India

I congratulate Mr. Kavan on his election as President of the General Assembly at its fifty-seventh session. I also extend my best wishes to Secretary-General Kofi Annan in this first year of his second term in office. Two days ago, we commemorated the first anniversary of a terrible event that focused the collective global consciousness on international terrorism. Terrorism did not start on 11 September. It was on that day that it brazenly announced itself on the global stage, flaunting its immunity from distance and power. 15 As a country exposed to the depredations of terrorism for decades, India empathized with the pain of the American people, admired their resilience in coming to terms with the consequences and supported the bold decision to counter-attack terrorism at its very source. The international community has taken some collective decisions in the global effort to combat terrorism and to choke off its lifelines. Security Council resolution 1373 (2001) contains the essence of these decisions. The Council's Counter-Terrorism Committee should now move beyond information compilation and legal assistance to enforcing compliance by States known to be sponsoring, sheltering, funding, arming and training terrorists. In our South Asian region, nuclear blackmail has emerged over the past few months as a new arrow in the quiver of State-sponsored terrorism. Dark threats were held out that actions by India to stamp out cross- border terrorism could provoke a nuclear war. To succumb to such blatant nuclear terrorism would mean forgetting the bitter lessons of the 11 September tragedy. As far as India is concerned, we have repeatedly clarified that no one in our country wants a war, conventional or otherwise. Nor are we seeking any territory. But absolutely everyone in India wants an end to the cross-border terrorism which has claimed thousands of innocent lives and denied entire generations their right to a peaceful existence with normal economic and social activity. We are determined to end it with all the means at our command. Let there be no doubt about that in any quarter. Yesterday we heard the extraordinary claim in this Assembly that the brutal murder of innocent civilians in Jammu and Kashmir is actually a freedom struggle and that the forthcoming elections in that state are a farce, since they cannot be a substitute for a plebiscite demanded over 50 years ago. It requires an effort of acrobatic logic to believe that the carnage among innocents is an instrument for freedom and that elections are a symbol of deception and repression. If the elections are a mere fraud, why are terrorists being trained and infiltrating India at the command of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency of Pakistan to kill election candidates and to intimidate voters? If Pakistan claims to be a crucial partner in the international coalition against terrorism, how can it continue to use terrorism as an instrument of State policy against India? How can the international coalition condone Pakistan-directed killings of thousands of innocent civilians women and children included to promote a bizarre version of self-determination? Those who speak of underlying or root causes of terrorism offer alibis to the terrorists and absolve them of responsibility for their heinous actions, such as the 11 September attacks on the United States or the 13 December attack on our Parliament. Yesterday we heard yet another patently false and self-serving claim that in India Muslims and other minorities are the target of Hindu extremists. With 150 million Muslims, India has the second largest Muslim population in the world; greater than that of Pakistan. We are proud of the multi-religious character of our society. Equal respect for all faiths and non- discrimination on the basis of religion are not just part of our Constitutional obligations, but, as the whole world knows, they are the signature theme of India's civilization and culture. We have to recognize that the developmental divide between the North and the South is becoming wider and deeper by the day. The challenges that face us are stark, and there is no alternative to having all countries of the world join hands to face them together. Over the last decade, 10 million people have been joining the ranks of the poor each year. A quarter of the world's population lives in extreme poverty. We have to find US$ 24 billion annually for investment in poor countries, if we are to achieve the World Food Summit goal of halving hunger by 2015. The continuation of widespread poverty, at a time when unimaginable wealth is concentrated in a small social layer, is totally unacceptable. The twenty-first century has all the means to end this sad legacy of the past centuries. What is lacking is the political will among the developed countries to sincerely and speedily address the legitimate developmental needs of the developing countries, especially the least developed ones. 16 Casting an even longer shadow over this grim developmental canvas is global climate change, from which the poor will most suffer, though they contributed least to it. The recent floods and forest fires in Europe are a forewarning that the countries of Asia and Africa are not the only victims of the fury of a degraded environment. The Earth's atmosphere and biosphere know no national boundaries. The choice before the global community is stark: Either we take urgent steps to protect the environment or be prepared for far worse natural calamities. Early this month, the Johannesburg Summit for Sustainable Development debated some of the linkages between poverty, trade, environment, national, international and corporate governance and global financial flows. We emerged from the Summit with some encouraging outcomes, but these fell well short of the demands of our time. It has become a categorical imperative to understand and address man's developmental needs in their totality, and not in isolated parts. It is disconcerting that the highways of development are jammed with the noisy and unruly traffic of materialism and its brash cousin, consumerism. Human values have become mute bystanders in most political, economic and social activities. The result of this imbalance between our material and non-material needs can never be happy for mankind. On the contrary, if we are guided by compassion, care, feeling for our fellow human beings, cooperation and other human values, we are bound to get the right solutions to every problem on our planet. Humanity is crying out for a harmonious integration of the economic, social, political, environmental and spiritual dimensions of development. This task calls for the closest possible cooperation among nations and communities, with a readiness to accept the best from every cultural and spiritual tradition around the globe. The United Nations needs to take up newer and bigger initiatives in this direction. In this Assembly, less than a year ago, and in the United States Congress the year before, I had extended India's offer to coordinate a comprehensive global development dialogue. I reiterate that offer today. If we are to achieve the development goals we have promised ourselves by 2015, we need such a dialogue urgently. As we come together once again at the United Nations, at a time of new and diverse challenges, we should reflect on our collective commitment to the Charter, its purposes and principles. There is a growing perception, particularly among the weaker and poorer countries, that responses to issues of far-reaching impact often seem arbitrary and contradictory. A common destiny is at stake. The world needs collective multilateralism. It needs the United Nations, the coming together and working together of all its nations in the development of a common and collective perspective. Conflicts arise when there is no spirit of democracy within and among nations. A genuinely democratic framework enables us to respect alternative points of view, to value diversity and to fashion solutions responsive to the aspirations of people. India's own experience as a hugely populated and diverse nation shows how complex problems can be addressed within a constitutional and democratic framework. These values need to be assiduously nurtured in our societies, so that at least a future generation is rid of the scourge of poverty, intolerance, obscurantism and religious extremism. Democratic societies are far less prone to ideologies based on violence or militarist yearnings, since they do not have their fingers permanently on the trigger of a gun. We have to be vigilant against threats to democracy worldwide arising from forces that are opposed to it, be they rooted in fundamentalist political ideologies or extremist religious dogmas. All of us are aware of the challenges. Most of us are agreed that a stable global order has to rest on the four strong pillars of peace, security, sustainable development and democracy. We have to ensure that each of these pillars is strong and resilient. We are conscious of our collective responsibility. It is the leap from this theoretical understanding to its practical realization that we have often failed to execute. We should not fail again. Our future generations will not forgive us if we do.