First, I would like to
congratulate you, Sir, on your election to the very
responsible post of President of the General Assembly
at its sixty-fifth session.
I have the privilege of representing the Czech
Republic, a country in the very heart of Europe that has
been actively involved in United Nations activities
from the very beginning and will continue to be so. We
are actively involved in a number of United Nations
bodies, and Czech soldiers and experts have
participated in United Nations peacekeeping missions
for many decades. It is in our interests for this
Organization to remain a respected high-level forum,
contributing to prosperity, stability and peaceful
solutions to conflicts around the world.
It has been said here many times in the past few
days that today’s world is very different from that of
1945, when this Organization was founded by
51 States. It now consists of 192. That is not merely a
quantitative change; it is much more. My country is
therefore deeply convinced that the structure of the
United Nations also needs to be different, especially
that of the Security Council, which should be reformed
to reflect the geopolitical, economic and demographic
reality of the twenty-first century. It is frustrating that
discussions of such reform have gone on for the past
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16 years without results. It is time to come up with
concrete results, and my country is ready to support
them.
Changes of this kind are necessary; on the other
hand, some things must continue unchanged. I do not
believe that the United Nations needs to search for a
new mission. Its goals should remain those defined in
the original Charter: to maintain international peace
and security, to develop friendly relations among
nations, and to achieve international cooperation in
solving international problems. The United Nations
should not diverge from these principles. It should not
search for alternative or substitute projects to replace
those that enhance peace, freedom and democracy. It
should remain an intergovernmental platform, based on
the plurality of views of its Member States and on
mutual respect for their sometimes differing positions.
Let me briefly touch on two issues that form part
of the current United Nations agenda. The first is the
worldwide economic crisis and the methods used to
overcome it. I am afraid that we are moving in the
wrong direction. The anti-crisis measures that have
been proposed and already partly implemented follow
from the assumption that the crisis was a failure of
markets and that the right way out is more regulation
of markets. This is a mistaken assumption. It will not
be possible to prevent any future crises by implementing
substantial, market-damaging macroeconomic and regulatory
Government interventions, as is being done now. That
will only destroy markets, and with them the chances
for economic growth and prosperity in developed and
developing countries alike.
The solution to this or any other crisis does not
lie in increasing protectionism, and it is a positive
factor that most Governments have behaved quite
rationally in this respect. Nor does the solution lie in
more bureaucracy, in creating new governmental or
supranational agencies, or in aiming at global
governance of the world’s economy. On the contrary,
this is the time for international organizations,
including the United Nations, to reduce their spending,
slim down their administrations and leave the solutions
to the Governments of the Member States, which are
directly accountable to the citizens of their countries.
Developing countries should not be prevented
from growing economically. They need access to
foreign markets and they need free trade. It was in this
forum last year that I emphasized that we must pay
attention to the costs and benefits of our decisions.
Developing countries must not be forced into
agreements on ever more ambitious targets in the fight
against climate change, particularly at a time when the
developed countries themselves are far from meeting
those targets. The United Nations should not have an
all-encompassing agenda. It should not turn away from
political topics towards scientific ones. It is here not to
determine what science is, but to engage its Member
States in rational and reasoned debate about political
issues. The most harmful political debate we have
witnessed in the past couple of years is about the
climate and global warming.
We should not give up on elemental values and
principles that most of us share, and this brings me to
the second issue I wish to mention here today —
nuclear non proliferation. In April, my country hosted
an important event during which the President of
Russia and the President of the United States signed
the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and
Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. We see the
Treaty as an important step forward and as a visible
sign of our efforts to make our complicated world
safer. Let us hope that it will be taken further in the
foreseeable future.
We do not dispute the right of any country to use
atomic energy for peaceful purposes, but it must do so
in a responsible way. It is not possible for some
countries to ignore agreed and respected international
standards, to threaten stability in their regions and to
increase the dangers of proliferation.
The United Nations is a unique forum at which
small and big countries alike are represented. They are
countries with different political, economic and social
systems; different neighbours; different historical
experiences and geopolitical positions; and, more
importantly, different levels of income, wealth and
development. This is precisely what makes the United
Nations unique and irreplaceable. Instead of
increasingly becoming a source of funds for various,
sometimes very dubious non-governmental
organizations that — without any accountability or
control — seek to profit from United Nations activities,
the United Nations should strive to be an efficient body
in which States and their peoples are represented. Its
task is not to push for global governance and play the
central role in it. The United Nations exists primarily
to enhance friendly relations among its Members and
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to look for solutions to problems that cannot be
confined to national boundaries.
I wish you every success in your office,
Mr. President, and I would like to assure you that the
Czech Republic will continue to be an active Member
of the United Nations.