At a
time when the United Nations continues on its path
towards universality by welcoming a new Member
State — Montenegro, with which Algeria has been
involved in multi-faceted cooperation — the very basis
of our institution is once again being tested by the
grave developments in the situation in the Middle East,
with violence directed at our brother peoples of
Palestine and Lebanon. Because of their context, their
scope and the breadth of their consequences at various
levels, those acts of aggression — which cannot merely
be seen as passing occurrences — point an accusing
finger at the limitations imposed upon the authority of
the United Nations when it is faced with conflict
situations which run counter to its very raison d’être.
In the vast areas of the developing world, in
particular throughout Muslim civilization, a silent
frustration is growing and increasing before the
powerlessness of the United Nations to support the
most elementary human values of the Palestinian and
Lebanese people.
The Middle East is without doubt the most
unstable region of the world. There we see the great
cruelty, flagrant denial of justice and recurrent waves
of violence that are reflected in the serious
deterioration of the humanitarian and security
situation. This makes the prospect of establishing a just
and lasting peace in the region a remote one. The
Palestinian people are improperly subjected to
collective punishment, and Lebanon — whose
suffering is exemplified by the relentless Israeli attack
against Qana — has been caught up in a murderous
war, in which the Lebanese people were able to hold at
bay the infernal firepower and destructive capability
directed against it.
In the same geopolitical sphere, lack of security
and instability persist in Iraq. The daily ransom paid in
heavy human losses is submerged in a pernicious effect
of habit and trivialization. The establishment of the
Government of National Unity, and that Government’s
decision to opt for inclusive national reconciliation are
first steps in the right direction. Algeria welcomes the
positive response to those developments from the main
political forces in Iraq, and we believe that the best
way to ensure the success of the ongoing political
process — with its objective of allowing Iraq to fully
recover its sovereignty in the framework of national
unity and territorial integrity — would be through
intensified efforts to avoid further fratricidal schism in
the country along ethnic and religious fault lines.
One year ago, at the World Summit, we defined a
path together towards comprehensive reform of the
United Nations. By joining the consensus on adoption
of a series of specific reform measures, the non-aligned
countries hoped to contribute to the transformation of
the United Nations into an instrument capable of
23 06-53329
addressing the new challenges and threats confronting
the international community.
First of all, we have seen the creation of the
Peacebuilding Commission, an innovative institutional
mechanism that has long been lacking in the
Organization. We saw also the establishment of the
Human Rights Council, which also marks progress for
the international community as it seeks to achieve
universal respect for all human rights. However, a great
deal remains to be done in order to attain the objectives
which have been set in the reform process.
Thus, it is important that we strengthen our
efforts in order to succeed at this session in achieving
comprehensive agreement on pending issues, in
particular reform of the Security Council. Through
such comprehensive reform, the Security Council
should become more representative in its membership,
more democratic and more transparent in its
functioning and more in harmony with the positions of
the General Assembly, in order to provide greater
legitimacy to its decisions and to enhance its
effectiveness.
The peoples of the United Nations had hoped that
the celebration of the Organization’s sixtieth
anniversary would return us to the principles and
purposes of the Charter, and enable us to re-draw the
plans it outlined. But today’s world is full of
uncertainty and too many problems still weigh upon it.
It is confronted with more threats than ever — all of
them equally dangerous — which must be addressed in
a consistent manner in order to better determine their
root causes and thus to enable the international
community to act with determination to eliminate them
for good.
That is true for terrorism, which continues to
strike communities with its well-known horror and
cruelty and without distinction as to race, sex or
religion. The fight against that scourge, from which no
country is safe, requires unified cooperation at both the
regional and international level, using clear and
complementary approaches.
Algeria, which has long suffered from terrorist
violence — to which some have reacted with
indifference and others with complacency — can only
welcome the fact that the international community has
become aware of the seriousness of the threat of
terrorism upon international peace and security. It
stresses the urgency of concluding a comprehensive
convention against international terrorism, which
should contain an unequivocal definition of that
scourge and draw a distinction between the legitimate
struggle of peoples against foreign occupation, on the
one hand, and on the other, acts perpetrated by terrorist
groups or individuals, and which would be careful not
to confuse that scourge with any particular religion,
civilization or geographic area.
I would like to reiterate our legitimate concern as
we are faced with the deadlock of the multilateral
disarmament process, and the disagreement that has
emerged, here and there, on the issue of the non-
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The goal
has remained the same. Disarmament must be overall
and complete and under effective international control.
The policy of nuclear non-proliferation must be
pursued in both its horizontal and vertical dimensions
and those countries that have voluntarily given up the
military nuclear option have the right to expect security
guarantees and free access without discrimination to
nuclear technology for peaceful uses.
In the Western Sahara, the last territory which
must be decolonized in Africa, the Saharan people
remain deprived of their inalienable right to self-
determination, as enshrined in the Charter and relevant
United Nations resolutions. Just as in 1991 with the
adoption of the Settlement Plan, in 2003 the
international community, after the unanimous adoption
by the Security Council of the peace plan proposed by
Mr. James Baker, former Personal Envoy of the
Secretary-General for Western Sahara, the United
Nations had the hope of seeing a just and lasting
settlement to the conflict. But today we must note that
no positive evolution of that conflict has taken place,
because of the rejection of the peace plan by one of the
two parties to the conflict and its desire to prejudge to
its advantage, the final status of the territory — a status
which can only be determined through a referendum on
self-determination.
Algeria, which has no claims whatsoever on that
territory and is not in any way involved in the
conflict — which has only two parties as designated by
the international community, namely, the Kingdom of
Morocco and the Polisario Front — has taken note of
the unanimous adoption by the Security Council of
resolution 1675 (2006), which reaffirms the right to
self-determination of the Saharan people. Deeply
respectful of the “Declaration on the Granting of
Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples” as
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contained in General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV)
of 14 December 1960, Algeria will continue to support
all efforts designed to enable the Saharan people to
exercise their right to self-determination with full
sovereignty in conditions that are incontestably free
and transparent.
In another area, the outcome of the seventh
African Union Summit in Banjul shows a mixed record
concerning the development of various crises and other
conflicts situations on the continent, in particular in the
Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
the Sudan and Somalia. Serious efforts are being
deployed in order to promote interaction between the
United Nations and the African Union, in order to
effectively deal with those situations, which have often
shown themselves to be complicated and difficult.
What is more important — a culture of peace is
developing throughout Africa as a result of a renewal
and recovery, the foundations of which were
established by African leaders of the region through the
creation of the African Union and the New Partnership
for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).
In that light, it is extremely important to insure
that the peaceful settlement of the crisis in Darfur, with
full respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity
of the Sudan and in keeping with the Abuja accord,
move hand in hand with harmonious action based on
the good will of all, in particular of the African Union
and the United Nations.
The question of development is, rightly, one of
the highest priorities of the United Nations agenda, in
particular following the adoption in September 2000 of
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). So, too is
the eradication of poverty, which weighs heavily upon
the conscience of mankind. However, the gap that
exists to date between the goals and the progress
achieved is such that decisive efforts are essential in
order to insure that Africa will achieve its goals by the
year 2015. Similar great efforts are required from the
developed countries to honour their commitments
undertaken at the time of the Millennium Summit,
the International Conference on Financing for
Development held in Monterrey, as well as the 2005
World Summit.
At the time of the sixtieth anniversary of the
creation of the Organization, all of us realized that the
world had profoundly changed and that it was
necessary to adjust our activities to the new realities.
Faced with the many challenges and structural threats
of our time, the 2005 World Summit gave us a clear
diagnosis and prescribed the necessary remedies. One
year later — the state of the world today further
stresses how acute the problems are and the urgency of
solving them. It makes it crystal clear that it would be
pointless to dwell on the uncertainties and imbalances,
as well as the precarious situations that have become
an inextricable part of the fabric of international
society, unless we want to doom that society to chronic
instability and insecurity.
Truthfully, the imperfect achievements and
limited gains made by the international community, at
a time when globalization has greatly shrunk both time
and space, demand of us that we view the future with
genuine resolve, concerning what has to be done, rather
than resign ourselves to what merely appears possible.
In that connection, there is no alternative to a truly
democratic reform of the United Nations that includes
the participation of all countries. There is no viable
option other than a globalization based upon peace and
prosperity that benefits all of humankind.