Germany

First of all I would like to warmly congratulate you, Sir, on your election as President of the fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly, and wish you every success with your work. I would like to thank Foreign Minister Gurirab for his dedication in chairing the fifty-fourth session of the General Assembly. I welcome Tuvalu as the one hundred and eighty-ninth member of the United Nations and congratulate it on its accession. I endorse the statement of my French colleague, Hubert VÈdrine, on behalf of the European Union. At this session of the General Assembly, the first in the new millennium, we are asked to determine the future tasks of the United Nations and which reforms are necessary in order to master them. The Millennium Declaration, which we all adopted on 8 September, shows us the way forward. The implementation of this Declaration should be a main focus of the consultations of this and future sessions of the General Assembly. I propose that the Secretary-General make use of the opportunity to draw up review reports at the beginning of the next session of the General Assembly. There was one issue in particular which dominated this debate, namely globalization. It will radically change the economy and finances, politics and culture everywhere. The question is, will a new order which guarantees peace, justice and an equal share in our common progress be established or will a new divide evolve in the world? Will the future of the globalized world manifest its pluralist character in a multilateral order? Only the future can provide the answers to these questions. Particularly for developing countries, globalization offers great opportunities. If it nevertheless provokes strong opposition, this lies in the imbalances of this historical process. Indeed, just under a decade after the end of the cold war, our world is today at risk from a new divide, one between the winners and losers of the economic globalization process. In his impressive Millennium Report, the Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, rightly highlights the growing inequalities in the distribution of income, resources, investments and access to new technologies. In view of this situation, the international community must make every effort in the coming decade to ensure that globalization benefits all peoples. If market forces are not balanced by a political corrective mechanism, it is to be expected that injustice in the world will increase further. Those who have been hitherto excluded from the advantages of globalization must be included to a greater extent. They must be given more say in the political decisions made about steering global processes and they must be given an opportunity to gain a fairer share in the development of the world economy. In the twenty-first century, we will, more than ever before, need a form of global governance if we are to solve global challenges. The United Nations will play a key role here. It is the only organization within which the injustice between rich and poor can be overcome and where a reconciliation between peoples and regions, global peace and sustainable development can be achieved. Greatly strengthening the United Nations capacity to act is, therefore, a crucial question for the whole of 15 humanity in the twenty-first century. In addition to the crucial reform of the Security Council, this will entail the United Nations entering into creative partnerships with industry and civil society. Germany strongly supports the Secretary- General's idea for a global compact with major companies. The German initiative for a resolution in the General Assembly on global partnerships will take up this and other issues relating to the globalization process. Global poverty is the key problem in North-South relations. It lies at the root of many global risks and threats to peace. The Secretary-General provided precise and stimulating analyses of this in his report. The industrialized nations have a special obligation to support the poorest of the poor. With the Cologne debt initiative launched by Germany, we are combining debt relief with a strategy to combat poverty. The 20 poorest developing countries should be debt-free by the end of the year. The least developed countries should be granted access to world markets with the greatest possible exemption from duties and quotas. We must, also by way of liberalization steps in the World Trade Organization, prevent these countries from being socially excluded even further. This applies in particular to the new economy. The United Nations and its Member States must intensify their efforts to make it easier for these countries to use the information and communication technologies. This is contingent upon initiatives in the field of education, as well as the availability of the necessary resources. However, how can poor countries ever catch up economically if they are, at the same time, afflicted to a much greater degree than the North by terrible diseases? The fight against the disastrous spread of the AIDS virus, particularly in Africa, must be priority for us all. The focus must be on prevention. At the same time, access to medicines must be improved and vaccine research must be intensified. The World Bank's promising idea of establishing a future fund for the purchase of vaccines deserves every support. Particularly in the fight against AIDS, new partnerships between Governments and companies are crucial. The second major issue of this General Assembly is peacekeeping. The Secretary-General showed the way ahead with the Brahimi report. The recommendations it contains should be examined and implemented as quickly as possible. Germany will play its part. Peace missions need a more robust mandate, as well as more personnel and equipment. Member States must do considerably more to ensure the rapid secondment of well-trained troops, police officers and civilian experts. The further development of the police concept is one of the most important tasks in this connection as the last few months and years have, in fact been teaching us. The German Government will offer German training for civilian peace-mission personnel and offer civilian capacities to the United Nations stand-by system. In addition, we are drafting a plan for training civilian experts for peace missions, thus creating a pool of qualified personnel who can be deployed at short notice. The prevailing form of conflict today is conflict within States. Therefore the main task of peacekeeping must be to address the internal roots of conflicts. In addition to focusing on an improvement in socio- economic conditions, our efforts must focus on promoting human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, aptly said that the human rights violations of today are the wars of tomorrow. Numerous concrete tasks are on the agenda. The protocols relating to the involvement of children in armed conflict and to the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography must enter into force as early as possible. The equality of women must be advanced in all spheres. I call upon all states to ratify quickly the new Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and to abolish all laws that discriminate against women by 2005. The World Conference against racism, to be held in 2001, must tackle all aspects of this issue. Out of a sense of responsibility for our history, our State and our society will stand up firmly against all forms of right-wing radicalism, racism and anti-Semitism, both in our own country and in the world. I call upon all States to respect the integrity of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, to sign and to ratify it, so that the Court can commence work soon. There can be no exceptions to the Rome Statute. 16 One of the greatest dangers facing humanity remains the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The risk of regional arms races, particularly in South Asia, has increased. Further developing the international arms-control regime therefore continues to be one of the United Nations key tasks. This will require resolute implementation of the results of the sixth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Against this background, President Clinton's decision not to commit now to the development of a national missile defence system is very welcome. The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty must remain as a cornerstone of strategic stability and the basis for further nuclear-disarmament measures. In poor countries the excessive stockpiling of small arms must be stopped. We must therefore do everything we can to achieve tangible progress at the United Nations small arms conference to be held in 2001. This presupposes the inclusion of all aspects, including the legal transfer of production and stockpiles. Regional cooperation has proved to be an extremely effective means of preventing conflicts. The United Nations can do much to help here. Allow me to mention two regions where progress is particularly urgent. The triangle between Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East is full of destabilizing factors oil, religious fundamentalism, terrorism, drugs and the nuclear arms race and this area is threatening to become the crisis region of the century ahead. A new comprehensive regional process, along the lines of the Helsinki model, which fosters cooperation instead of confrontation, could play an important stabilizing role. Germany is prepared to take part in such a process. In Africa, regional approaches have gained in significance. In the main, however, it is, unfortunately, too early to talk of effective peacekeeping structures. Unfortunately, the efforts on the part of the United Nations and of the Organization of African Unity to resolve the conflicts in the Congo and Sierra Leone have not achieved a breakthrough so far. In the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea it is to be hoped that the ceasefire that has finally been concluded will be consolidated and that the United Nations peace mission will be lent the full support of the parties to the conflict. The third issue, protection of our natural environment, will probably become the crucial issue affecting our planet. In the course of the twentieth century the world's population quadrupled, while consumption of energy and raw materials increased tenfold. We must end the squandering of natural resources and switch to renewable energy sources as quickly as possible. This cannot only be a matter for industrialized nations. We are witnessing at this very moment what a burden high oil prices places on poor countries in particular. It must be in the interest of all States to bring about the transition from the oil to the hydrogen age as quickly as possible. The most important thing now is to finally overcome the deadlock in the climate-protection negotiations and to ensure that the Kyoto Protocol can be implemented by 2002, 10 years after the Rio Summit. Another key issue for humanity, the future of genetic engineering, can only be mastered within the framework of a global consensus. Genetic engineering has the potential to revolutionalize medicine and agriculture. At the same time, it raises more ethical and human rights questions than any other technology. Do we not need clear, binding rules for dealing with such a powerful new technology? Why do we not seriously consider within the United Nations creating under international law a convention that meaningfully promotes genetic engineering and safeguards the freedom to research and the findings of this research, while, at the same time, defining an ethical basis and guaranteeing protection against abuse? The Millennium Declaration points the way ahead. But what help will that be if an increasing number of Members allow the world's real problems to be dealt with and decided somewhere else? If we do not succeed in adapting the United Nations to deal with the challenges of the twenty-first century and in modernizing it fully, it will be sidelined, with fatal consequences for peace and development, human rights, the environment and social progress. We will all, rich and poor, lose out. We must therefore muster the strength to resolutely implement the Millennium Declaration. We need a world Organization that is strong and we must use its scarce resources more effectively. An important prerequisite for this is that the United Nations be placed finally on a solid financial footing. Together with its European Union partners, Germany has put 17 forward proposals for a fairer, more balanced scale of assessments, which must continue to be based on Member States' ability to pay.. The Security Council no longer reflects the political reality of our world at the dawn of the new millennium. We share the Secretary-General's view that this central steering organ of the international community must become more representative, legitimate and effective, also involving the developing countries. Last week Chancellor Schroeder reaffirmed Germany's willingness to take on more responsibility in this connection. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my friend and colleague Robin Cook for the clear language that he used before the General Assembly just a few minutes ago. The General Assembly must structure its work, debate global problems in a more focused fashion than hitherto and identify courses of action. The synergetic potential between United Nations organizations, for example in the environmental field, must be better used and resources pooled to a greater extent by merging organizations. Reform of the United Nations will play a decisive role in ensuring that the twenty-first century is safer and more just than the twentieth century. Allow me to conclude with a quote from the Secretary-General's Millennium Report: No shift in the way we think or act can be more critical than this: we must put people at the centre of everything we do ... Only when that begins to happen will we know that globalization is indeed becoming inclusive, allowing everyone to share its opportunities.'