At the
outset, allow me to congratulate our brother Mr. Nassir
Abdulaziz Al-Nasser on his assumption of the
presidency of the General Assembly. I am fully
confident that, given his renowned experience and
wisdom, he will ably execute the functions of his
position. I wish him every success in his work. I would
like to express our thanks and appreciation to
Mr. Joseph Deiss for his constructive efforts in
presiding over the General Assembly at its sixty-fifth
session.
13 11-51670
Our thanks also go to Mr. Ban Ki-moon on his
deserved re-election as Secretary-General of the United
Nations. We wish to express our thanks and
appreciation to him, as well as to the entire Secretariat
staff for their work over the past year, in particular for
their follow-up of the situation in my country.
We wish to congratulate the people of the
Republic of South Sudan on that country’s
establishment and accession to the United Nations. We
also wish to congratulate the National Transitional
Council of Libya for its presence among us and for its
representation of the brotherly Libyan people.
Since January, my country has been experiencing
an acute political crisis. The political opposition that
has been one of the main components of our system
since the unified State of Yemen was established in
May 1990 decided to relinquish all common
denominators and rejected the principle of consensus,
refusing to implement the agreement reached since
2006 following its defeat in the presidential elections.
It has created crises, raising its demands and rejecting
all compromises and solutions. Realizing that
democratic means would not enable it to seize power,
the opposition resorted to political manoeuvres,
including violence, threatening the outbreak of civil
war and complete devastation in Yemen. That could
undermine all the achievements of the Yemeni people
in the modern era, as well as their struggle to establish
a democratic political system and to protect their
national identity, social fabric, unique human harmony
and the system that we have managed to build.
At the beginning of the 1990s, Yemen’s national
movement made great progress by establishing a
unified State of Yemen, founded on pluralistic
democratic principles and coupled with various civil
institutions that promoted and respected human rights.
However, those who wished narrow, individual and
partisan interests to prevail did not support that historic
achievement. Therefore, they tried to stir up trouble,
using the conflicts and mistakes made in Yemen in the
early days of our unified State, as well as the
challenges to development — the uncontrolled
population growth, the prevailing poverty, the lack of
national resources, increasing drought and
desertification, and the scarce water and oil resources,
which were the main source of income.
All those factors have made it impossible for
thousands of university graduates to find employment,
which has led to social and political tensions and
frustration. But all the opposition forces used the tidal
wave of change witnessed by Arab countries to prevent
Yemen from achieving democratic change through
elections. However, we respected young people’s
demand for change and started a dialogue with them in
order to meet their demands for reform. We have
created tens of thousands of jobs in order to alleviate
unemployment.
However, the opposition parties abused and
misused the protests of our young people in order to
seize power, and some of their elements have carried
out subversive acts to sabotage the youth movement
and its just demands. The opposition parties rejected
the results of the democratic elections that were
conducted under the international monitoring of the
European Union, the Democratic National Institute and
several international organizations, which verified that
the elections were fair, democratic and transparent.
Our Government showed its readiness to meet the
requests of our young people and their legitimate
demands to build a better future for us and for
prosperity — a future that is hindered by my country’s
weak economy, limited national resources and the
prevalence of poverty and unemployment, as well as by
terrorism and the repercussions of the global financial
crisis. Our Government kept on calling on our
development partners and friends and international
organizations to provide financial and economic
support in order to achieve sustainable development in
Yemen, which would ensure security and stability in
our country.
The main reason for, and primary cause of, the
current upheaval in Yemen is the dissatisfaction of the
opposition and its refusal to endorse the election that
took place in 2006. In that election our people showed
confidence in the President of the Republic and chose
him as our President. The opposition’s rejection of that
process has led to the crisis that we are witnessing
today at the economic, development, security and
political levels.
Despite the intransigence of the opposition, the
President of the Republic offered compromise in order
to achieve reconciliation between the opposition and
the Government. That has led to the postponement of
parliamentary elections for two years. However, the
efforts of our President continue through his initiatives
before Parliament and the Consultative Council,
11-51670 14
whereby he affirmed that he had no intention of
running in the presidential elections and that he
accepted the amendments to the Constitution and the
electoral law, as well as an entire package of political
reforms.
Our country has incurred heavy losses, estimated
at more than $2 billion, as a result of the chaos caused
by the opposition parties, which have tried to cut off
roads, blow up oil pipelines and cut power lines in
many of our cities, in particular in the capital, Ta’izz,
Aden and Abyan. However, the Government continued
to seek a peaceful solution to the political crisis,
calling on the opposition to come to the table and begin
dialogue. We in Yemen are confident that the recent
division will be overcome by returning to
constitutional legality and remedying certain
shortcomings.
The Government offered a new opportunity for
dialogue by endorsing the initiative of the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) as the foundation for a
solution to the political crisis, especially given that His
Excellency President Ali Abdullah Saleh decided to
entrust his Vice-President with all constitutional
powers, to initiate dialogue with the signatories of the
Gulf initiative and to create a mechanism that would
guarantee a smooth and democratic transfer of power.
That would allow for reconciliation, reform, change
and reconstruction in Yemen without any violation of
security, the Constitution or democratic principles.
We believe that Yemen, as a country that opted
for dialogue as a means of overcoming the political
crisis, will provide a model for change in which all
parties are winners and the status of women is
enhanced. The President, following his return to
Sana’a, declared in no uncertain terms that he
supported the GCC initiative and was committed to it.
He called on all parties to initiate dialogue and to reach
a compromise with a view to its implementation.
My country is continuing to make every effort to
fight Al-Qaida and its terrorist acts in our country
despite our Government’s limited resources. We have
dealt some serious blows to Al-Qaida in Abyan
province in recent weeks. What we need at the
international level is an integrated global strategy that
would help us build our national capacities and thereby
enable us to fight extremism and terrorist ideology.
Such a strategy would not involve military force only
but would be of a social, educational and political
nature and would strive to eradicate poverty and
achieve universal justice.
The Republic of Yemen attaches primary
importance to human rights, which is one of the main
pillars of the United Nations. Since the return of unity
to Yemen in 1990, my country has made great strides in
this area. We have established a Ministry for Human
Rights and have become a signatory and party to a
number of international human rights instruments and
conventions, on whose implementation we submit
periodic reports. We have also submitted our national
reports within the context of the universal periodic
review of the Human Rights Council, with which we
cooperate.
In that connection, we welcome the outcome of
the review conducted by the Human Rights Council in
Geneva and New York, in which we participated
actively. There is no doubt that during the political
crisis many human rights violations have been
committed by all parties. The Government nonetheless
showed a readiness to conduct independent national
investigations and to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The Government also opened its doors to the fact-
finding mission sent by the Human Rights Council. In
response to an invitation by our Government, the
mission visited Yemen in July and submitted its report
to the Council on 19 September. However, my country
believes that resolving the political crisis is the key to
stopping all violations of human rights.
The Government of Yemen, during its
chairmanship of the Group of 77 and China in 2010,
continued to actively and sincerely work to achieve
consensus and unity within the Group, which led to a
consensus on many issues of interest to the Group,
including, inter alia, climate change, the outcome
document of the High-level Plenary Meeting of the
General Assembly on the Millennium Development
Goals, and United Nations reform. In that connection,
we wish every success to the Republic of Argentina
during its chairmanship of the Group. We also wish
every success to the fraternal Republic of Algeria,
which will chair the Group in 2012.
The Israeli-Arab conflict represents the main
threat to international peace and security. An objective
understanding of the conflict clearly shows Israel’s
intransigence and its Government’s policy of
establishing settlements, its rejection of the legitimate
and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, its
15 11-51670
refusal to abide by international legality, and its
rejection of the Arab Peace Initiative. We call upon the
international community and the peace sponsors,
including the United States of America, to continue
their efforts to achieve universal recognition of a
sovereign State of Palestine and to allow it to join the
United Nations as a fully fledged Member of the
Organization and other world organizations and organs.
Allow me in closing to reiterate my thanks to the
Secretary-General for his efforts in following the crisis
in Yemen. I wish also to thank all the United Nations
agencies for their humanitarian efforts in my country
during this political crisis.