Argentina, 2012

I would

like to begin my statement by confirming my personal

position and that of the Argentine Republic and the

Argentine people with regard to our emphatic rejection

and repudiation of the savage assassination of United

States Ambassador Christopher Stevens in the city of

Benghazi, Libya. That ugly act of terrorism warrants

that we reflect upon certain interpretations of events

that took place in various Arab countries and were for

many Western leaders interpreted as or called the Arab

Spring. But, in reality, from our point of view — and

I say this humbly and with all respect — it reflected

other situations that were not correctly perceived or

understood by the main leaders in the West.

It is no accident that the death of Chris Stevens

occurred in Benghazi, where the principal focus of

resistance against Muammar Al-Qadhafi’s regime

originated, and where those of us with an understanding

of international politics clearly know that the main

Islamic fundamentalists were located — not just

opponents of Muammar Al-Qadhafi’s regime, but those opposed to the very idea of peaceful coexistence

between men and women of different races, religions,

beliefs or faiths.

I say that because it is necessary to have a clear

understanding of our problems and of the situations

in the world, particularly in the Middle East. It is

important to understand the need for different policies

geared to building true and lasting peace — a peace that

must always imply choosing the language of diplomacy

before choosing the language of weapons. If one reviews

recent history, one can see that important figures or

political factions that appear to be allied with the West

frequently end up becoming sworn enemies of Western

values, perhaps as a result of poor interpretations or

policies ill suited to what was happening in the Middle

East and around the world.

The need to recognize the Palestinian State and

the need to recognize that Israel must live within

legally recognized borders in accordance with the 1967

borders is the crux of the problem in the Middle East.

The Argentine Republic — and I believe we reflect the

interests of our region — maintains that it is necessary

to have a response to an issue that has been calling

for a solution for decades. Yet, owing to different

circumstances, to Governments and to interests in

the West, which has an enormous responsibility of

leadership in the issue, nothing constructive has been

achieved.

For Chris Stevens, and for his family, there will

be no Arab Spring, but rather a terrible and eternal

winter. That is why it is absolutely necessary that we

in the West rethink our strategies and policies with

respect to the Middle East. Otherwise, we run the risk

of ending up embarking upon erroneous strategies that

undermine our values and deepen the crisis. What will

happen is what happened in Benghazi, and we shall

have to mourn the death of a diplomat, regardless of his

nationality. In this case, it was an American, something

that had not happened for a very long time.

A similar situation could be described with respect

to the other great crisis, which was apparently economic

in nature and which is shaking the world. In 2008, when

we came to the General Assembly, Lehman Brothers

collapsed, causing a crisis that seemed triggered by

poor people who could not pay off the mortgages on

their homes — the famous sub-prime loans crisis — but

it has ended up today as something greater than a crisis

of the poor who cannot pay off their mortgages.

It has spread well beyond that issue. It has been

discovered that it was precisely those financial

administrators of capital who were behind all this.

Actually, it was the wealthiest sectors of society who

created this global crisis.

In Europe the eurozone crisis is basically a crisis

of sovereign debt for countries that owe more than

their gross domestic product (GDP). Also, families

have taken on more debt than they can pay off in the

next 20 or 30 years. At this very moment in Spain

there is repression against indignant citizens who are

demonstrating against the belt-tightening programme

being imposed on their country. They are protesting

the same austerity programme that has been applied for

decades now and that has not borne any fruit.

When we in Argentina discuss the problem we

talk about it with deep-seated knowledge of the

type of neoliberal policies that were the result of the

Washington consensus, which was launched following

the problems in the 1990s and ended up exploding as a

default on the most significant sovereign debt known

in history. Argentina owed 160 per cent of its GDP, the

result of debt policies that in turn had resulted from the

industrialization and ongoing imposed adjustment and

consumption policies. Those policies were ferociously

and methodically imposed on countries, just as we are

seeing now with Spain, Greece and Portugal, with the

resulting danger to the eurozone.

Endangering the eurozone involves more than just

the undermining of an economic region. It is actually

endangering the very stability of the world financial

system. We should recall that some 65 per cent of

international reserves deposited in central banks

around the world are in United States dollars, and some

24 per cent are in euros.

It is necessary to rethink all of this. We need to

rethink the trade war that has exploded between

various countries. Some countries have denounced it

as protectionism. Basically, participants in such trade

wars assert that such policies are needed to defend their

societies, their workers, their labour markets and their

businesses against developed countries’ economies,

which actually were the root cause of the crisis we are

all experiencing today. The developed countries are

trying to push their problems off on to others. I keep

asking, if one of our countries had had a deficit in its

current account, such as the United States is running

right now, that country would no doubt have been

censored, punished and criticized. Of course, because

dollars are the reserve currency — some 85 per cent

of world transactions are in dollars — and the United

States has been considered the country that issues the

money used as reserve currency par excellence, it ends

up being outside of the whole system. It is not criticized

and is not targeted by the International Monetary Fund

(IMF). Yet the IMF continues to impose adjustment

policies. Even yesterday, there were threats issued to

countries like the Argentine Republic.

The IMF has tried to allude to sovereign debts

as though the whole thing were just a soccer game. If

Argentina were unable to accomplish certain things,

the country was going to be given a red card, just as in

soccer. I just want to say to the head of that organization

that this is not a soccer game. First, this is the most

serious political and economic crisis in memory since

the 1930s. Secondly, my country is not a player in a

soccer game; it is a sovereign nation, which makes its

decisions on a sovereign basis. It will not be subject

to pressures brought to bear from the outside nor any

threats of red cards. Finally, continuing with this

analogy between soccer and the economy, the President

of the International Federation of Association Football

(FIFA) does a much more satisfactory job than the head

of the IMF.

With regard to organization and responsibility,

FIFA organizes world matches every four years. Next

time, they will be in Brazil, and no doubt they will be a

success. The International Monetary Fund is in charge

of organizing economies and has been doing so since

the 1980s, and yet it has been unable to carry out its

task effectively. However, it seems that it is countries

that should be criticizing themselves, whereas I do not

hear any self-criticism from the IMF.

With regard to the statistics for Spain, what were

the statistics for Greece or Portugal, Ireland or Italy?

What were the figures that allowed them to go more

into debt without any kind of control or oversight? Why

are some countries being controlled and not others?

That is a question that we have to ask, and that we are

asking from this rostrum. Since 2003, we have been

saying this.

When President Néstor Kirchner came here for the

first time he was representing an Argentina that had

been devastated by the crisis, with poverty at levels

that we had never seen before: 25 per cent of Argentine

people had no work. People were losing their savings in dollars, roubles, pesos, pounds, whatever; they simply

had nothing left. They came to the United Nations

and said that we needed an opportunity to grow. For a

country to pay off its debt, it needs to be able to grow.

The dead do not pay off their debts. That is what the

Argentine President said, and he was not mistaken.

In 2003, based on the policies he was able to put into

place, and without access to capital markets, Argentina

was able to restructure a significant part of its foreign

debt. We have been rigorously making every single

payment since 2005. We will continue making those

payments because we believe in policies that promote

national production.

We are working with the most vulnerable sectors

of society and promoting social programmes. We

have dedicated more than 1 per cent of our GDP to

those programmes. We have put social policies and

programmes in place, and they are the most notable

in Latin America. They have allowed us to promote

growth, which undoubtedly is the most significant seen

in the last 200 years of the history of the Argentine

Republic.

We are not coming here to preach to anyone or to

teach lessons. We do not think that we are teachers. We

just want to tell the Assembly about the experience of

one country that went through a situation quite similar

to that now being experienced by other countries in

the developed world. What we want to contribute is

our empirical experience, not theoretical experiences.

There are still decisions that need to be taken, but that

have not been taken because many continue to follow

the practices of those who control the capital markets.

They hit one country and then another. One day,

the stock market goes up 20 per cent, skyrockets, and

then it plummets the following day. We may not be

economists, but we are not stupid either. We are talking

about incredible transfers of money, and those who end

up being harmed are the same millions of people who

lose their jobs and lose their hope. What I hope to see

is that they do not lose patience. Usually, when people

lose patience, that is when they hit the wall. When

people cannot find a job and do not have a State that is

protecting them, it becomes a political and institutional

crisis. That is what happened to us in 2001 in Argentina.

I also believe that it is important to understand that

we have a new world before us now. This new world

requires more creative leadership.

It requires taking the risk of applying new ideas

and new concepts. Trying to solve the current problems

of the world with the same medicines that caused them

is absolutely absurd. That has to be stated clearly.

Then there is the matter of the current accounts

deficit, which is transferred from the United States to

emerging countries, so that our currencies are devalued

and we have to make immense efforts to build up our

reserves. We also have to take measures to prevent the

central countries from transferring cheap merchandise

to us that undermines our economies — the economies

of the emerging countries that, it bears saying, propped

up the growth of the global economy during the past

decade.

Today, as emerging countries, we are being

condemned as protectionist by the very countries that

survived by protecting themselves through agricultural

subsidies and all sorts of special breaks at the expense

of our economies and, above all, of millions of our

people who only now are being incorporated into the

labour force.

It is crucial for developed countries to understand

the contribution that emerging countries can make to

the international economic recovery with the millions

of dollars we still owe, on top of our costs for social

benefits and production. Besides, we have paid down

our debt to levels never seen before. Argentina, whose

foreign debt represented 160 per cent of its gross

national product, today owes only 14 per cent of its gross

national product abroad; the remainder of its borrowing

is intrasectoral public debt. We are at the lowest level

ever of foreign debt and debt held by foreign sources.

Obviously, for some we are a bad example. Why?

Because when we restructured our debt — and I am

not proposing restructurization as a solution — we

held that under capitalism anyone who risked investing

dollars in a country like Argentina, with interest rates

in the 1990’s between 15 and 16 per cent to ensure

convertibility, when the rate in rest of the world was

a mere two per cent, had to know that there was a

substantial risk that that person, that bank or that

institution would not repay the debt.

Our thesis was that if they had taken the risk, they

should share it. We therefore proposed a restructuring

whereby both parties would share. The fact is that

Argentina paid its stockholders more than Enron did.

Enron paid, I believe, $1 per $100 share; Argentina paid

$25 to $30 on $100. In reality, we were more generous and responsible than Enron was, not just towards the

rest of the world but to the citizens of the United States.

That may of course annoy certain multilateral credit

institutions, especially because, during the 1990’s,

Argentina was held up as an example of the way things

should be done, while in 2001 we were left to our own

devices and told to resolve things by ourselves. I believe

that is why some would censure us or fine us, so that

our bad example does not spread, but if we think of the

world as a totality, we will understand that that is not an

economic problem, but a political one. Without leaders

who can point to a clear, specific path for overcoming

a world economic crisis of this magnitude, we are no

longer facing a problem of economics or economists;

we are facing a problem of politics for which there are

neither solutions nor responses nor new models.

We know that some multilateral agencies are

angry with Argentina, but we tell them there is no

point being angry with us. The important thing is to

analyse the mistakes that were made in both economics

and politics and what was done wrong so that we can

correct them, move forward and overcome this crisis,

because if allowed to continue it will trigger not just

severe economic problems but severe political and

institutional ones. Having been a political activist at

a young age and having experienced periods in my

country when Western values were not respected, when

people were raped, tortured and disappeared — because

democracy had disappeared — what I am most afraid of

is that if there continues to be no solution to the present

crisis, many millions of people in the West will cease to

believe that a democratic system can provide solutions.

If we examine human history, we can clearly see

that the most terrible totalitarian periods were preceded

by severe economic crises that gave people no way out,

deprived them of hope and filled their ears with siren

songs that promised things we all know could never be

delivered.

I wanted to speak emphatically about how to tackle

the problem, about how to conceive of it, so that the

situation can be brought back into line instead of

languishing as it has since 2008. Unfortunately, we

have begun to see that the crisis in the developed world

is starting to spread into emerging countries, which

have been the engine of global growth.

I believe those things are connected. The lack of a

correct interpretation, of an adequate classification, so

that political and economic events get jumbled together, gives rise to fallacies — for example, that the people in

certain political movements want to live like Westerners

or that certain orthodox economic adjustments might

lead to some way out or some solution — all false, of

course.

I would now like to address two topics that might

be called bilateral in nature. One, in the form of this

little booklet in English and Spanish, was delivered to

each of the Missions represented here and deals with the

question of the colonial status of the Malvinas. Last June,

I appeared before the Committee on Decolonization

here in New York to present our request for compliance

with resolution 2065 (XX), which urged both

countries — the United Kingdom and Argentina — to

undertake a dialogue on the issue of the Malvinas. Next

January, it will have been 180 years since the United

Kingdom illegally usurped our Malvinas islands. Not

only has that country not ceased, it has not listened to

or heeded any of the many allegations and resolutions

of the United Nations, the resolutions of the Committee

on Decolonization, and the many resolutions of various

organizations such as the Organization of American

States and other multilateral organizations such as the

Rio Group, which have asked Great Britain to sit down

to a dialogue with Argentina. We are not asking them

to say that we are right. That would not be dialogue; it

would be to impose a point of view. We are simply asking

them to sit down with us to comply with the United

Nations resolution and to undertake a dialogue on the

sovereignty of the Malvinas, as well as to demilitarize

the South Atlantic so that it becomes a region of peace

in South America, without regard to ethnic, religious or

any other differences that could lead to clashes between

us.

That is why we once again reiterate our appeal.

There is a clear double standard here: the permanent

members of the Security Council have the right to

violate any and every requirement of the United Nations,

while everyone else has to accept without demur any

and every Council resolution. That is not building

multilateralism. It contributes nothing whatever to the

peacebuilding that we all demand and need, and it leads

to a growing feeling of injustice and inequality between

nations, which significantly affects the possibility of a

more just world, of living in a world without violence.

That is why we say once again: this is not a

bilateral issue between us and the United Kingdom. It

has become a global issue — doing away with the last

vestiges of colonialism, which became one of the great contributions of the United Nations when it created

the Decolonization Committee, in 1961. Entering the

twenty-first century without colonies is a matter of

human rights, rights that in my country we certainly

defend very strongly; our support for them is an

example to the world.

Finally — and this relates to the early part of my

speech, when I repudiated and condemned the killing

of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Libya — I would

like to mention something that for us, the Argentine

people, continues to be an open wound, since in

its case justice has still not been served. That is the

bombings of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina

(AMIA) in 1994 and of the Israeli Embassy in 1992,

acts that should be utterly deplored and condemned.

Former President Kirchner and I both asked the Islamic

Republic of Iran, which stands accused by Argentina’s

judiciary of participation in that crime, for its

collaboration and cooperation. In 2010 and 2011, given

the lack of response to that request, I suggested, as an

alternative, that if the Islamic Republic of Iran did not

trust the fairness and independence of the Argentine

judiciary, the solution could be based on a case that the

Assembly will recall, the Libyan terrorist attack on a

British airplane, in which a trial was eventually held in

a third-party country to arrive at reparations — if one

can talk of reparations in the case of death — for some

of the damages. Thus both countries would agree on a

third country where a trial would guarantee justice for

both sides. In the aftermath of that terrible event, what

was most important was the quest for truth.

I began my statement by talking about international

terrorism, and I am ending it on the same subject. I am

not talking about an act committed in a single African

country against a single member of the diplomat corps;

I am talking about what was done in my country, on my

territory, to my brother Argentines, in clear violation of

territorial sovereignty. Last Wednesday, 19 September,

we received a request from the Islamic Republic of Iran

for a bilateral meeting at which, as we understood it,

there would be a dialogue on this matter. My country,

which has continued to ask for a dialogue and which

promotes dialogue as a universal — and, in the case

of the Malvinas, a specific — instrument, decided

to instruct our Minister for Foreign Affairs to hold a

bilateral meeting between the two ministries, here at the

United Nations, as requested by the Islamic Republic of

Iran.

I should say here that I am expecting results

from that meeting, based on the fact that the Islamic

Republic of Iran showed that it wanted to cooperate

and collaborate on the matter of the attack. If they do

not want to conduct the case in Argentina or in a third

country, we hope that they will come forward with

other proposals as to how we can address this deep-

seated conflict, dating back to 1994. I would like to

remind the Assembly that when President Kirchner had

just become President, in 2003, nine years had elapsed

since the attack, without results. But I would also like

to say that we hope this meeting will yield specific,

concrete results if the Islamic Republic of Iran has a

proposal for making headway. It might not necessarily

be in the direction proposed by Argentina, but I would

in any case, as a member of a representative and federal

republican country, submit it for consideration by the

representative parliamentary bodies of my country. A

proposal made by the Islamic Republic of Iran is too

important to be resolved through executive power

alone, quite apart from the fact that our Constitution

requires that the legislature and judiciary be involved

in such an issue.

This is not a matter of casual or standard foreign

relations with another country. It concerns an event

that has marked the Argentine people and is enshrined

in the history of international terrorism. The essential

fact is that the families of the victims, to whom I feel

very committed, need answers. For six years I sat on

the bicameral commission of inquiry into both the

Embassy and the AMIA attacks, and I was always

critical of how the investigation was conducted. That is

why I believe I have the authority to address the families

of the victims — because they are the ones who truly

need answers; they need to understand what happened

and who is responsible — and to assure them that this

President will not take any decisions on any proposals

put forward without first and foremost consulting them

and the parliamentary representatives of my country.

They all have an obligation to voice an opinion publicly

on a matter of this importance.

Lastly, I would like to say to every member of the

Assembly that in 2013 and 2014 Argentina will have

the great honour and responsibility of occupying a

seat — a non-permanent seat, obviously — on the

Security Council. I would like to make it clear that

beyond the fact of our taking a seat at that table, each

and every country with serious aspirations to peace

as a universal value will be represented by us in that seat. That is not a disingenuous or informal wish. It

is a firm declaration that peace must go hand in hand

with truth, justice and equality. Peace is impossible in a

world where countries are not all treated equally. Peace

is impossible in a world where people are growing

poorer and becoming increasingly excluded. Peace is

impossible in a world where people do not tell the truth

or state how things really are.

We believe that in peacebuilding the largest

and leading nations of the world bear the greater

responsibility. Just as in a country’s political system

the President bears the greatest responsibility and the

chain continues down from there, the same is true in

the wider world.

We cannot, beyond the call for equality, turn a

blind eye to hegemonies or to the importance of certain

countries in not only resolving conflicts but sometimes

also in triggering them.

The Argentine Republic will, from its seat, do

everything in its power to promote the values that it

has always defended: peace and the unconditional

promotion of human rights in all countries, whether we

are on good terms with them or not. Human rights are

universal values that should be respected by all types of

Governments throughout the world. It is the obligation

of the Assembly and the Security Council to act on the

basis of a single standard so as to build the values of

peace, human rights, equality and truth. That is the

only way to bring about a world that is more fair and

equitable than the one of today.