First, Sir, please accept my warm congratulations and my fervent hopes for your successful achievement of the mission entrusted to you. Your election to the presidency of the fifty-eighth session of the General Assembly is a fitting tribute by the international community to the people of Saint Lucia. I am convinced that with your experience 22 and your distinguished intellectual and ethical qualities, you will successfully lead our work to be carried out in the best spirit. Sir, I wish to convey to your predecessor, Mr. Jan Kavan, the congratulations of the delegation of Mali for the skill, dedication and spirit of initiative and the authority with which he directed the work of the fifty- seventh session of the General Assembly. I also take this solemn occasion to pay well-deserved tribute to Secretary-General Mr. Kofi Annan for his dedication to the ideals of the United Nations. The present session is opening in a context where the United Nations is still confronting challenges to its very existence; those challenges moved humanity 58 years ago to equip itself with an instrument of hope capable of meeting them. Let us recall that the United Nations were conceived to save ourselves from the demons of war and insecurity. The idea was to secure a state of grace one of man reconciled with himself and to create the conditions for reducing material want, uncertainty and poverty. Flashpoints of tension fire and smoke exist and are developing in many places. Poverty and distress are the daily lot of many inhabitants of our planet, particularly in Africa. The arrival of the new millennium brought enormous hopes. We have barely turned to the third page of this millennium and new challenges are assailing humankind. Upon us are other questions for which we must uncover the appropriate solutions so that our Organization will remain true to itself and pursue its goals without succumbing to a hijacking of its mandate. The Government of Mali believes that the United Nations remains an instrument of great value. Defining the rules of the game is one thing; applying them under the watchful eye of an impartial arbiter who has the necessary authority and the corresponding means to act is another. We need to work to make the United Nations that authority and arbiter. For its part, under the distinguished leadership of Mr. Amadou Toumani TourÈ, President of the Republic of Mali, our country is steadfastly committed to supporting the United Nations in attaining its objective: the full development of humankind. At the national level, our President is firmly committed to strengthening the institutions of the Republic and of communities, to promote democracy and human rights and to give a boost to good governance, economic growth and sustainable development. Peace and security are among the principal values held and venerated by the peoples of the entire world as they are essential for their social and economic development. Mali has been fully committed to the twin challenges of conflict prevention and conflict management. At the subregional level, Mali has sent troops to Liberia, and our President has been personally committed to solidarity with the Government and people of CÙte d'Ivoire in their search for coordinated political solutions to the crisis faced by that brotherly country. That testifies to the importance we attach to peace and stability. At the continental level, our country will unstintingly continue its tireless efforts within the African Union, which have deployed continuously since the establishment of the African Union to achieve stability, the guarantor for all economic social and cultural development. Therefore, Mali calls on all States to adopt a multilateral approach, subregional and regional cooperation and international solidarity, with rigorous respect for the sovereignty of States. The overall situation prevailing in the Middle East, in particular the conflict in Iraq, remains a burning issue of the day and a major concern for the international community. We should point out to the protagonists of these conflicts that war is never anything other than a political failure and that the victories of peace are no less renowned than those of war. Peace between Palestinians and Israelis will garner more fame than all wars combined. The parties to the conflict should be mindful of that. In addition, we invite the international community to provide aid and assistance to the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority because the destruction of Palestinian infrastructure and the restrictions imposed as a result of occupation have caused a clear deterioration of the socio-economic fabric of Palestinian society. It is therefore to be feared that the strategy of destruction will henceforth become a constant in how conflicts unfold in general. Terrorism is one of the gravest threats to human security. Combating that scourge requires strengthening national and regional capacities. It should be recalled 23 that Mali has ratified all international legal instruments concerning terrorism and transnational organized crime, as well as the additional protocol. It is encouraging to note that the international community, in particular the United Nations, has made the campaign against the proliferation of small arms and light weapons a major focus of concern. That is particularly reassuring because, for the last ten years, small arms and light weapons have weighed on the future and destiny of the peoples of Africa. Their adverse affects have been a great blow to human dignity, freedom and security. Mali, which since 10 May 2003 has held the presidency of the Human Security Network, calls on all States to unite for the success of the initiative of the framework convention on international transfers of arms, currently being drafted, which is expected to be launched in Bamako next October; it will be an important step towards the establishment of the mandate of the heads of State and Government of the Economic Community of West African States to transform the moratorium on small arms and light weapons into an international convention. In addition, Mali continues to be deeply concerned by the phenomenon of child soldiers and calls for vigorous action to put an end to that practice, if we wish to save future generations from the scourge of war. For many reasons, the level of security for the world's population has considerably deteriorated in recent years. Even today, in many African countries, people are often caught in the grip of conflicts involving guerrillas, rebel groups, civil war, ethnic war, clan war and clashes between militias, warlords and regular army forces. Designing a political strategy based on the idea of human security has now become a very urgent priority. For its mandate at the head of the Human Security Network, Mali has made its priority the issues of education in human rights, children in armed conflict, the campaign against the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, gender in peacekeeping operations and food security. In the field of economics, the Government of Mali is adopting stimulative fiscal measures in order to attract national and international investment, in particular in the productive areas of cotton, mines and raising livestock. But those efforts are being hampered by the effects of globalization. In fact, in agriculture in particular, it is not so much poverty that offends as the conditions that engender that poverty. To give but one example, Mali like other African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries is suffering from the cotton competition with developed countries, which each year provide five times more funds in subsidies to their farmers than they do to development assistance. Those subsidies have a direct impact on world cotton prices, which are lower than they have been for 25 years. That policy of cotton production and export subsidies by certain developed countries must be abandoned, because they are contrary to the rules and principles of the multilateral trade system. They are ruining African economies, depriving our farmers of their share of the world market, and exacerbating the poverty that we undertook to eliminate at the Millennium Summit. On another topic, Mali welcomes the adoption of the Almaty Programme of Action, whose aim is forge partnerships that will better meet the special needs of the landlocked developing countries. We believe that that Programme makes it incumbent on the international community to devise a new framework of cooperation with respect to transportation and transit a policy that will help developing landlocked countries to integrate into the world economy and to speed up their socio-economic development. To do so, it is essential that this Programme of Action be implemented with diligence at all levels, with the active assistance of the technical and financial partners of the landlocked developing countries. Given the major changes that the world is going through today and the many challenges that it faces, Africa decided to crystallize its willingness to act through two initiatives: the creation of the African Union and the launching of the New Partnership for Africa's Development. These two initiatives represent a clear and courageous vision of the way Africa intends to shoulder its responsibilities with respect to its own development and its full integration into the world economy. We deeply appreciate the commitment made by the international community here at United Nations Headquarters to support the tremendous task of development in Africa, and we welcome the actions of the Group of Eight aimed at establishing programmes 24 that will help translate into reality the commitments made in the African action plan. We hope that this example will be followed by the international community, because the implementation of NEPAD will require substantial and effective support. With respect to information and communication technologies, my delegation welcomes the upcoming holding, in December 2003 in Geneva, of the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, which will offer the international community, and African States in particular, the opportunity to discuss the role of those technologies and their impact on socio-economic development. The second phase will be held in Tunis, Africa, and we hope that the Summit will adopt specific measures to promote the development of the least advanced people in these areas. The world is in crisis, and the worldwide crisis at present is largely due to humankind's inability to comprehend and to take on the responsibilities required by the new role that is required in the world. In the context of this crisis, realities have changed also for the United Nations. Today we have to deal with those who had previously been overlooked. For Mali, the United Nations remains the living incarnation of this hope for peace and security. It is an unequalled instrument. But, like any other instrument, it can worn out if it is overused, and from time to time it needs to be reinvigorated in order to be more effective, efficient and modern and to perform better. Our Organization is at a crossroads. To quote a contemporary author, If we keep looking towards the past to prolong it, we are doomed. If we look towards a new horizon, then our strength, our creativity and the power of our intellect will do the rest.' The past of our Organization has shown its limits. We must now implement reforms that will allow us to realize our hopes for the future. Global governance requires the democratization of the decision-making structures that will implement it. The current membership of the Security Council, for example, no longer meets the needs of our planet. Its composition must reflect its universal nature. Therefore, we are in favour of opening it up and expanding it to include other Member States in order better to meet the complex challenges of the day. Mali has taken note of the commitments made along these lines by the Secretary-General in his most recent report and reaffirms the central role of the United Nations in the implementation of international commitments and the fact that this can be done only if there is a dynamic and innovative partnership between developed and developing countries. The creation of the International Criminal Court, whose elected judges and Prosecutor were sworn in this year, is certainly a success for the international community, which has fought against impunity and made it a subject of international concern. In fact, for two decades, the fight against impunity and respect for human dignity has mobilized all people of goodwill. Although recent developments seem to indicate that prospects for the advent of an independent international judicial forum do not appear promising, I would recall that the path to follow involves not only resolving conflicts and establishing peace, but also requires our determination to work together. We are convinced of this, and therefore Mali would plead for a strong ICC a universal ICC, acting as an instrument which cannot be deterred and which will help contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security. In conclusion, I should like to recall that democracy, justice, freedom, peace, security, development and respect for commitments are common values that are our foundation for, and give us a sense of, our humanity. All people must be given their freedom and their dignity. We therefore call on all States to look to the future to imagine and to promote the lifestyle that corresponds to the aspirations of our people. To do so, we are determined to reject any sense of fatalism of whatever kind political, economic, social or cultural. Indeed, today there are men and women who are capable, through their work and through their will, of realizing the aspirations of our peoples for well-being, peace, security, prosperity and sustainable development. Now we can hope to build a new world a world that is rich in its diversity within the framework of the United Nations and on new bases, a glorious world in which we can work together in a spirit of solidarity. Some of those men and women, on behalf of the peoples of the world, paid with their lives for their 25 dedication to the lofty ideals of the United Nations. Let them always be in our thoughts and prayers. Let us all work together. Let us all continue to believe in the intrinsic nature of human beings in their basic dignity and kind-heartedness.