On behalf of the people and the Government
of Turkmenistan, I heartily welcome and congratulate
you, Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki, on the opening of the
sixty-fourth session of the General Assembly and on
your election as President of the Assembly and express
my confidence that, under your leadership, this body
will work successfully and fruitfully. I should also like
to thank Mr. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, President of
the General Assembly at its sixty-third session, for his
skilful and effective work in that post.
The current state of global realities and the nature
of and trends in today’s political, economic and social
processes objectively require closer and more
coordinated interaction between States and major
international organizations if we are to accomplish our
common main goals: achieving world peace and
security, creating conditions for further development
and progress, and protecting the legal and moral
foundations of today’s world order.
The level of effectiveness of such interaction,
striking a reasonable balance between national interests
and the interests of the entire international community,
will greatly determine how successfully we resolve
equally important global problems with regard to the
ecology, energy, food, issues of fair distribution of
water resources, effectiveness in fighting poverty and
infectious diseases, countering the drug threat and
many other challenges.
It is impossible to talk about achieving these
goals without acknowledging and confirming the
critical role of the United Nations. For more than 60
years the Organization has been the main guarantor in
maintaining and supporting universal peace, security
and development. During that time, our Organization
has won great credibility in the world, accumulating
unique experience in resolving difficult international
problems and forging a firm legal foundation for
cooperation between States.
The United Nations was and remains the
underpinning of today’s world order, a pole of
attraction of the hopes and aspirations of all mankind.
In the present conditions it is the United Nations that
must become a pillar in the constructive activity of
States in building a just and harmonized system of
international relations.
It is from this angle that Turkmenistan considers
issues of United Nations reform. We realize that on a
number of aspects our Organization needs
improvement and greater effectiveness to meet today’s
needs. That is a normal and logical process in line with
the logic of contemporary dynamic world development.
Therefore we are for a rational reform of the United
Nations. We will achieve that only by further
strengthening it and steadily consolidating its position
in the international system, expanding its role and
functions as a guarantor of global peace, stability and
development.
We are confident that United Nations reform must
be sensible, targeted and related to the real needs of the
international community. Turkmenistan supports efforts
of Member States and of the Secretary-General aimed
at making the Organization’s work more dynamic,
more effective, more open and more democratic. In this
context, Turkmenistan shares the view on the need to
further improve the structure of the Security Council,
creating closer and effective interaction between the
Council and the General Assembly.
The main goal of our foreign policy remains the
same: comprehensive assistance to the world
community in its efforts to support and strengthen a
global security system, to warn of and neutralize
threats of conflict and to provide conditions for stable
and sustainable development of States and peoples and
for broad and constructive international cooperation.
In this regard, we believe that the permanent
neutrality of Turkmenistan and the related
consequences of its legal status give the community of
nations good practical opportunities to positively
impact the course and nature of processes under way in
Central Asia and the region of the Caspian basin. That
means creating here permanently functioning
mechanisms of international contacts for discussing
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various aspects of regional problems and working out
mutually acceptable and consensual decisions. Based
on available experience and on political and diplomatic
peacemaking under United Nations auspices,
Turkmenistan states that it is ready to provide the
world community with all the necessary political and
logistical conditions for that activity.
In this context we consider exceptionally
important and promising the decision of the United
Nations in 2007 on opening the United Nations
Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy for Central
Asia, with its headquarters in Ashgabat. The Centre
now works actively on monitoring and analysing
regional problems. It participates in various measures
concerning most important development issues in
Central Asia, including at the level of heads of State,
and helps to craft approaches for resolving those
issues. Turkmenistan welcomes the involvement of
various States, international organizations, financial
and economic institutions and experts in United
Nations efforts to draw up constructive models of
development for regional processes.
In formulating our approaches to the problems of
universal security, our view is that the concept is
integral and indivisible, both geopolitically and from
the standpoint of specific aspects. We are certain that
security in one country cannot be guaranteed when
security is lacking in the region, on the continent or in
the world. Similarly, political or military security
cannot be long term and fully fledged without
guaranteeing economic, energy and food security,
without preventing and mitigating the risks and threats
of a man-made ecological problem, or without
effectively combating international terrorism,
organized crime, proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction or other global challenges.
From this point of view, one of the most urgent
components of global security is energy security. First
and foremost, that is because the current system of
international energy has become a vulnerable link in
the world economy. That vulnerability is due to a
number of reasons: political instability in some parts of
the planet, a lack of commonly recognized international
legal mechanisms, incomplete infrastructure and
pipeline routes that are geographically limited. All of
that affects the common atmosphere in the world
energy supply market. There is an objective need to
change this situation, to overcome inertia of
stereotypes and to reach a new level of thinking that
corresponds to modern demands.
Today, we talk not about adopting certain
preventive measures or about local agreements on
some aspects of fuel transport, but about the creation of
principally new, universal models of relations in the
realm of world energy, models that are based on a
multilateral balance of interests, the coinciding of
opinions and concepts on the global architecture of
energy security and an awareness of the long-term
benefits and advantages of cooperation.
It seems logical to begin international discussion
of the problem of energy supplies as a first step in this
direction. The discussion needs to find lines of
coincidence of interests, to determine initial positions,
to generate common language to carry on a dialogue —
in other words, to create the basis for substantial and
effective cooperation.
Therefore, during the previous session of the
General Assembly, Turkmenistan announced an
initiative to develop universal mechanisms that could
guarantee reliable and secure functioning of the
international energy supply infrastructure and provide
for access to it and its effective use. A first step in that
direction was resolution 63/210, entitled “Reliable and
stable transit of energy and its role in ensuring
sustainable development and international cooperation”,
which was adopted by consensus on 19 December 2008
on Turkmenistan’s initiative. I would like to take this
opportunity to express my gratitude to all States for
their support for our initiative and for their responsible
and constructive position on this issue.
Mrs. Aitimova (Kazakhstan), Vice-President, took
the Chair.
In line with the letter and the spirit of the
resolution, Turkmenistan proposed the convening, with
the support of the United Nations, of a high-level
international conference on the theme “Reliable and
stable transit of energy and its role in securing stable
development and international cooperation”. That
conference took place in Ashgabat in April 2009, and
one of its outcomes was the proposal to request the
United Nations to establish a group of experts to make
recommendations on a possible international legal
document on the subject that takes into account
proposals by interested countries and international
organizations. Turkmenistan is prepared to fully
support the setting up of such a group in the framework
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of the United Nations. We call upon all interested
States to provide proposals for its programme of work.
We believe that the establishment of such a group
could be the first step in the process of drafting a
comprehensive United Nations document aimed at
securing the effective functioning of the international
energy supply system.
Support for the process of disarmament, reducing
weapons arsenals — including, first and foremost,
weapons of mass destruction — and preventing
proliferation continue to be among the most important
issues on the international agenda. We believe that in
the current system of international relations there
should be no room for either the legacy of the cold war
or for the recurrence of bloc confrontation, under
which the quantity and quality of armaments were
almost the sole criteria for establishing the influence
and authority of States. We are convinced that the
fewer weapons there are in the world, the more stable
and calm will be its development and the more trust
and understanding there will be among countries and
peoples.
As the Assembly is aware, the Treaty on a
Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia was signed
in 2006 in the city of Semipalatinsk. All countries of
the region have now become parties to the Treaty. This
joint initiative has proved to be consonant with the
aspirations of the majority of the world’s countries. It
has been highly praised by the international community
and endorsed by the General Assembly. In that regard,
we believe that it would be timely to hold an
international conference, during the first half of next
year, on the subject of disarmament in the Central
Asian region and the Caspian Basin. Our country is
prepared to host such an event. We would also
welcome constructive proposals from the international
community, including from individual States, on how
to help global disarmament processes and on how to
effectively address issues pertaining to our
participation in the implementation of such proposals.
One of the most serious challenges in today’s
world is how to effectively combat such phenomena as
international terrorism, illegal drug trafficking and
cross-border organized crime. For a variety of reasons,
those problems are of particular importance for our
region. We are convinced that only through joint efforts
by States working in close cooperation with
international organizations will we be able to
successfully face those threats. Turkmenistan believes
that the United Nations has a special role to play in that
regard. We believe that it is both necessary and timely
to reinvigorate the participation of the United Nations
and its agencies in developing and coordinating
effective models for international cooperation aimed at
neutralizing those threats and putting in place
mechanisms for preventive diplomacy and the
establishment of conditions for the post-conflict
reconstruction of economic and social infrastructure.
In that connection, we must underscore the
special importance that Turkmenistan attaches to the
reconstruction of Afghanistan and to the establishment
of lasting peace on Afghan soil. Our country provides
assistance to Afghanistan for economic, social and
humanitarian projects. That work will continue. We
want to see Afghanistan as a peaceful and prosperous
country that is a good neighbour and partner for all
States in the region.
At the same time, we believe that the United
Nations can and should play an important role in
resolving the issue of Afghanistan. We are convinced
that, with its enormous peacemaking experience and
great moral authority, the United Nations is capable of
proposing new formats and models in the context of
political and diplomatic efforts to resolve
Afghanistan’s problems and establish peace and
harmony in that country. That work could today be
done more energetically and efficiently, given the
potential of the United Nations Regional Centre for
Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia. We support
increased focused involvement by the Regional Centre
in the international community’s efforts to resolve the
situation in Afghanistan.
The international community’s awareness of
long-term development objectives and its readiness to
work jointly to achieve them are today prerequisites for
the stability of the entire system of international
relations. The serious effects of the global financial and
economic crisis have once again clearly demonstrated
the need to join efforts in developing an international
security architecture and establishing the conditions for
equal and fair relations between States and peoples on
the basis of recognized international legal norms and
the timeless ideals of the United Nations.
Turkmenistan believes that responsibility,
morality and humanism will be the criteria by which
present and future generations will assess our work. As
a State and as a member of the world community we
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will further contribute to strengthening lofty principles
in international affairs while consistently implementing
our philosophy of Turkmen neutrality, a fundamental
part of which includes our strategic cooperation with
the United Nations.