UK

Let me begin, Sir, by paying tribute to your predecessor, Jean Ping, for his extraordinary work — above all on the world summit, but also throughout his year as President — and by offering my congratulations to you on beginning your year in office. I should also like to express, on behalf of the European Union and all its member States, our deepest sympathy and solidarity to the people of the United 27 States, particularly those in the Gulf states, in their hour of need. In early July, my first duty in the presidency of the European Union was to go to Srebrenica to mark the tenth anniversary of the massacre there, the worst in Europe since the end of the Second World War. More than 8,000 people, mainly Muslim, were taken away and killed as the international community just stood to one side. To be sure, we had shown the right convictions in words, but shamefully, we had failed to act. The lesson of that massacre — and of the even greater horror of Rwanda a year before — was that we all needed better means to turn our collective will into decisive action. I think that we in the European Union have learned in the intervening period. Today, the Union is on the ground as a military, police or civilian presence in Bosnia, in Aceh, in Iraq, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, with the African Union, in Darfur. I also think that the United Nations has learned the lessons of the past decade. At the summit this week, we agreed on the further steps that we need to take for the Organization to be even more effective. Of all that was agreed at the summit, I believe it will be the agreement on our “responsibility to protect” that will be seen in the future as having the greatest significance of all. If we follow through on the responsibility to protect, then never again will genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity be allowed to take place under our noses with nothing done. The responsibility to protect is, of course, a reflection of our common morality. But it is also a recognition that the world in which we now live is too small for us to be unaffected by, or indifferent to, the innocent victims of murder and oppression. This shrinking of the world has been as sudden as it has been profound. When the Berlin wall fell, a generation of ideological certainties was swept away. People could suddenly see partners where before they had only glimpsed adversaries. And as that very visible barrier was noisily being breached, a revolution in information technology was quietly erasing the barriers of distance and time. Continents and cultures are now cabled together and bound by trade and services in a way that was unimaginable even a decade ago. In this new world, we can no longer safely tolerate the general threat that can come from a particular human tragedy, wherever it takes place. To a greater extent than ever before, we share the same world: the same threats and responsibilities, the same opportunities and interests. And precisely because the boundaries of our world have contracted, the horizons — the ambitions — of many people around the globe have infinitely expanded. For the first time in our history, mankind has the ability to realize the potential of individuals in societies of all kinds and in every region through an open exchange of goods, investment, technology and, above all, ideas. Not least in all of this, it is the rise of India and of China that is reordering the world economy. Hundreds of millions there and elsewhere have been lifted out of poverty. A new global market has been created that ignores the divide — which seemed so fundamental for so many decades — between East and West. Currently, not everyone has the chance to share in all of that. Much of sub-Saharan Africa remains blighted by poverty, disease and conflict. The European Union has now set a clear timetable to achieve the 0.7 per cent target for aid. Debt relief, trade reform and development aid are all vital, but none of them can work alone. Fundamental to making poverty history are the Governments of the developing world themselves. And where Governments fail, their own peoples are the victims, as United Nations Special Envoy Anna Tibaijuka’s damning assessment of the situation in Zimbabwe only too graphically shows. Sub-Saharan Africa is not alone in having yet to achieve its potential. The American author Thomas Friedman, in his recent book The World Is Flat, highlights an extraordinary anomaly: it was the Arab peoples whose forebears devised algebra and the algorithms upon which our entire digital age is based, but those peoples are now right at the rear of today’s technological revolution, with, for example, fewer than 2 per cent of those populations having Internet access. Three United Nations Development Programme Arab Human Development Reports have now set out clearly how limited economic prospects and stunted political freedoms have led young and talented people towards alienation and disillusionment. The answer, however, does not lie in easy stereotypes about some clash of civilizations. It is only the terrorists and the preachers of hate who want us to believe that Islam and the West are fundamentally 28 different. Theirs is a philosophy of mistrust and despair, and we reject it utterly. Indonesia and Turkey — to name just two — are both striking examples of how countries with predominantly Muslim populations can embrace democracy and modernity. We in the European Union have seen the vibrant Muslim communities in our own countries, and from that experience have seen how Islamic and Western cultures can be partners in a global society. Everyone knows that the Arab peoples want prosperity, freedom and democracy every bit as much as anyone in Europe or America. So the fact that the Arab world has the lowest scores in regional measurements of democratic practices, civil freedoms and good governance is not some cultural inevitability, but a temporary failure of human will. In that regard, the international community has a clear responsibility to encourage regionally led political, social and economic reform. The European Union strongly supports such reform and will continue to do so. Equally, it has been our active foreign policy that has placed us in the lead with regard to Iran, especially on the nuclear dossier. With our High Representative Javier Solana and my French and German Foreign Minister colleagues, we have made detailed proposals for the relationship between the European Union and Iran to be based on cooperation and respect for international norms and treaties. Our proposals envisage a high-level, long-term political and security framework between the European Union and Iran, in which we would work together in political, economic, scientific and technological areas, including the civil nuclear field, in return for Iran providing guarantees about its intentions and capabilities concerning nuclear weapons. So, we will listen very carefully to and reflect on this afternoon’s speech by the new President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. On Iraq, the European Union now has a comprehensive programme of engagement and has put behind it divisions over the military action two and a half years ago. We are supporting the goal of a peaceful, prosperous, democratic and stable nation. We are also giving very active support to the Quartet’s efforts to secure a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, with two States living side by side. We salute Prime Minister Sharon’s brave decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, and we salute President Mahmoud Abbas’s work to build the first stage of an effective, viable State of Palestine. In July, the European Union again suffered the horror of a major terrorist atrocity. This time the target was my country, the United Kingdom: its capital, London. But none of us is safe from the threat of terror. International terrorism requires an international response; otherwise, we all pay the price for each other’s vulnerabilities. The ratification of a comprehensive treaty on terrorism is, therefore, at the highest priority. But the threat from terrorists and the political instability they bring is made worse by the easy availability of weapons in what has become an anarchic, unregulated international trade. These same weapons fuelled the killings in Rwanda and in Bosnia a decade ago and are fuelling the conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Darfur today. We already have international instruments to regulate chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. We in the European Union have a comprehensive arms control regime. But I suggest to the General Assembly that the time has now come for this Organization to embrace the idea of an international arms trade treaty, which would build on and strengthen existing initiatives. It was in the killing fields of Europe, in two successive wars, that the twin ideas of the United Nations and of the European Union became imperative. Today, the European Union’s commitment to the United Nations is profound; it has never been stronger. And it is reflected in what we give in voluntary donations and to the regular budget and peacekeeping operations. The fundamental purpose of the United Nations remains today what it was at its foundation: to remove the scourge of war, to reaffirm the worth of the human person and to promote social progress and better standards of life. In this changed and changing world, it is the responsibility of us all to ensure that this Organization has the powers and the resources to achieve all these aims.