I must confess that, when I arrived in this
city to participate in this session of the General
Assembly, I had intended to begin my statement with a
strong appeal on the need to rebuild multilateralism
and cooperation as the two basic instruments to
overcome what today is undoubtedly the central issue
in our global discussion, namely, overcoming the social
and economic crisis.
However, certain events on Monday and Tuesday
oblige me to begin my statement by reporting that the
Embassy of the Argentine Republic in Tegucigalpa,
Republic of Honduras, had its electricity cut off some
two days ago. That, of course, was not because we had
not paid the bill, but was for far more serious reasons.
Next to the Argentine Embassy is a television
studio which broadcast the news of President Zelaya’s
arrival in Honduras, the repression and the
demonstrations in favour of the return of democracy.
That was one of the reasons. In any event, we have had
better luck than the Embassy of the sister Republic of
Brazil, where, at an early stage they cut off not only
the electricity but the water as well — for having given
shelter to the constitutional President, Manuel Zelaya.
As a Latin American, I must recall that not even
in Chile during the dictatorship of General Pinochet, or
in Argentina during the dictatorship of General Jorge
Rafael Videla — perhaps the two cruelest dictatorships
in Latin America — was there similar behaviour
against embassies that were actively working to give
shelter to refugees.
I say this because it is crucial that we realize that
we must design and forge a multilateral strategy which
is strong and specific to return democracy to Honduras.
We need a strategy which would actually allow for true
respect for human rights and ensure free and
democratic elections — which can take place only with
full respect for the constitution. If we do not do this,
we would be setting a harsh precedent in a region
where, for decades during the national security
doctrine, suspensions of democracy claimed the lives
of thousands and thousands of Latin Americans, led to
the exile of many other and created the region’s most
serious economic and social tragedy in memory.
09-52228 2
I make this appeal because I played an active role
from the platform of the Organization of American
States, and also accompanied the former President of
the General Assembly, Father Miguel d’Escoto
Brockmann, to El Salvador in order to carry out a task
which would safeguard two basic values which, in my
opinion, our region has managed to develop:
democracy and respect for human rights.
Therefore, I believe that multilateralism would
also mean understanding that we have to set common
and general rules in this globalized world that must be
accepted by all countries. In this case, we are faced
with a cynical media coup which was carefully hidden
or minimized because, in fact, it was slanted against
the advent of populist progressive Governments in the
region. I believe that, for all of us, defining
multilateralism is going to require specific actions and
rules so that absolutely all of us will have the same
parameters when it comes time to judge conduct,
attitudes and institutional situations.
Yesterday I took part in the climate change event
convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in order
to bring positions closer together with a view to the
Copenhagen Conference, which will take place in a
little more than 10 weeks’ time. A decade and a half
ago we agreed on the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change, dealing with
environmental protection, and we later adopted the
Kyoto Protocol in order to begin ensuring respect for
those obligations undertaken by nations. A decade and
a half later, it is clear that neither agreement is being
satisfactorily implemented.
Essentially, this is sometimes because the nations
most responsible for pollution and gas emissions,
which should bear greater responsibility for reducing
those emissions, in terms of investments both in their
own countries and in developing countries, cannot
come to an agreement either. As I was saying yesterday
in our meeting, I think we need to understand that the
only possibility of successfully approaching
globalization lies precisely in the setting of common
rules which would be respected by all nations,
developed and developing.
In this framework, we should mention the
situation of the Argentine Republic, where we still
have a colonial enclave, our Malvinas Islands, which
persists without the possibility of addressing the
question of sovereignty together with the United
Kingdom, as proclaimed in many General Assembly
resolutions. We were recently able to agree, following
a humanitarian request, that family members with
loved ones buried on the islands should be able to
travel there by air to inaugurate a cenotaph to pay
tribute to those who fought for their homeland.
All of this points to the very clear need to look at
multilateralism not only as a type of rhetorical
statement repeated every year in this or other
multilateral forums, but rather in terms of concrete
results. Otherwise, it will become increasingly
complicated, with ever more unresolved problems. For,
in the final analysis, the multilateralism we have been
persistently proclaiming since 2003 has not been put
into practice.
My country and the United States are the only
two countries to have experienced attacks of
international terrorism. For Argentina, the first was in
1992, at the Embassy of Israel, and the second was at
the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA).
Hundreds of people died in those attacks. Today, in this
Assembly, I am joined by the head of AMIA, the entity
that was bombed, as well as by family members who
have accompanied him.
In 2007, then-President Néstor Kirchner came
here to the Assembly (see A/62/PV.5) to call on the
Islamic Republic of Iran to agree to extradite officials
of its country wanted by the Argentine justice system
in order to carry out a proper investigation and assign
responsibility for that serious attack. Last year, I
myself came here (see A/63/PV.5) to call once again on
the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran to
accede to our request. I said that there were
constitutional guarantees in my country; that the
principle that no one is guilty until proven guilty
beyond a shadow of a doubt prevails from one end of
my country to the other; and that we have guarantees
for freedom and the administration of justice.
Nevertheless, that did not happen. Instead, this year,
one of the officials whose extradition was sought by
the prosecutor on the case was promoted to minister.
I know that some 4, 5 or 15 speakers from now
the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran will take
the floor. Surely, he will once again deny tragedies that
occurred in the course of western history in the
twentieth century. He will surely invoke the threat of
other imperialisms. And he will also surely invoke
God. I would like to say to him that my country, the
3 09-52228
Argentine Republic, is not an imperialist country —
neither by way of belief nor as a reflection of our
history. To the contrary, ours is a country that suffered
from colonial oppression at its founding. During the
world’s bipolar era, we also suffered from the doctrine
of national security. I would like to tell him that, like
him, I believe in God. We may do so in different faiths
but, in the end, I believe that neither of us believes that
God could command us to prefer threats or to avoid
justice from being done.
As President of the Argentine Republic, therefore,
I humbly reiterate once again our appeal for the
extradition of the officials whom Argentina’s justice
system believes are responsible — not to be found
guilty, but to be judged and to be allowed to take
advantage of all the rights and guarantees that every
Argentine citizen and foreigner has in our country:
guarantees under democracy, whose unconditional
defence Argentina has made part of its institutional and
historical core.
I would not wish to conclude without referring to
three events that I believe are very positive, which I
would like to share with the members of the Assembly
today. The first took place quite recently, on
9 September, when the Argentine Republic received a
visit from the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights, including its Chair and the President of the
Inter-American Court of Human Rights. That visit
occurred 30 years after the Court’s first visit, during
the dictatorship, when it came to investigate the crimes
that were being committed and to take complaints from
Argentine citizens — including our Minister for
Foreign Affairs, who is with me today and who, like
his father, was imprisoned at that time — and to hear
testimony about the serious violations that were taking
place.
Thirty years later, the men who comprised the
Commission and the men and women who are its
members today visited an Argentina where criminals
responsible for genocide under the dictatorship are
being tried by judges in accordance with the
Constitution. We have also reached an agreement with
the Inter-American Court to send a bill to our
legislature — which I have already done — to
eliminate the crime of libel and defamation against
journalists. That is homage to the freedom of
expression and of the press. But I also firmly believe
that it should apply to all citizens. It is offensive that,
in the twenty-first century, someone could be sentenced
to prison for having said something and said it freely.
We have also reached an agreement to send up
two bills — which we have also already done — to
contribute to the recovery of children born in captivity
during the dictatorship. Those will include provisions
to ensure respect for the victims, as well as on society’s
collective right to learn their identities.
The second thing that I would like to share has to
do with the fact that I listened today to the President of
the United States speak about an issue that is crucial to
world peace and security, as well as to the rights of the
Palestinian people. It is also a key component of a
strategy against international terrorism, which, as ever,
we continue to condemn. It is genuinely satisfying, and
a salve to the soul, to hear from the mouth of the
President of the United States of America that there is a
need for the Palestinian people to be able to live on
their land free of settlements of any kind, as well as,
clearly, a right for Israel’s citizens to live in peace
within their borders. The words of the President and
the timely message he delivered at Cairo University,
which many here likely followed with interest, place us
in a position that we have not occupied for many years,
namely, the possibility of beginning negotiations —
successful ones, I hope — between the Palestinian
Authority and the Government of Israel to at last
resolve a key issue for international peace and security,
namely, the Palestinian question.
Lastly, I would like to tell the Assembly that, as a
member of the Group of 20 (G-20), which will meet
tomorrow in Pittsburgh, we would like to call for the
presence of another multilateral body to be heard from
at those meetings: the International Labour
Organization. In the two previous G-20 meetings, there
was a great deal of discussion about the financial
crisis. However, as we did then, we continue to believe
that a key issue is to once again discuss the real
economy. That is why we believed it timely that
workers and business owners, as genuine actors in the
real economy and as catalysts to re-energizing it,
should be heard from as well in those forums,
alongside officials from multilateral credit institutions
and the World Bank.
We are genuinely convinced that there is a need
to build a new multilateralism in which all of us are
genuinely on an equal footing; where rights and
obligations and the road map for the course to be taken
09-52228 4
are the same for rich and poor countries alike; and
where the rights and responsibilities of developing
countries are the same as those of developed States. We
therefore agreed that equal rules of the game for the
entire world was one of the basic elements of ensuring
success in building multilateralism. If we do not
achieve this, we will continue with these rhetorical
exercises year after year, but we will never achieve the
results that are not a right but an obligation for all of us
who make up this body.
In conclusion, democracy, the defence of human
rights, and equal rules for all countries in the world are
the three key elements to building a new
multilateralism. These three requirements must be
equal and the same for all countries, but above all for
those that, through their own actions and because of
their level of social and economic development, lead
the major developed countries of the world.
It is clear that those who have the greatest
responsibility and hold the greatest leadership roles —
won through military, technological, economic and
even cultural power — also have an obligation to
exercise that leadership in a responsible manner. This
is what we, the developing and emerging countries,
feel, and what we ask of the major nations of the
world. They have the responsibility to build this world.
This will no doubt be echoed in all our speeches, but
this building must be done every day through our
decisions and concrete actions.