Botswana

I congratulate the President on behalf of the Botswana delegation on his election to lead the fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly. He can count on our support as he discharges his onerous responsibilities during this historic session and in the year that lies ahead. I also take great pleasure in saluting my brother and colleague, the outgoing President, Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab, for his outstanding leadership of the fifty- fourth session of the General Assembly — the last session of the twentieth century — and for steering it to a successful conclusion. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has continued to give a good accounting of himself as the chief executive of this, our United Nations. We owe him a debt of gratitude for the manner in which he has, without fear or favour, led the United Nations during the past four years. Five years ago, in this very Hall, we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. On that historic occasion, the former President 12 of the Republic of Botswana, Sir Ketumile Masire, had this to say about the United Nations: “The United Nations has served us well. Small States such as my own have found in the United Nations a vital forum for collective bargaining. It has contributed to the advancement of international cooperation in solving economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems. It is a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.” (A/50/PV.37, p. 3) Botswana's faith in and commitment to the United Nations remains undiminished, and we are here on the eve of the new millennium to renew that faith and to reaffirm that commitment. The United Nations begins the new millennium heavily laden with the residual problems of the outgoing century. Even as we meet here, bloody conflicts of varying degrees of intensity and savagery are ravaging societies in many places around the globe. Endemic poverty holds sway in the developing world, in contrast with the lavish opulence of the West. Diseases, the most virulent of which is the devastating HIV/AIDS pandemic, have continued to cause untold misery all over the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. All these problems pose a serious challenge to the United Nations and to the international community as a whole. The character of the twenty-first century will no doubt be determined by our ability and commitment to face this challenge. On the African continent, the struggle for peace and against war remains an all-consuming preoccupation. The agendas of the United Nations Security Council and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) attest to this vexing state of affairs. All the efforts of the leaders of Central and southern Africa, which a little more than a year ago produced the Lusaka Agreement aimed at bringing peace to the war- torn region of Central Africa, have thus far come to naught. There is no peace in the region because the Agreement remains unimplemented even as the parties have continued to profess their fidelity to it. The United Nations now has the authorization of the Security Council to deploy more than 5,000 observers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to monitor the ceasefire and pave the way for the deployment of a full-fledged peacekeeping force in the near future. A crucial element of the Lusaka Agreement, among others, is that there must be dialogue in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among the people of that country, if the international efforts spearheaded by the United Nations and the OAU aimed at creating conditions for national reconciliation in that country are to bear fruit. Regrettably, there is no dialogue in process in that country, although a facilitator has been in place for nine months. We hope the Congolese leaders will soon realize that without the implementation in full of the Lusaka Agreement, their country will be bereft of any hope for peace. There may be no second chance. The Lusaka Agreement is their only salvation. The leaders of Burundi, next door to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, recently gathered in Arusha, United Republic of Tanzania, to make peace under the facilitation of the former President of the Republic of South Africa, Mr. Nelson Mandela. Their gathering in Arusha attracted the presence of leaders from near and far, including the President of the United States of America, Mr. Bill Clinton. Regrettably, the peace agreement reached was embraced by some and denigrated by others, which does not augur well for peace in Burundi. It is our fervent hope that those who have not embraced the Arusha peace agreement will do so. In having President Mandela as Facilitator, the people of Burundi could not have been more fortunate — and for the second time. Before President Mandela, it was the late President Mwalimu Nyerere, may his soul rest in peace, who gave so much of himself for peace in Burundi. Burundi may not be so fortunate a third time. On that occasion, President Clinton had this to say: “So I plead with you: you have to help your children remember their history, but you must not force them to relive their history.” Burundi would do well to heed these words and save its children from the scourge of endemic conflict. The Great Lakes region of Central Africa needs peace. The neighbours of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, all of them, will not have peace so long as carnage continues in their backyard. Angola will not have peace so long as its neighbours to the north are strife-torn. The United Nations is making steady progress in Sierra Leone, following initial mishaps which 13 threatened to reduce this Organization to an object of ridicule. The size of the United Nations force in that small country should be enough to frustrate the murderous activities of the bandits of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). In the final analysis, however, the future stability of Sierra Leone cannot be imposed by the United Nations or even, indeed, by the Economic Community of West African States. It is the people of Sierra Leone themselves who must embrace the logic of peace through national dialogue and reconciliation. The silence of the guns in the Horn of Africa in the tragic war between Eritrea and Ethiopia could not have been more welcome. The region has more than enough problems without endless war. Famine is stalking the area, evoking earlier episodes of human devastation, particularly in Ethiopia and Somalia. In peace, it is hoped the international community will be able to assist the affected areas without hindrance. Our hearts and best wishes go out to the people of Somalia in their difficult endeavour to restore normalcy to their fractured country. We hope the new central authority they have established will be respected by all the parties in the country. The struggle for peace in Africa, if it is to be successful, must be prosecuted on two fronts — political and economic. On both fronts, I can assure this Assembly that Africa is not a hopeless continent, as some of our detractors would have the world believe. The Secretary-General's seminal report on the causes of conflict in Africa has not fallen on deaf ears. Our continent has been changing for the better for some time now. Changing democratically elected governments by unconstitutional means, whatever the reason, is no longer tolerated. Coup makers are no longer welcome in the councils of the OAU. We have come to accept that good governance and the rule of law, far from being regarded as sinister neo-colonialist concepts as some may wish to stigmatize them, simply mean accountability and transparency on the part of those who are entrusted with the responsibility of running the affairs of their nations. They mean cultivating a culture of incorruptibility, openness and tolerance. On the economic front, I cannot gainsay the obvious fact that people cannot eat democracy or good governance. Democracy in an environment characterized by abject poverty and ignorance is an endangered species. Africa needs investment and aid to buttress its democratization process. The challenge facing the United Nations in the new century is therefore to strive to ensure that Africa's difficult renaissance is not simply encouraged but also supported in material ways. The western world would do well not simply to shout at Africans, to pontificate about human rights and good governance and deprecate the continent's civil wars and endemic instability, from the privileged comfort of Western Europe and North America. Africans need and deserve hands-on solidarity and constructive engagement with the developed world if they are to succeed in their struggle for peace and development. Let me state the obvious. Small States like my own derive a sense of security from our membership in the United Nations. The United Nations is our shield against the vagaries and predatory nature of world politics. That is why we have been unstinting in the fulfilment of our obligations to the Organization. We pay our dues to the Organization without fail. We have participated in its peacekeeping activities. And we have defended it against its many detractors. It is no secret, however, that this United Nations to which we all habitually profess our unflinching commitment and devotion is perpetually tottering on the brink of insolvency. This is unfortunately so, even as we equally habitually burden the Organization with escalating tasks for it to perform on a shoestring budget. The Secretary-General is right in challenging us, the Member States, to hold one another responsible for the financial difficulties faced by the United Nations. We alone can resolve these difficulties. We must honour our Charter obligations and do so without conditions. We must strengthen the United Nations in order to secure our future, the future of mankind. We must continually reform the Organization to adapt it to the realities of the post-cold-war world and the new millennium. A crucial part of this reform and adaptation is the reconfiguration of the Security Council, on which there is sufficient consensus in our United Nations family. The Council needs a heavy dose of democratization and accountability; about this, there is no dissension. 14 We must strengthen the peacekeeping arm of the United Nations to make good or deliver on our Charter's pledge “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war ...”. Peacekeeping has always been a crucial function of the United Nations. And so the need to enhance the rapid reaction of the United Nations to conflict situations around the world has long been recognized and is deeply felt. The lessons in Kosovo, East Timor and, more recently, Sierra Leone have taught us that the United Nations needs better trained and well-equipped troops, as well as innovative, imaginative and realistic mandates from the Security Council. Let there be no repetition of the kind of humiliation the United Nations recently suffered in Sierra Leone at the hands of a ragtag army of bandits. The conflicts that are wreaking havoc on societies today are radically different from those that preoccupied the United Nations during the cold war era. We must therefore devise new and creative mechanisms and strategies for responding to them. Let me conclude my statement by reiterating Botswana's commitment to the United Nations and its Charter. This Organization is irreplaceable, and I am sure the presence here two weeks ago of so many world leaders to mark the turn of a new millennium is more than enough testimony to this obvious fact.