UK

I am conscious that the central problem for all of us when we rise to speak to the General Assembly is that there are too many issues of concern to hope to address them all in one speech. There is no shortage of challenges to the United Nations as we meet for the first time in a new century to debate the issues of a modern world. It is a world united by the new technologies of communication. We have never had so much opportunity to share the know-how for economic growth. Yet our world has never before been so divided between rich and poor. In the year ahead, we must make sure that all the United Nations agencies and its international financial institutions work together in a coordinated way to promote development and to reduce debt. It is also a world bound together by growth in trade between our countries. But we failed at Seattle to make further progress on removing the obstacles to that trade. In the year ahead, we must launch a world trade development round which is fair to those countries whose main exports are agricultural rather than industrial. It is a world which faces a common threat to its global climate. We are each learning the alarming rate at which that climate is changing as the result of our own actions. Before the end of the year, we must try to reach agreement at the sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to bring into effect the Kyoto measures to stabilize climate change. Each of these is an important challenge. Each of them is a strategic priority for our work programme for the coming year. This morning, though, I wish to focus my remarks on the central theme of the Millennium Summit and of this fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly. How do we equip the United Nations with the capacity in peacekeeping that matches the real demands for it around our world? In his opening address, the Secretary-General invited us to give a swift response to the Brahimi report on peacekeeping (A/55/305). The United Kingdom is happy to respond to that invitation by offering our support for the report's conclusions and pledging our commitment to its implementation. The report begins by reminding us that the United Nations was founded, in the words of its Charter, to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war'. Too often, though, we have failed to save those who needed our protection from the suffering, the pain and the terror of brutal conflict. We must be frank in facing up to those failures if we are to learn their lessons. And we must be determined to improve the capacity of this Organization to keep the peace if we are to succeed in the future. I want to set out six tasks which we must address if we are not to repeat past failures. First, we must equip the United Nations with a more effective and more rapid capacity for peacekeeping. In the space of about one year, the number of troops on United Nations peacekeeping missions around the globe has trebled. The United Kingdom has forces operating in eight different theatres where peacekeeping has been authorized by the United Nations. 8 But it is not the new size of our peacekeeping effort that demands changes. It is the different character of the peacekeeping challenge. It used to be the case that United Nations forces were typically deployed to observe a ceasefire between two States both of which wanted to end the fighting. Today, our peacekeepers are typically deployed within States, not between them, and often where one or more parties to the conflict is not seriously committed to peace. In those circumstances, United Nations peacekeepers need a robust mandate. As the Brahimi report puts it, where one side is violating a peace agreement, treating both sides equally can amount to complicity with evil. United Nations peacekeepers who witness violence against civilians should be presumed to be mandated to halt it. But if those peacekeepers are to act with determination, then we must equip them with the capacity to do so. The United Nations needs a Headquarters unit capable of rapid deployment within a few weeks, not a few months, of a Security Council resolution. And each of us must develop the number of troops who are trained in the principles and practice of peacekeeping whom we can commit to the United Nations. That is why the United Kingdom has proposed a permanent staff college for United Nations peacekeeping. The United Kingdom has offered to host such a resource for United Nations peacekeeping, if that is welcome to other members of the General Assembly. The second task is to be more rapid and more imaginative in tackling tension before it results in conflict. By definition, any mission to restore peace is an admission of failure to prevent conflict. As well as coping with the consequences of conflict, we need to address the root causes of conflict: poverty, bad governance and the denial of freedom or of minority rights. I welcome the Secretary-General's intention to submit a report on conflict prevention early next year. It will be a natural companion to the Brahimi report. I hope it can enable us to develop an early warning system which will alert us to potential conflict and give our agencies the chance to offer help before it becomes a real conflict. Too often, internal conflict is fuelled by the external demand for the illicit trade in diamonds or the evil trade in drugs. Measures to ban conflict diamonds from international sale or to defeat the drugs barons must be key elements of any comprehensive strategy of conflict prevention. The third task is to take tighter control of the flows of arms which supply conflict. As an international community, we have put much effort into controlling weapons of mass destruction. The good progress we all made at the Review Conference of the States Parties to the Treaty on the Treaty on the Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) underlines the importance which each of us attaches to this strategic issue. The United Kingdom has ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, has reduced by half its planned strategic nuclear warheads, and has supplied greater transparency on our nuclear arsenal. Yet, over the past decade, the true weapons of mass destruction have been small arms, which have killed 5 million people in conflicts around the globe. Overwhelmingly, those killed were civilians rather than soldiers. And, overwhelmingly, they were killed in countries which do not manufacture firearms. We must make a success next year of the United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in all its Aspects. We need to reach agreement to mark firearms at the point of production so that they can be traced. The United Kingdom would support at that conference the presumption that military firearms should not be licensed for sale other than to legitimate Government bodies. And we must seek the help of the international economic agencies, including the World Bank, to fund and to reward with development aid the surrender of firearms. The fourth task is to provide the United Nations with the civilian resources to promote reconciliation and reconstruction. In Kosovo, and again now in East Timor, we have learned that the end of conflict is only the starting point. When the troops have brought peace, we need judges and administrators to bring justice and development. The peacekeepers must be followed by peace-builders. In particular, we need to muster the civilian police who can establish law and order in place of violence and conflict. I was astonished to read in the Brahimi report that this mighty international organization has only nine civilian police on its Headquarters staff, administering 8,600 civilian police in the field around the world. I am confident that every one of them is the very best, in keeping with the tradition of United Nations staff. But if we are serious about succeeding on the ground, we need a more serious back-up at the centre. Four times in the past 9 decade, the United Nations has been called upon to undertake a transitional civilian administration. We need a better, permanent, capacity here at the centre to support our operations in the field. The fifth task is to enforce the international law on crimes against humanity. If we are to have international justice, we must have an international court. The United Kingdom has given strong support to the International Criminal Court, and we have just published our draft legislation to ratify the treaty setting up such a Court. The International Criminal Court will send a strong warning to any future tyrants that they will be called to account for their crimes before the bar of international justice. It will be one of the most powerful advances for human rights since we agreed 50 years ago to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And finally, we must strengthen the authority of the United Nations. In 50 years, there has been no new permanent member of the Security Council. The Security Council needs to represent the world as it is in this century, not the world as it was in the middle of the last century. It needs to be made representative of the 100 or more countries that have joined as Members since the Security Council was set up. The United Kingdom supports a doubling of the permanent membership to include Germany, Japan and three countries from each of the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America. We also want more members among those who are elected, in order that the Security Council can be more representative of the General Assembly. For seven years, we have been debating this question. It is becoming an issue of credibility for the United Nations. How can we pretend to end conflict if we cannot end this disagreement among ourselves? A more representative, modern Security Council would speak with more authority when it challenges those who breach the peace. I have been frank about where we must improve our capacity for peacekeeping and strengthen our will to halt conflict. But we should not underrate the immense achievement of the United Nations. Our Charter begins by recalling the untold sorrow to mankind inflicted by two world wars. It was a Charter written by ministers and officials determined to end war between States. And in this they were remarkably successful. External aggression between States is now unusual. But the benefits have been unevenly shared. The industrialized nations have enjoyed half a century of peace. That has provided the security and good order in which their prosperity has advanced at a rate without precedent in history. Yet, in the same half century, people elsewhere in the globe have lived through violence and conflict which have broken their human rights and impoverished their standards of living. It is largely poor countries that now experience the scourge of war which our Charter sought to banish. The challenge for the United Nations is to ensure that the peace and security which have been enjoyed by many Member States are shared by all. None of us can prevent humanitarian catastrophe by acting alone. But this United Nations can, if we act together. The Brahimi report tells us what we need to do. As an organization, we publish many reports. Nobody could fault the capacity of the United Nations to produce reports. But we are not always as good at implementing them. Let us make sure that the Brahimi report does not gather dust on library shelves but is put into practice before we meet again next year. Let us show the determination and the conviction that the right in our Charter to be preserved from war is an equal right for the people of all our nations, large and small, rich and poor.