Botswana

Allow me, first of all, to express once again to the Secretary-General and to all United Nations personnel the condolences of my Government and the people of Botswana for the terrorist attack on United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August. We are outraged that an attack of that magnitude was carried out against international civil servants, whose sole mission in that country is to help Iraqis rebuild their country. The death of Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and a number of his staff is indeed a loss to the United Nations family that we shall all feel for a long time to come. May I now pay my respects to you, Mr. President, and congratulate you on your election as President of the General Assembly at its fifty-eighth session. I pledge to you the full support of my delegation. Let me also pay tribute to our illustrious Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, for his dynamic leadership of the Organization, in particular for his unshakeable commitment to the reform of the United Nations. I assure him of the unwavering support of Botswana in the discharge of his onerous responsibilities. The fifty-eighth session is beginning at a time when we are faced with formidable challenges to the cohesion of the international community and to the role of the United Nations in maintaining international peace and security. We have just witnessed the war in Iraq, which caused deep divisions and recrimination among the Member States of the United Nations. It is important that the Member States set aside their differences and promote the Organization as a force that can rally nations, both big and small, around common causes. For the United Nations to succeed in its mission, it is important that all Member States respect the Charter. Although now fewer in number, conflicts continue to bedevil the African continent. Fighting is still going on in many parts of Liberia, although there is a semblance of peace in the capital, Monrovia. It is a welcome development that the Security Council has decided to send a peacekeeping mission to that war- torn country. The peace process in CÙte d'Ivoire, though holding, is still fragile. Only recently, a military coup took place in Guinea-Bissau. Botswana strongly condemns the coup, which further tarnishes the image of Africa. We welcome the news that, through the mediation of the Economic Community of West African States(ECOWAS) and the African Union, the military in Guinea-Bissau has agreed to hand over power to a civilian interim administration until elections are held, in two years' time. Those conflicts continue to drain Africa's energies and to undermine the continent's capacity to focus on the equally challenging tasks of development and poverty eradication. The vicious cycle of war, poverty, hunger and disease has left African people in despair. They wonder whether in this new millennium the dawn of peace and tranquillity that they so aspire to will ever come. The inability of the international community thus far to act resolutely to address those conflicts will no doubt make it more difficult for the continent to implement its major programmes, such as the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). The conflict in the Middle East continues to be a matter of grave concern. All initiatives towards a peaceful settlement, including the road map promoted by the Quartet, have so far failed. The decision by Israel and others to insist on determining who in the leadership of the Palestinians they will do business with is an unacceptable precondition for genuine negotiations. Worse still, the threat to expel the democratically elected leader of the Palestinians, Mr. Arafat, is a recipe for further strife that could result in more loss of life on both sides. That development should be condemned by all who want to see peace in that land. In Iraq, despite formal pronouncements that hostilities have ended, the country is still not at peace. Instead we see an escalation of violence, with many people, including coalition troops, being killed every day. The situation clearly calls for an intervention by the Security Council to ensure that the Iraqi people are 29 given the mandate to govern themselves and that the United Nations is given a bigger role to play in the reconstruction of the country. Botswana firmly believes that the various challenges that the international community faces today can best be tackled under a multilateral framework. The United Nations remains the foremost body for promoting the Agenda for Peace. Small States such as my own place great hope in multilateral partnership and cooperation, for on their own or in their small regional groupings the challenges they face are formidable. We therefore call upon Member States to rededicate themselves to the noble ideals of the Organization. As we direct our energies towards peace and security, we must also remain focused on the twin challenges of development and poverty eradication. Those are global challenges requiring global solutions and the active participation of all nations. Our performance in efforts to eradicate poverty cannot be considered successful by any measure. Poverty still remains a blemish on humankind's attempts at socio-economic upliftment. The policies, strategies and programmes to address the situation have not had the desired effect. It is estimated that about 1.2 billion people around the world still live in poverty, and a large proportion of them live in Africa. It is unacceptable that in this day and age, when billions of dollars are spent on armaments, space technology and other advances in human endeavour, such a large number of people are still poor and marginalized. We should bear in mind that there is a clearly established link between poverty, on the one hand, and the political instability and insecurity that the world is witnessing today, on the other. Poverty breeds resentment, anger and despair. People condemned to the margins of society feel that they have nothing to gain by participating in the democratic process of governance. Instead they believe that they have nothing to lose by using violent means in expressing their grievances, for in their perception, the international community is indifferent to their suffering. Three years after the Millennium Declaration was adopted by our heads of State, the General Assembly should take full stock of the progress achieved towards the fulfilment of the commitments contained in it. Botswana welcomes the report of the Secretary- General on the implementation of the Millennium Declaration. It is the intention of my delegation to participate actively in the debate on this matter. We need to measure in concrete terms whether there has been an increase in the flow of official development assistance. We need to measure whether we have been able to mobilize enough domestic and international resources for development, including foreign direct investment and private capital flows. We need to measure whether we have resolved the external debt crisis. We need to measure how far we have gone towards establishing fair and equitable international monetary and trading systems. Above all, we need to measure how much we have achieved in the global fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In that context, it is regrettable that the recent talks in Cancun on trade, a key factor in poverty reduction and development, collapsed. Earlier, I referred to the need for the international community to address the problem of poverty with all the resources at its disposal; for the failure to do so will only increase the level of frustration and anger and feelings of powerlessness among the poor, which will in turn will provide fertile ground for radicalism and extremism. Botswana strongly condemns international terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Terrorism, like poverty, is now the biggest threat to civilized norms of international discourse. The recent senseless and deliberate attack on the United Nations office in Baghdad is a stark reminder that even the United Nations servants of peace and humankind are not immune from acts of terror. We must support the appeal by the Secretary-General for the adoption of urgent measures to provide protection and security to United Nations staff wherever they serve. We believe that the United Nations must be empowered to play a pivotal role in mobilizing international consensus around measures to curb the scourge of terrorism. In that respect, Botswana remains ready to cooperate in any way possible with the relevant United Nations agencies. My delegation was most pleased that a high-level meeting of the General Assembly was convened on 22 September this year to focus on sharing best practices and the lessons learned in the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As one of the countries most affected by that scourge, my Government accords the highest priority to tackling HIV/AIDS. My delegation fully supports the conclusions reached by the high- 30 level interactive panel on the critical issues that must now be addressed, namely, political leadership; stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/ AIDS; the importance of broad-based partnerships; and resource mobilization on a very large scale. We call upon our development partners, both in Government and in the private sector, to dig deeper into their pockets to support the efforts of developing countries struggling so hard to meet their obligations to control that scourge. Turning to the Secretary-General's reform proposals, while progress has been made in respect of the rationalization of the functions of the Secretariat, especially in the economic and social fields, formidable hurdles still remain in connection with the reform of the Security Council. The Open-ended Working Group on the Question of Equitable Representation on and Increase in the Membership of the Security Council has, in our view, done all that is humanly possible to solicit a wide range of views and to try to bridge the differences that have emerged. But, regrettably, little progress has been made. It is clear to us that this matter, which is of vital importance to the whole Organization, will only move forward if there is political will on the part of some key Member States. This issue cannot continue to defy our collective wisdom after 10 years of deliberation. A compromise solution must emerge soon or history will judge us harshly. We welcome what now seems to be an emerging consensus towards the revitalization of the General Assembly. The speeches delivered in the Assembly have been correctly observed by the Secretary-General in his report as being repetitive and sterile. The agenda tends to be too long, and often results in a duplication of issues. We share the proposal to keep the agenda short and focused, with a number of issues clustered. Long speeches should be replaced by more focused debates and interactive dialogue. We strongly believe that those modest reforms would make the deliberations of the General Assembly more interesting to our stakeholders. They would also enable issues of vital importance to be fully debated, and thus make it easier to implement the decisions reached. In conclusion, I wish to reiterate Botswana's commitment to the United Nations and its agenda. To us the United Nations is the embodiment of our collective will to accomplish the Millennium Development Goals.