My first words are to congratulate Mr. Ali Abdussalam
Treki on his election to the presidency of the General
Assembly at its sixty-fourth session. Aware of his skill
and his vast diplomatic experience, we are convinced
that this session will be crowned with success. My
country, Guinea-Bissau, which has excellent relations
of friendship and cooperation with his country, Libya,
welcomes his election and assures him of our fraternal
cooperation during his term.
I wish to congratulate and express the
appreciation of Guinea-Bissau to Father Miguel
d’Escoto Brockmann for his performance and his
dedication to the successful conduct of the work of the
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sixty-third session. I should also like to thank the
Secretary-General, His Excellency Mr. Ban Ki-moon,
for his comprehensive report on the work of our
Organization and the excellent work he has done to
ensure the consolidation of peace and development
throughout the world. In particular, I should like to
congratulate Mr. Treki for holding the high-level
gathering on climate change on 22 September as a
prelude to the Copenhagen conference to be held in
December.
Six months after the crisis caused by the
assassination of our President, we have restored
constitutional normality, and the organs of State power
are in a position to fulfil the role entrusted to them by
our Constitution. We have just inaugurated a new
President, His Excellency Mr. Malam Bacai Sanhá,
who was democratically elected in elections deemed
free, fair and transparent by all political parties and
candidates and by international observers.
The party that I have the honour to chair, the
African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau
and Cape Verde, has a qualified majority in parliament
and in an inclusive Government, and now the President
of the Republic is from among its ranks. Never in its
history has our country enjoyed such great conditions
for stability. We have thus created the conditions for
implementing the reforms that the country so
pressingly needs, in particular, reform of the public
administration, with particular emphasis on the defence
and security sectors, as well as public finance reform
and the decentralization and modernization of the State
apparatus.
In this regard, I would like to highlight the role
and contribution of subregional organizations, such as
the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS), the West African Economic and Monetary
Union and the Community of Portuguese-speaking
Countries (CPLP), as well as of the African Union and
the United Nations, whose constant support has
allowed our Government to make substantive progress
in the normalization of the country’s political,
economic and social life and development. I should
like further to highlight the substantial support
provided by the European Union during the difficult
period we have gone through. In addition, I should like
to thank the brothers of the CPLP countries for their
continued commitment and solidarity.
The latest crisis situation in Guinea-Bissau
resulted in the assassinations of the head of State and
the Chief of Staff of the Guinean Armed Forces. Those
tragic events surprised and shocked all of Guinean
society and the international community. They revealed
the vulnerabilities of our rule of law and the
weaknesses of the national defence and security
system.
In addition to strongly condemning those crimes,
the Government immediately ordered the establishment
of a committee to enable us to find out the truth and
hold the perpetrators accountable. Since then, owing to
its concerns about the objectivity, transparency and
speed of the process, our Government made a request
to the Secretary-General that an international inquiry
be carried out under the auspices of the United
Nations. In response to that request and on the basis of
Security Council resolutions, the Secretary-General
urged the Government to continue its own investigation
of those crimes, offering, however, to intervene with
the African Union, ECOWAS and the CPLP to provide
the technical, financial and other types of support that
might be necessary. Following that response from the
Secretary-General, the Government sent requests for
support to those organizations but has not yet received
a response. The Government is truly looking forward to
any assistance that can be offered by the African
Union, ECOWAS and the CPLP.
We want to take advantage of our presence in
New York to engage with all those organizations to
ensure that conditions that would give a new dynamic
to the work of the Committee of Inquiry are
established, and we consider the attainment of that
objective an essential condition in order to ensure
genuine justice and contribute to the consolidation of
the democratic rule of law and the protection and
promotion of human rights. We seize this opportunity,
from this rostrum, to firmly and unequivocally reaffirm
that we are against impunity. We will not be a party to
it, nor give safe haven to any type of crime. So I can
assure you that the Government of Guinea-Bissau will
do everything in its power to create the conditions for
the Committee to carry out its work in a peaceful,
transparent and credible manner.
Those events caused a serious crisis in my
country, which led to a radical change in the priorities
of Government policy — specifically, it became
necessary to hold presidential elections. However,
despite the gravity of the situation, the response of our
9 09-52592
institutions was swift and positive. The President of the
People’s National Assembly temporarily assumed the
presidency of the Republic, as provided for in the
Constitution, and a date was immediately set for the
holding of early presidential elections, according to the
covenant of understanding among the political parties.
The tenure of the interim president, which has
recently ended, was marked by the promotion of a
constructive and frank dialogue between civil society
and political society, with a particular focus on
clarifying the objectives of the defence and security
sector reform, which is a crucial pillar for peace and
stability in the country.
In Guinea-Bissau, the creation of the armed
forces preceded the creation of the State itself, and the
latter inherited a burden of complex problems in the
aftermath of the armed struggle for national liberation.
As in other countries with a similar past, the problems
associated with this condition are not easy to
overcome, especially when facing survival issues that
plague all of society. Aware of these facts, the
Government held a round table discussion in Praia,
Cape Verde, last May to jointly evaluate the proposed
reform programme for the defence and security sectors
with the help of our development partners, the United
Nations, ECOWAS and the CPLP. The continuation of
the reform programme in the military and security
forces, within which the establishment of a Special
Pensions Fund is planned, specially designed to deal
with these issues, can contribute to solving those
problems once and for all.
My Government has just concluded a thorough
assessment of our national poverty reduction strategy.
The results of this evaluation allowed us to conclude
that we must strengthen our action on all the axes that
define the strategy. It also enabled us, after careful
consideration, to determine that the greatest
impediment to the development of our country lies in
the energy sector. It was concluded that the top priority
should be to develop an energy plan that solves this
problem definitively. We would therefore like to use
this forum to ask our development partners to carry out
the interim review of our poverty reduction strategy
and its respective programmes as soon as possible so
that we can organize, together with our partners, a
round table to address the need to strengthen the
technical, economic and financial cooperation
programmes with our country. This round table, which
we would like to organize under the title of
“Reconciliation and Development”, will take into
account the new strategic direction advocated by the
Security Council, with the transformation of the
current United Nations presence in Guinea-Bissau into
an integrated mission from January 2010.
I believe I am in a position to say that, by
working selflessly within this framework and with the
resources that we obtain, we will be better able to
accomplish the Millennium Development Goals set by
the United Nations, in particular with regard to the
consolidation of peace and stability in our country.
We welcome with satisfaction and encourage the
policy of President Obama towards Africa, as recently
clarified during his visit to some African countries; it
shows concern for the stability of our subregion and of
the world at large, and devotes greater attention to the
promotion of development. We also welcome with
satisfaction the peace initiatives that are under way in
the Middle East under his patronage, as well as the
United States Administration’s policy towards Cuba;
we hope that the embargo against Cuba will be lifted in
the near future.
We have been asking our development partners
for many years for a post-conflict programme for
Guinea-Bissau. A country with such severe shortages
as ours should not be abandoned to its fate, given the
profound consequences of the political-military
conflict of 1998-1999, which continue to affect all
socio-economic sectors of Guinea-Bissau. Guinea-
Bissau, which once possessed foreign currency
reserves enough to provide for six months’ worth of
imports and which paid regular wages to its State
employees, can no longer honour its commitments
because of the war.
I am therefore particularly pleased with the
position of the African Development Bank, which,
understanding the needs of a post-conflict country,
turned an important part of the financial resources
available to Guinea-Bissau into donations. Likewise,
we welcome the recent decision by the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank to negotiate and
conclude a post-conflict programme with our
Government, which will soon be joining the Poverty
Reduction and Growth Facility, which will enhance
cooperation with our key development partners. We
hope this new and dynamic level of cooperation will
enable us to benefit from the initiative for debt relief
under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative.
09-52592 10
I should like publicly to express our appreciation
to the heads of State of the West African Economic and
Monetary Union, Angola, Nigeria, the Leader and
Guide of the Great Socialist Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,
as well as to the CPLP and the European Union, for
their support in covering our budget deficit, which has
greatly contributed to the climate of peace in which we
now live. Moreover, we acknowledge the presence of
South Africa, Brazil and India, which have been
contributing significantly to mitigating food shortages
in our country through the India, Brazil and South
Africa programme.
I should like to assure the General Assembly that,
in bearing our responsibility for the governance of
Guinea-Bissau, we shall strive to continue to merit the
trust and support that the international community has
granted us. We will do everything possible to enable
Guinea-Bissau to make strides towards development
and the well-being of its people.
We are of the opinion that the people of Guinea-
Bissau themselves should seek to resolve their internal
problems, especially those arising from social, political
and military issues. However, one has to recognize that
the reasons for the recurrence of the cyclical issues in
our country are not only domestic in nature. Factors
such as transnational organized crime and drug
trafficking, in particular, have contributed to
exacerbating the situation in Guinea-Bissau.
By taking advantage of our shortcomings in sea
and land border control and in our administration
structures, which are weak in some regions, and by
using sophisticated means, certain groups have
introduced drugs into our country with the support
received from influential people in the State apparatus.
My Government is committed to participating in
all programmes and initiatives adopted in the subregion
of West Africa to combat drug trafficking and
organized crime, as we are convinced of the need to
establish mechanisms for coordination and support to
fight these scourges.
We are prepared to examine the possibility of the
participation of foreign forces in our country in joint
surveillance missions monitoring our land and
maritime borders as well as our airspace, in order to
eradicate organized crime and all forms of trafficking
in drugs, weapons and people, from or through the
territory of Guinea-Bissau.
I would like to state before this Assembly my
commitment as Prime Minister and president of the
historic party founded by Amilcar Cabral, the African
Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde,
to strive to put Guinea-Bissau on the path of peace,
national reconciliation and development. We will
respect all the commitments made by my Government,
whether related to peacebuilding, policy dialogue,
poverty reduction and the creation of conditions
conducive to economic growth and well-being of the
Guinean people.
I ask the international community and our
development partners who believe in our determination
to end the cycles of crises and the recurring conflicts in
Guinea-Bissau to provide a new opportunity to our
country for a true partnership in favour of sustainable
development.
I want to thank all the friends and partners of
Guinea-Bissau for their solidarity and support. I can
assure the Assembly that we will spare no efforts and
will not be deterred by any obstacles in consolidating
peace and political stability, promoting national unity
in Guinea-Bissau and creating better living conditions
for the Guinean people.
I leave this podium with a very special expression
of our gratitude to all those who have contributed to
this normalization, with particular attention, if you will
allow me, to all of the members of the Contact Group,
the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Guinea-Bissau, whose
mandate was recently terminated, all members of the
Security Council, as well as to the Secretary-General
and his Representative in Guinea-Bissau.
However, the most sublime show of appreciation
on our part would be to build a peaceful and
prosperous Guinea-Bissau for all its children, which
we will strive to do with all our might.