an exercise in active and constructive
multilateralism so that no other country will have to
experience what Argentina — a country that has the
ability and willingness to pay its debts despite the
harassment of these vulture funds — has been through.
These vulture funds also threaten and hold the
economy of our country hostage by provoking rumours,
slander and libel from the personal to the economic and
financial, so that they sometimes act as a destabilizing
factor in the economy. Those who set bombs are not the
only terrorists; those who destabilize the economy of a
country and create poverty, misery and hunger through
the sin of speculation are economic terrorists. That is
what we want to spell out. That is why we strongly
advocate the establishment of a multilateral convention
soon and expeditiously, not just for Argentina, but
for the rest of the world. We believe that a financial
and economic balance that addresses the social and
economic disparities among countries and within
societies will also be a great antidote to those who
recruit young people who have no hope in the future
and enrol them in crazy crusades. We must all lament
that. We can see only the surface of the phenomenon; we
also have to delve deeply into the causes that mobilize
people.
We also talked about my country as a triple leading
case on terrorism and security. My country is the only
country of the Americas other than the United States of
America that was the target of terrorist attacks: one in
1992 when the embassy of Israel was blown up, and the
second in 1994 when the headquarters of the Asociación
Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) was bombed. This
year marks the twentieth anniversary of the bombing
of AMIA. I dare say before this Assembly — in the
presence of some of the family members of the victims
who have always been with us — that the Government
headed by President Kirchner did the utmost and went
the greatest lengths to uncover the real culprits, not
only because it opened all my country’s intelligence
files and created a special prosecutor investigation unit,
but also because, when in 2006 the justice system of
my country accused Iranian citizens of involvement in
the bombing of AMIA, I myself was the only President
who dared to propose asking the Islamic Republic of
Iran to cooperate with and assist in the investigation.
That request was made intermittently from 2007 to
2011, until the Islamic Republic of Iran finally agreed
to a bilateral meeting, allowing it to be included in
the agenda. That meeting led to the signing by both
countries of a memorandum of understanding on
legal cooperation that allowed for the Iranian citizens
who had been accused, and who live in Tehran, to be
deposed before the judge.
But what happened when we signed that
memorandum? It seemed as if all hell had broken
out, both nationally and internationally. The Jewish
associations that had sought our support for so many
years and that had come here with us to ask for help
turned against us, and when an agreement was finally
reached on legal cooperation they accused us of
complicity with the State of Iran.
The same thing happened here in the United States.
When the vulture funds lobbied before the United
States Congress, they accused us of collaborating
with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which at the time
was known as the Terrorist State of Iran. They even
lobbied on their websites, posting pictures of me on the
Internet with former President Ahmadinejad as if we
were business partners. Just this week, we learned that
the iconic Waldorf Astoria hotel, in this city, was the
setting for a meeting between the Secretary of State of
this country and his Iranian counterpart.
We are not criticizing them. Quite the contrary,
anything that represents dialogue and understanding
seems very good to us. But we wish to ask those who
have been accusing Iran of being a terrorist State — and
I am not speaking here of the last century, but of last
year — what they would say today about the members
of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Sham (ISIS),
many of whom not so long ago were called freedom
fighters when they were fighting in Syria against the
Government of Bashar Al-Assad. And this is where
I believe we have another problem with respect to
security and terrorism. The major Powers too often and
too easily seesaw from the concept of friend to enemy,
and terrorist to non-terrorist. We need to agree once and
for all not to use international politics or geopolitical
positions to determine positions of power. I say that as
a militant opponent of international terrorism.
By the way, just to add a touch of color, ISIS has
apparently issued a threat against me that is under legal
investigation in my country. The threat apparently has
two justifications: first, because of my close relationship
with His Holiness Pope Francis, and secondly, because
I recognize the need for two States, Israel and Palestine.
While I am at it, let me reiterate my call on the Assembly
to recognize Palestine once and for all as a State with
full membership in this body. We have to begin to undo
some of the Gordian knots — because there is not just
one Gordian knot but several — regarding the situation
in the Middle East, which involves recognizing the
State of Palestine, Israel’s right to live securely within
its borders, and Palestine’s right not to be subjected to
the kind of disproportionate use of force that led to the
deaths of hundreds of women and children, which we
condemn just as we also condemn those who attack
Israel with missiles.
In a time of economic vultures and hawks of war,
we need more doves of peace to build a safer world. We
need more respect for international law and more equal
treatment of those seated in this Hall. Just this morning,
I overheard one leader refer to the use of force to attack
the territorial integrity of a country.
Here too, the Republic of Argentina is a leading
case. For more than 100 years, we have had a claim
against the United Kingdom on a matter of sovereignty.
We once again ask the Assembly to call on the United
Kingdom to sit down with Argentina to discuss the
matter of the sovereignty of the Malvinas. No one
cares and there is not a single veto from the Security
Council, because Argentina is not a member of the
Security Council and is not even among the countries
that decide what happens in the world. So long as
that continues, and so long as the votes of the five
permanent members of the Security Council are worth
more than the votes of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya,
Egypt, Uganda, Argentina, Bahrain or the United Arab
Emirates, nothing will be resolved. We will just have
the same speeches we hear every year without arriving
at a resolution.
The Assembly must fight to take back the
powers it delegated to the Council, since —almost
paradoxically — the Assembly has to ask the Council
for permission on its decisions or on whether to admit
a member. We need to reassert that the Assembly is a
sovereign body of the United Nations, and that each of
us is worth one vote in a true global democracy. Not
everything will be resolved when that global democracy
is respected to the letter, but I do believe it will mark
the beginning of a solution. I am neither a pessimist
nor an optimist; I consider myself to be a realist. In any
event, the child of pessimism and optimism is always
optimism, but with realism. Optimism without realism
is either ingenuity or cynicism. I do not wish to appear
ingenuous or cynical before this audience.
I want to convey what we really think in my country.
We have long demanded reform of the Security Council
and of the International Monetary Fund. In 2003,
reform the International Monetary Fund seemed almost
inevitable; today, hardly anyone remembers the idea of
reforming the International Monetary Fund, because
it no longer plays a central role in decisions. Even the
International Monetary Fund itself and both its current
head and former leaders, including Anne Krueger, are
also calling for reforms with respect to the restructuring
of sovereign debts. So long as there is no international
treaty approved by this Assembly, no matter how many
clauses are imposed by the restructuring, there will
always be a Judge Griesa somewhere in the world who
says that they are meaningless, and who will end up
applying usurious taxes to bleed some poor country to
death. That is what is happening, because it seems to
me that they are trying to overturn the restructuring of
sovereign debt for which the Argentine people worked
so hard.
Before coming here I was in Rome, meeting with
a fellow countryman who today occupies a strong,
exemplary religious and moral leadership. I would like
to offer a message of peace and of peacebuilding. If
we truly wish to fight terrorism, then let us work for
peace. We cannot fight the terrorists by beating the
drums of war. Quite the contrary, that is exactly what
they want — a symmetrical reaction so that the wheel
again begins to turn and a price is paid in blood.
That is why I think it is important for us to think
deeply about those issues. Above all, I want to bring
to the table the certainty that if the United Nations
recovers its leadership, if the Assembly resumes its
mandate, when too many countries fail to comply with
international law, even though they require others to do
so, then I am certain that we will have made a major
contribution to peacebuilding and the fight against
terrorism from which no one would have been left out.
But we have to leave to our children a much better
world than the one we have today.
Finally, I wish to recall that a year ago the problems
were different. A year ago, we were discussing other
problems, other threats to security. Times have
changed. The wrongdoers of yesterday do not seem so
bad today. Those who should have been invaded and
crushed a year ago, today seem to be cooperating to
fight the Islamic State in Iraq and the Sham (ISIS).
First, it was Al-Qaida, and, I wonder, where did
Al-Qaida and the Taliban spring from? Where do they
get their weapons and resources? My country does not
produce weapons. Who sells arms to those groups?
Then there was the Arab Spring, which ended up by
being not so much a spring as a fall and even a winter.
Those involved went from being freedom-fighters to
being persecuted or imprisoned. Now there is ISIS, a
new terrorist organization that carries out beheadings
on television on a carefully set stage. What is causing
all this, I wonder? Where is this coming from? I have
become really distrustful of everything after seeing
what is happening in the world today — real-life scenes
that make fictional series look trivial.
It is therefore worth asking ourselves why it is that
we are facing ever-greater problems — problems that
caused the Pope to comment that there is practically a
third world war. That is true. It is a world war but not
along the lines of the more conventional wars of the
twentieth century. There are hotspots where the only
victims are civilian populations. That is why, a few
minutes from now in the Security Council, of which
Argentina is a non-permanent member, we wish to raise
some of those issues. We have no certainties, no absolute
truths, but we have many questions. We want to put
them to those who possess a lot more information than
we do, far more data and far more extensive networks of
information than my country has. Heaven forbid that,
with all those data, they have a wealth of information
but can understand little of what is happening. For they
have to be able to comprehend what is happening if they
are to come up with a definitive solution.
I deeply appreciate once again the political will of
the 124 countries that supported resolution 68/304. As
everyone knows, there was pressure to keep us from
getting that number of supporters or having a vote,
but I think that the exercise of practical, effective and
democratic multilateralism that the adoption of the
resolution represents demonstrates that all is not lost.
On the contrary, it is in the hands of each and every one
of us, each of our countries, to find real and effective
solutions to the problems the world has today.