On
behalf of my delegation and in my own name, I would
like to offer the President our warmest congratulations
on his brilliant election to the presidency of the
General Assembly at its sixty-fourth session. It would
be remiss not to express our pride and our pleasure at
the election of the representative of a neighbour
country, brother and friend of Chad. I am referring to
the brother Ali Treki of the great Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya. With his qualities and his long and rich
diplomatic experience, he will find it easy to lead our
work with tact. Through me, the Chadian delegation
assures him of its full cooperation in discharging his
difficult but very lofty task.
I would also like to express our gratitude to his
predecessor for having led the work of the sixty-third
session with skill and perception. Allow me also to pay
due tribute to our Secretary-General, His Excellency
Ban Ki-moon, for his tireless commitment to the work
of defending and promoting the ideals of our
Organization.
From this rostrum, delegations at the sixty-third
session deplored the food, energy and financial crises
that had struck our countries, the consequences of
which were felt differently according to each country’s
level of development. What conclusions should we
draw after a year of intense mobilization, cooperation
and work to overcome those crises?
For us poor States, those crises remain genuine
obstacles to achieving the Millennium Development
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Goals to which we all committed, in particular for the
financing of our development strategies. Despite the
great international mobilization, there is a risk that the
poor countries will fail to meet the 2015 deadline. That
is all the more worrying as the situation persists and
remains the focus of international debates. The
situation continues to also generate consequences that
endanger the implementation of the Monterrey
Consensus, in particular official development
assistance, commercial trade, the debt of the countries
of the South and world trade.
We cannot say it often enough: the developing
countries will continue to pay dearly for an economic
crisis that they did not cause. The international
community must therefore urgently step up its efforts
to alleviate the difficulties that those countries face.
Another major issue of concern, one no less
significant, is the negative impacts of climate change
on the world in general and on developing countries, in
particular the most vulnerable. There too our countries
are victims of a phenomenon caused by the major
greenhouse gas producers, which are the industrialized
countries. We feel those effects daily as the greatest
disaster for our environment, our agriculture, our
livestock farming — in short, for the life of our
populations in the form of famines and all kinds of
illnesses.
The most significant example is the risk of the
complete disappearance of Lake Chad if the
international community does not resolutely commit to
helping us save its world heritage. In 40 years, the
surface area of Lake Chad has shrunk from 25,000 to
less than 3,000 square kilometres. The countries of the
Lake Chad Basin Commission expect the international
community to come to the support of their plan to save
the lake, including by implementing the project to
divert the waters of the Oubangui River in the Central
African Republic to feed Lake Chad.
At the initiative of His Excellency the President
of the Republic, the Head of State, Chad has committed
to planting 10 million trees a year to fight
desertification. That programme, which is part of the
transcontinental project of the Green Great Wall
initiated by the Community of Sahelo-Saharan States,
needs the international community’s support.
Turning to the issue of the settlement of disputes,
while we welcome the progress made here and there,
that is unfortunately not the case for the situation
prevailing in Darfur, which is of serious concern to my
Government. Regarding the African continent, we
reaffirm our support and our readiness to contribute to
all joint actions of the African Union and the United
Nations for the peaceful and lasting settlement of those
conflicts. Indeed, we welcome the initiative recently
undertaken by the Leader of the Libyan Revolution,
President of the African Union, to convene in Tripoli a
special meeting devoted to the consideration and
settlement of conflicts in Africa.
With respect to the question of Palestine, we urge
and encourage our Organization to continue with
greater resolve its efforts towards backing the
conclusion of a peace agreement providing for the
peaceful coexistence of two sovereign States, in
accordance with the principles of international law and
of the United Nations Charter. This is an opportunity to
welcome the commitment of the new American
Administration, under the leadership of President
Barack Obama, to restoring peace to that region long
torn by war.
The new approach to international relations
adopted by the American Administration should also
lead to a new attitude towards Cuba, burdened for
decades by an economic, trade and financial embargo
that is no longer justified today. That is why Chad
wishes the United States of America to rapidly lift the
embargo, which runs counter to the new vision of the
world and to the great principles championed by our
Organization.
Turning now to the crisis in Darfur and our
relations with the Sudan, we would again like to draw
the Assembly’s attention to the seriousness of the
situation, which hangs over the security of our borders
and threatens regional peace and security. The
repercussions of that crisis for security in the camps for
refugees and displaced persons in the east of my
country, for the environment, which is already
vulnerable in that part of the country in particular, and,
in general, for the social and economic development of
my country are quite evident.
The other consequence of that crisis, and not a
minor one, is the phenomenon of child soldiers, who
are very often recruited against their will by the
various armed groups that hold sway in the region.
During its various campaigns, the Chadian national
army succeeded in freeing hundreds of such children
and entrusted them to UNICEF for care and reinsertion
19 09-52604
into civilian life. An inspection and awareness-raising
campaign has been undertaken in varying barracks
throughout the country in collaboration with UNICEF,
the United Nations and a number of diplomatic
missions present in N’Djamena to prevent this
phenomenon and curb it where is already exists.
These are the reasons that lead Chad to cooperate
closely with the United Nations and the international
community to find a solution to that situation, which
has lasted much too long. At the same time, this shows
how wrong it is to believe that my country fuels the
war in Darfur by giving support to Sudanese rebels
there.
Additionally, we would like to reiterate our
complete availability to cooperate with the United
Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and
Chad (MINURCAT) for the fulfilment of its mandate
in the east of our country. We condemn the delays in its
full deployment in the field and the ensuing difficulties
in ensuring effective security for vulnerable
populations such as refugees, displaced persons and
humanitarian workers. It is essential that parties
involved in this Mission step up their efforts to make
up for those delays, whose prolongation means daily
danger for the populations that all of us must protect.
We are very concerned by the uncertain future of
MINURCAT, and we wonder what the national
capacities might be to remedy the situation by
strengthening the operations for maintaining order and
security in zones covered by its mandate.
Regardless of MINURCAT’s efforts, or the
efforts of my country to improve the security of camps
for refugees and displaced persons, a genuine
settlement of the Darfur crisis can be only political in
order to enable refugees and the displaced to return to
their ancestral homelands.
That is why my country welcomes all initiatives
undertaken by the international community in this
regard. My Government has backed, and continues to
back, the Qatar process and welcomes the untiring
efforts by brother-leader Muammar Al-Qadhafi to
secure a political settlement of the crisis and, more
recently, to relaunch the Doha process. Along the same
line, we also welcome the recent American and
Egyptian initiatives.
The efforts of the international community to
normalize relations between our country and the Sudan
are also welcome. A great many agreements have been
signed by my country and the Sudan. All that remains
now is to implement them.
The fact that we have welcomed refugees fleeing
the war in Darfur and have facilitated actions of the
international community to assist them should not be
used as an alibi by our neighbour in any attempt to
destabilize us.
At the national level, the Government of Chad, on
the impetus provided by Mr. Idriss Deby Itno,
President of the Republic, Head of State, continues
political dialogue with the democratic opposition on
the basis of the 13 August 2007 agreement. In this
climate of shared trust we have just concluded a
population census with a view to organizing free and
transparent elections. A national independent electoral
commission composed of representatives of the
Government and the opposition has just been formed
and has already started its work.
Despite repeated attacks by mercenaries and
armed movements with support from abroad against
our territorial integrity and the democratically elected
institutions, the Government continues to advocate
reconciliation and national understanding. A number of
armed groups have regained legal status through
implementing the Sirte Agreement of 25 October 2007.
A great many others have committed themselves to this
path, which we welcome.
In conclusion, I would like to express the support
of my country for the appeal to this Assembly by the
President of the African Union for a just and fair
reform of the Security Council, a reform that would
take into account the legitimate aspirations of the
African continent and the evolution of the history of
relations among States.