Belarus

Please accept our sincere congratulations, Sir, on the occasion of your election to preside over the fifty-third session, as well as our wishes for success in realizing the goals and principles of the United Nations. We welcome all the efforts of the Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, for the benefit of the Organization and its Member States, and sincerely wish him further success on his way, which is strewn not with roses alone. With appropriate respect and great appreciation for the activities of the President of the General Assembly at its fifty-second session, Mr. Hennadiy Udovenko of Ukraine, we wish him important achievements in his activities as a Member of Parliament in his native country. Today, on the very threshold of the third millennium, it becomes clear for the majority of Member States that the time has come to take comprehensive measures for everyone to turn the determination of the peoples of the United Nations, declared in its Charter, into reality “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war ... to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours”. In fact, that was the ultimate goal behind all the diverse activities of the United Nations in the years after its Charter came into force in 1945. The world goes through non-stop change. Today the global environment in which Member States cooperate to achieve the goals of the Charter is different from that of half a century ago. United Nations activities should reflect more adequately those sweeping changes of the second half of the twentieth century, many of which shattered the world. The Government of the Republic of Belarus has been persistent and consistent in its efforts to promote peace, friendship, good-neighbourly relations and mutually beneficial cooperation. This policy is enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus, chapter 18 of which, in particular, declares: “In its foreign policy the Republic of Belarus proceeds from the principles of the equality of States, non-use of force or the threat to use force, inviolability of frontiers, peaceful settlement of disputes, non-interference in internal affairs of States and other universally acknowledged principles and standards of international law. “The Republic of Belarus pledges itself to make its territory a neutral, nuclear-weapon-free State.” 30 Thus the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus is consistent with all our obligations under the United Nations Charter and other instruments of international law to which Belarus is a party. The United Nations is to define far-reaching goals and guidelines for international cooperation into the twenty-first century. Everybody wants to be better off, to have the opportunity to work and live in peace and freedom. There is a need for the United Nations to elaborate an effective legislative, economic, social and political framework to give humankind an opportunity to realize these legitimate aspirations in an environment much more favourable than the one we have had in the century that draws to its close. Most global problems are persistent, hard to resolve and resist old approaches. We should seek new solutions and reach agreements to do away with the problems in unconventional, innovative ways. I believe that the proposed reform of the United Nations will give us a good opportunity to achieve this. Our attitude to the reform was defined in the letter of the President of the Republic of Belarus, His Excellency Mr. Alyaksandr Lukashenka, to the Secretary-General. We must ensure that reforming the activities of the United Nations does not disrupt the attainment of its goals and the implementation of its principles or derogate the interests of Member States and regional groups. Reforms should not mean disorganization. Reforms should mean the synergy of the best United Nations achievements in all areas of its activities, which have been developed for more than half a century. We believe in the ability of the Secretary-General and his staff to lead our Organization exactly in the required direction. On its part, the Republic of Belarus will do its utmost to contribute in all ways possible to the enhancement of the efficiency of the United Nations and its specialized agencies, and will seek generally acceptable agreements on all the issues of the global agenda. Strengthening the United Nations system and reforming the Security Council on the basis of just and balanced representation of the regional groups would be most instrumental in this respect. Together with other East European States, in particular members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Belarus has been an active initial proponent of the demand to allocate an additional non-permanent seat to that group in the expanded Security Council. People all over the world and the international community as a whole can no longer tolerate the killing of human beings in inter-State and intra-State armed conflicts. During the years after the Second World War thousands upon thousands, if not millions of people, have been killed. Nevertheless, hostilities continue in different regions of the globe. Conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans stay unresolved; still unsettled are situations in Cyprus and other regions. In these tremendously difficult circumstances the United Nations is continuing to fulfil its responsibility with dignity. Yet there is ample room for further improvement. We consider that the principles of the peaceful settlement of disputes and non-interference in internal affairs should be strictly observed while bringing about reconciliation in regional and domestic conflicts. Any enforcement measures should only be applied following the adoption of a Security Council resolution. Accordingly, the use of force by individual States or regional organizations at their own discretion should not be permissible. One of the objectives stipulated in the United Nations Charter, in the preamble, is “to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest”. It is difficult for the Government and people of the Republic of Belarus to comprehend why in certain quarters the idea of a military attack on the sovereign State of Yugoslavia is being publicly discussed just because the latter decided to solve its domestic problems, though really complicated, in its own way and would not rubber-stamp recipes enforced from outside. It is also time that Yugoslavia?s full membership of the United Nations be resumed. The mere threat of the use of force could seriously disrupt peace and stability in Europe, revive old fears and animosities and generate more distrust. The very serious problems that humanity faces today can be solved by reason and joint actions, rather than by force. Paradoxically, despite the ever growing industrial and economic output in the world, the number of people living below the poverty line is not diminishing. More and more people are becoming refugees or displaced persons. Humanism, justice, fairness and respect for human rights have not become universal. Terrorism, organized crime and illegal drug trafficking have not been overcome, and even tend to grow. We share the Secretary-General?s view that the forces of globalization “pose extraordinary opportunities, as well as enormous challenges”. (A/53/1, para. 229) The recent financial crisis in many parts of the world is one of the latest and clearest manifestations of that. 31 Ecological interdependence has not yet become a matter of common awareness, as evidenced, in particular, by the attitude to efforts to mitigate the after-effects of the Chernobyl disaster. Belarus, which absorbed 70 per cent of all the radioactive Chernobyl fallout, spends one fifth of its budget annually to eliminate the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe. We are grateful for all international assistance, particularly in the rehabilitation of children. At the same time, the United Nations has prepared the inter- agency programme of international assistance to areas affected by the Chernobyl disaster, in order to revive international interaction for Chernobyl programmes and make it more purposeful and effective. Furthermore, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has organized two international special donor meetings to raise funds for the implementation of this programme, estimated at $74 million. Yet the results of those meetings appear modest so far and demonstrate a disappointing deficit of international solidarity with the affected countries in solving their problems. Given the global dimensions and implications of the disaster, I would like to take this opportunity to again call on the donor countries, international organizations and non- governmental organizations to consider every possibility of their participation in financing the implementation of the programme. It is common knowledge that Belarus took an unprecedented step in post-world-war history by voluntarily and unconditionally renouncing the nuclear arsenal in its possession. Ukraine and Kazakhstan undertook similar measures, but at a later stage. These initiatives received unanimous high international appreciation, as confirmed by relevant United Nations resolutions, and were also endorsed by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member States, which explicitly welcomed the step. The latter specifically voiced, through NATO?s Secretary-General, its support of the goal shared by Belarus to “establish a common security system that would meet the interests of all States”. At first, it seemed that there was a will to legally consolidate a newly emerging international security system and to promote disarmament, non-proliferation and the non- use of nuclear weapons. Those aspirations, however, have yet to be realized. According to the United Nations Disarmament Commission, nuclear-weapon-free zones at present cover more than half of the Earth?s surface, with an aggregate membership of 144 countries. Yet there is still resistance to the creation of new nuclear-weapon-free zones, in the southern hemisphere as well as the northern hemisphere. Therefore, the Belarus initiative of retaining a nuclear- weapon-free status quo in Central and Eastern Europe is also stalled. The emergence of new nuclear-capable countries also affected the situation with regard to the existing nuclear-weapon-free zones, whose members have yet to win the acknowledgement of their nuclear-weapon- free status by the nuclear States. Moreover, there are no guarantees that other “threshold” States will not express in the future their intention to join the “nuclear club”. We urge those Member States which have not yet done so to accede to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). We would also welcome progress in the respective activities of the Conference on Disarmament and the United Nations Disarmament Commission. In view of the above, a more constructive approach to the issue of disarmament and arms limitation, inter alia, in the nuclear field, is called for. The reduction of nuclear stockpiles currently under way in the United States and Russia is to be complemented by similar efforts by other holders of nuclear weapons, so as to jointly facilitate the complete disbanding of nuclear and other means of mass destruction. It is the ultimate objective. To attain it, a number of specific prerequisites must be created. I would like to refer in particular to the statement of the NATO ministerial meeting on 10 December 1996, confirmed by the NATO heads of State or Government in the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Russian Federation of 27 May 1997, which maintains that “the NATO States have no intention, plan or reason to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of the new members.” We believe that that statement by NATO deserves approval by a General Assembly resolution. I should also mention the 1996 Stockholm Declaration of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly, which contains a reference to the decision of the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference that “the establishment of additional nuclear-weapon-free zones by the time of the Review Conference in the year 2000 would be welcome.” (NPT/Conf.1995/32, Part I, Decision 2, para. 6) With due regard to that, we cannot accept the argument that it is premature to discuss and implement the initiative to create a nuclear-weapon-free space in 32 Central and Eastern Europe at this juncture, and that it might only be addressed in the distant future. Inspired by new partnerships, we cannot possibly let the existing de facto nuclear-weapon-free status of Central and Eastern Europe evaporate. We are convinced that the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free space in Europe would constructively contribute to the shaping of a new European security architecture aspired to by all the OSCE Member States. The fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is widely celebrated this year throughout the world. The provisions of the Declaration and other international instruments on human rights, to which Belarus is a dutiful party, are reflected in the Constitution and other legislation of my country and are strictly implemented at the State level, proceeding from the indivisibility and interdependency of civil rights and obligations. Much has been done in Belarus to highlight the United Nations efforts to promote and protect human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was reprinted and widely circulated. The National Assembly held parliamentary hearings devoted to human rights. It should be noted here that the hearings were broadcast live on Belorussian radio in their entirety. Other undertakings are envisaged, including preparations to introduce the institution of Ombudsman in Belarus. All these efforts are aimed, to cite the United Nations Charter, at promoting “social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”. The representatives of Belarus will give a detailed account of these matters during the discussion of relevant issues on the agenda. At the same time, we share the position of other Member States that there is an ever pressing need to observe the United Nations Charter and declarations based thereon concerning non-interference in the internal affairs of States and the protection of their independence and sovereignty. The same is true of the principles of international law referring to friendly relations and cooperation between States. I would like to pay special tribute to the positive experience Belarus has gained in cooperating with United Nations bodies. We greatly appreciate the role and importance of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in our country regarding human resources development, strengthening the potential of State management, restructuring industries and creating civil society. We hope for a broadening of the United Nations programme activities related to solving the problems faced by the Republic of Belarus and other countries with economies in transition. Our people live in a non-violent environment and work very hard to overcome current economic difficulties and achieve substantial output in the State-owned and private sectors. In that context, in 1997 gross domestic product increased by 10 per cent and industrial output by 17 per cent, and the production of consumer goods also rose. This all came about as a result of the efforts made by the Belorussian people, as well as through the promotion of subregional integration and cooperation with other countries. Belarus, like other CIS States, is painstakingly striving to overcome the tremendous difficulties that emerged in the country after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Now that we are in a period of transition, my country would be justified in expecting encouragement, solidarity and support from the international community. We would appreciate such support from all countries and from every people of the world. The Republic of Belarus is committed to the conscientious fulfilment of all its international obligations under the United Nations Charter in their integrity, and we wish success to the family of nations in this work.