At the outset, I should like
to congratulate Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki on his
election as President of the General Assembly at its
sixty-fourth session. I am confident that his extensive
diplomatic experience and talent will contribute to the
fruitful and successful work of the General Assembly
at this session.
In recent decades, the world has made
considerable progress in terms of technology,
information and economic and social development,
which, due to globalization, is being spread throughout
the world. However, the negative aspects of this
phenomenon, such as international terrorism,
extremism, transnational organized crime, narcotics
trafficking, pandemic outbreaks and emerging
ecological challenges, pose a serious threat to the
international community. The United Nations plays the
key role in coordinating Member States’ efforts to
effectively meet the challenges of modern times and to
attain the Millennium Development Goals.
Tajikistan regards peacekeeping as one of the
most important aspects of the work of the United
Nations. Last year, for the first time ever, citizens of
the Republic of Tajikistan joined police forces in
peacekeeping operations, contributing to efforts to
strengthening peace and stability in conflict zones. A
national strategy on the development of Tajikistan’s
peacekeeping capacity is currently being drafted.
Tajikistan attaches the utmost importance to
strengthening the disarmament process. We hope that,
at the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, a
constructive exchange of views will take place on
urgent issues related to the practical implementation of
that agreement. We are convinced that the
establishment of nuclear-weapon-free zones is equally
important at the regional and global levels. Tajikistan
is therefore prepared to work to enhance its practical
implementation of the provisions of the Treaty on a
Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia, which
came into effect on 21 March 2009.
We support the leading role played by the United
Nations in combating the illicit trade in small arms and
light weapons. We hope that important measures for
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coordinating further steps in this direction will be
developed at the next Biennial Meeting to be held on
the Programme of Action.
Tajikistan supports the efforts of the international
community to achieve the comprehensive prohibition
of the use of anti-personnel mines. For our part, we are
meeting our commitments under the Convention on the
Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and
Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on Their
Destruction, by providing mine-risk information to the
Secretary-General on an annual basis.
The first international conference to address the
issues of the consequences of landmines was held in
Dushanbe, the capital of my country, in June 2009.
Tajikistan has long suffered the effects of landmines.
We believe that Central Asia must be free from the
threat of mines and we call upon the international
community to do its utmost to achieve this noble goal.
The international community continues to fight
terrorism, extremism, transnational organized crime
and illicit drug trafficking. These combined threats
give rise to greater concerns. We therefore consider it
essential to expedite the adoption of a comprehensive
convention on international terrorism. Double
standards must be avoided in this endeavour, since
terrorism has no national or religious affiliations.
The prevention of illicit drug trafficking is an
integral part of the common struggle against terrorism.
Tajikistan has developed bilateral, regional and
multilateral short- and long-term programmes of action,
and ratified approximately 30 intergovernmental
agreements.
The Drug Control Agency established by the
President of the Republic of Tajikistan, with the active
involvement of the United Nations, has now been in
existence for over a decade. The total value of heroin
seized during these years, in terms of its average price
in Europe, is estimated at $1.12 billion. This initiative
has helped save more than 36 million lives from drug
addiction. The Tajik initiative to establish an
anti-narcotics security belt around Afghanistan was
launched from the lofty podium of the General
Assembly at its twentieth special session in 1998.
We believe that rendering assistance to
Afghanistan’s target programmes could be one way to
counteract the drug threat emanating from that country.
Regrettably, the efforts undertaken to date and the
resources allocated by the international community to
address this challenge have not always been sufficient
to counteract the increasingly aggressive spread of
narcotics. In our view, the borders of the countries
neighbouring Afghanistan should be regarded as the
front line in this struggle, and efforts to reinforce that
line should be enhanced. For many years, Tajikistan
has acted as a buffer zone against the spread and export
of narcotics, terrorism, extremism and other negative
phenomena emanating from this area.
We are profoundly interested in strengthening
lasting peace and stability in our neighbour
Afghanistan because the security of Central Asia
depends in every respect on the situation in
Afghanistan. Today, it is obvious that the Afghan issue
cannot be resolved by military means alone, but
requires a comprehensive approach taking into account
all the many factors involved. First and foremost,
social and educational projects and programmes should
be implemented in that country. We support the current
efforts at peaceful rehabilitation and believe that the
international strategy of action in Afghanistan should
to a larger extent rely upon the Afghan people
themselves, and that priority should be given to
ensuring close and efficient cooperation with the
country’s authorities.
The world situation is rapidly changing because
of the financial and economic crisis. It not only
undermines our efforts and capacity to achieve the
Millennium Development Goals, but imposes new and
complex tasks. We highly appreciate the United
Nations role and efforts to address the current threefold
crisis and mitigate its consequences.
It is well known that the global financial and
economic crisis was caused primarily by the most
advanced and wealthy countries, which unreasonably
inflated banking assets on the basis of unsecured loans.
We therefore believe that these countries must bear
their share of responsibility towards the developing
countries, whose already difficult situation was further
aggravated by the global financial crisis. Partial write-
offs of the debts incurred during the crisis, ongoing
increases in donor assistance and rational management
of labour migration would be very helpful in this
situation. In my opinion, it is high time for a number of
forums to be replaced by practical support for the
efforts of the developing countries to mitigate and
overcome the impact of the crisis. If the crisis should
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persist over the long term, it may be fraught with ever-
more serious consequences.
Along with other Member States, Tajikistan
supported the outcome of the United Nations
Conference on the World Financial and Economic
Crisis and Its Impact on Development. We highly
appreciate the efforts undertaken by the High-level
Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, and
deem it necessary to enhance assistance to the
developing countries in the form of financial and
economic support and the transfer of modern
technology and seed stocks.
Meanwhile, in our opinion the efforts to solve the
problems caused by the energy crisis have not been
successful enough. We believe that, along with the
Millennium Development Goals, access to energy
should be given top priority. Tajikistan, which ranks
eighth in the world in terms of available hydropower
resources — the total amount of which is estimated at
527 billion kilowatt hours — currently utilizes less
than 5 per cent of its potential, and over the past
18 years has endured a chronic energy crisis for eight
months of every year, primarily in autumn and winter.
In recent years, the electricity shortage has been
exacerbated by abnormally severe and long winters, the
result of climate change. It is perfectly logical that, in
the absence of explored hydrocarbon resources,
Tajikistan should develop its hydropower engineering
in a concerted and comprehensive manner.
The completion of the construction of a number
of small, medium-size and large hydropower stations
will help to provide energy not only to the whole of
Central Asia, but to neighbouring countries as well. In
this regard, the implementation of such regional
projects as the Central Asia-South Asia Electricity
Transmission and Trade Project will define the
development prospects of our vast region, which
includes Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
The ever-increasing need for cost-efficient and
environmentally sound energy requires the construction
of hydropower stations and water reservoirs, which are
essential to providing reliable volumes of water,
especially in years of drought. As hydropower facilities
generate energy by utilizing water rather than by
consuming it, hydropower engineering plays an
important role in developing energy production and the
socio-economic sphere, as well as in environmental
protection not only in Tajikistan but in the entire
Central Asian region.
Global climate change requires a comprehensive
and integrated approach to the use of natural resources.
We are deeply convinced that the Copenhagen meeting
of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change will
endorse a new comprehensive agreement on this issue.
Every year, natural disasters cause severe damage
to agriculture, the environment and the entire economy
of countries such as ours. In Tajikistan, 93 per cent of
the terrain consists of mountains. The damage done to
our country’s economy in recent years by such natural
disasters as mud flows, landslides and floods is
estimated at hundreds of millions of United States
dollars. Tragically, that damage entails human
casualties.
An assessment of the impact of climate change on
Tajikistan’s glaciers has shown that, during the period
of observation begun in 1930, the total area of the
glaciers has been reduced by approximately one third.
Since glaciers and snowcaps are the main sources for
water runoff into the rivers, there is a probability that
in the near future river capacity will be diminished by
5 to 15 per cent. At the same time, water consumption
has increased, due to demographic growth and the
expansion of areas of irrigation. In the previous
century alone, the total area of irrigated land increased
from 2.5 million to 9 million hectares, while the
population of Central Asia grew from 20 million in
1956 to 63 million people today. In these
circumstances, the countries of the region should
review their programmes and strategies with regard to
water use, especially in agriculture, and take
consolidated and concerted action to promote
sustainable development.
From this lofty rostrum, we should like once
again to remind everyone of the problems caused by
the degradation of the Aral Sea. The large-scale use of
land for cultivating such agricultural crops as cotton
and rice, which consume a great deal of water, has
become the primary cause of this ecological disaster.
The most reasonable solution to the current
situation, which is characterized by the salinization of
soil and the irretrievable loss of 30 to 60 per cent of
irrigation water, would be to adopt specific water-
saving measures, such as the rehabilitation of irrigation
systems, the reclamation of irrigated land, the
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introduction of advanced irrigation technologies and
the partial replacement of cotton and rice with crops
that consume less water, which would also help to
address the food crisis issue.
Only an integrated and mutually beneficial
approach of the countries of the region towards the use
of water energy and other natural resources can help to
resolve the interrelated energy, food and environment
problems and to ensure the sustainable development of
all Central Asian countries. It is no secret that
humankind is already facing a shortage of safe
drinking water, which is not accessible to more than
1 billion people on the planet, while in some countries
the price of freshwater currently exceeds that of petrol.
As a country that has one of the largest amounts
of freshwater resources in the world, Tajikistan is
convinced that creating an economic mechanism for
the cross-flow of water and energy resources between
upstream countries that are rich in water resources and
downstream countries where hydrocarbon deposits are
primarily located would promote long-term mutually
beneficial cooperation among those States.
Having put forward the idea of using safe
drinking water from Lake Sarez to meet the needs of
the population of the entire region, we propose specific
measures in that area. We hope that the United Nations
and other international organizations, regional
commissions and relevant institutions can offer
constructive and unwavering assistance on that issue,
which is of utmost significance to our region.
As the initiator of the International Year of
Freshwater 2003 and the International Decade for
Action, “Water for Life”, 2005-2015, Tajikistan
believes that it is of paramount importance to expedite
the implementation of the United Nations water agenda
and to enhance it by achieving the Decade goals. World
Water Day on 22 March 2010 will mark the fifth year
since the commencement of the Water Decade. In that
regard, Tajikistan proposes holding on that day a high-
level dialogue of the General Assembly to discuss the
implementation of the international water Decade and
the Millennium Development Goals on water and
sanitation. That event could be a milestone in the
midterm review of the implementation of half of the
Decade and evaluation of the progress in achieving the
Millennium Development Goals.
My Government has already put forward a
proposal to hold a conference for a midterm review in
Dushanbe in 2010 that would serve as one of the
preparatory events for the United Nations millennium
review summit in 2010. I hope that that initiative will
find understanding among and receive support from all
Member States.
Bearing in mind the water crisis, which has been
aggravated by population growth and global climate
change, the international community should take
specific measures to ensure the fair and integrated use
of water resources in order to meet the needs of the
people, environment and economies of all countries
around the world. To that end, the Republic of
Tajikistan has proposed declaring 2012 international
year of water diplomacy, with the aim of developing,
within the United Nations, further coordinated steps
towards the rational use of water resources at the
national, regional and international levels. Our country
intends to further promote that issue at the General
Assembly, and hopes for the support of all Member
States.
Next year will mark the beginning of the third
five-year term on the way towards the international
community’s achieving the Millennium Development
Goals. The year 2010 will be a landmark in the
assessment of our efforts to meet global challenges,
overcome difficulties and evaluate the progress in
attaining the goals outlined in the United Nations
Millennium Declaration.
In conclusion, I would like to stress that, as an
advocate of broad-based cooperation, Tajikistan
believes that only collective and coordinated efforts
and effective regional and international cooperation
can serve as a foundation for our common success in
that area. The mutual understanding and cooperation
that have prevailed in this Organization since its
establishment remain the only way to a bright and clear
future and to universal peace and prosperity.