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 06-53329 24 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.