Armenia, 1999

May I begin by

congratulating the President on his election. I am confident

that the skills and vast experience he has acquired

throughout his distinguished diplomatic career will provide

the guidance we need to guarantee the successful outcome

of the session. I must also recall the valuable contribution

of his predecessor, Mr. Opertti, to the work of the last

session of the General Assembly.

I would like to take this opportunity to extend my

warm welcome and congratulations to the Republic of

Kiribati, the Republic of Nauru and the Kingdom of

Tonga on their admission to the United Nations.

As the twentieth century comes to an end, it is

evident that all countries in the world — advanced,

developing or transitional — will be substantially affected

by globalization. Further specialization and the widening

of markets through trade, the larger division of labour and

a more efficient and diversified allocation of financial

resources should increase overall productivity and raise

living standards. However, no country will benefit from

this trend spontaneously and automatically. The major

tasks which Governments face today are development and

the pursuit of sound policies and appropriate structural

adjustments to meet the challenges and take advantage of

the opportunities that globalization offers. While sound

domestic economic planning and reforms are critical to

meeting the challenges of globalization, regional

cooperation and integration processes are essential to

maximizing the emerging benefits and opportunities.

We, as a country and the region as a whole, are

trying to adjust to the multiple stresses of post-Soviet

economic, cultural and political transformations. Clearly

these problems can stress relations as much within States

as between them. Armenia does not see either itself or the

region as being permanently condemned to

marginalization; rather, it believes that close cooperation

in the region, whether political, economic or security

based, will help bring lasting stability and prosperity

based on a sense of solid and shared emergent values.

Cooperation within the framework of regional economic

initiatives, such as the Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to

Europe (INOGATE) programme and the Transport

Corridor: Europe-Caucusus-Asia (TRACECA) project, is

essential. Armenia is sincerely open to such cooperation,

although we have to state with regret that the blockades

imposed on Armenia by Turkey and Azerbaijan are a

serious obstacle to such cooperation. It is obvious that the

region's high potential cannot be fully utilized if attempts

are made to isolate one of its constituents. Such attempts

are doomed to failure and will adversely affect all

concerned in the region.

The Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) is

another mechanism that could contribute to the region's

economic development. The activities of the recently

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established Black Sea Trade and Development Bank will

considerably contribute to carrying out the projects

elaborated by the member States of the Black Sea

Economic Cooperation. In this regard, Armenia fully

supports the granting of observer status in the General

Assembly to the BSEC.

A young republic in transition from a long nightmare

of totalitarian, single-party State to the emergence of a

democratic, free-market, open society, Armenia must

simultaneously consolidate its State structures, move its

economy forward and resolve the Nagorny Karabakh

conflict. It must do all three at the same time, for they are

in fact interdependent. First and foremost, Armenia must

ensure that the Armenian population of Nagorny Karabakh

continues to enjoy its security within its own lands. Our

recent memories of vulnerability and insecurity make it

impossible for any Armenian anywhere to accept anything

less than the inalienable right of the people of Nagorny

Karabakh not to be subjugated, not to be dominated and not

to be subordinate. Armenia understands this and is actively

engaged in pursuing in every possible forum a resolution of

the conflict with Azerbaijan that would achieve peace

without endangering the hard-won and legitimate rights of

our own people to live in secure dignity and freedom.

Since 1992 the Organization for Security and

Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has played a key role in the

process of finding a peaceful solution to the conflict in

Nagorny Karabakh. It has been actively involved, through

the various permutations of the Minsk process, to define the

elements for a durable peace and stability in the region of

the Transcaucasus. Armenia is committed to pursuing every

possible and credible attempt to resolve the conflicts that

linger in the region. It is committed to exploring every

avenue for peaceful relations with all its neighbours,

relations based on mutual respect and recognition.

The OSCE, through the Co-Chairmen of the Minsk

Group, is trying to reconcile seemingly incompatible

principles. We have always remained opposed to one-sided

orthodoxy and have always advocated a more flexible

approach. It is therefore with interest that Armenia and

Nagorny Karabakh received the Minsk Group

Co-Chairmen's draft proposal during their latest visit to the

region. My Government, as well as the authorities of

Nagorny Karabakh, considered this formulation by the

Co-Chairmen a more realistic effort in trying to address the

thorny issue of the status of Nagorny Karabakh with

minimal prejudice to either of the competing claims.

Indeed, we must distinguish between stability and

the forced maintenance of the status quo. Conflating the

two is neither wise nor practicable in the long run. A

status quo in political life is never inherently permanent,

and a viable policy of stability requires a mechanism to

pursue an evolutionary, dynamic process of managing

change. We have new and dynamic challenges to the

status quo; we should not be shy in addressing these

challenges creatively and objectively to conceive more

adaptive answers rather than falling back into a

comfortable, yet dangerously elusive, status quo.

As Armenia actively defends and pursues the

Nagorny Karabakh people's right to self-determination

through peaceful means, we also sympathize with and

support all other just self-determination claims in other

parts of the globe. Armenia applauded the Indonesian

Government's courage when it announced the conduct of

the referendum on East Timor's independence. Today we

are concerned with the latest developments, but we hope

that the results of the popular consultation will be fully

respected. We also commend the role that the United

Nations has played in organizing and supervising the

popular consultation.

Armenia also welcomes the most recent positive

developments in the Middle East peace process. We hope

that the Palestinian people's right to self-determination

will be fully realized, thus bringing lasting peace and

stability to the Middle East.

The last decade of the twentieth century has been

marked by serious achievements in the sphere of

disarmament and global and regional arms control, and

more remains to be done. At the global level, that would

mean reviewing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of

Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in the year 2000; completing the

work of the Biological Weapons Convention Ad Hoc

Group on a compliance and verification protocol;

completely eliminating existing stocks of chemical

weapons and ensuring the universality of the Chemical

Weapons Convention regime. Similarly, at the regional

level, we attach great importance to the successful

conclusion of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces

in Europe (CFE) adaptation process, which will be signed

by heads of States at the OSCE summit this November.

We are convinced that the adapted Treaty will

significantly contribute to the strengthening of European

security.

In pursuing its national policies, Armenia has made

it a priority to support the international efforts in securing

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peace and stability throughout the world. We believe that

our full participation in the work of the Conference on

Disarmament will allow us to make further contributions to

the issues of arms control and disarmament. We hope

members will support Armenia in its willingness to become

a full member of the Conference on Disarmament.

Armenia welcomes the millennium summit initiative.

At the threshold of the new millennium, it is important for

heads of State and Government to discuss the tasks that the

United Nations is going to undertake in providing global

peace and security. Believing that the United Nations

should play the leading role in the formation of an

international anti-criminal strategy, Armenia supports the

idea of holding, in Vienna in the year 2000, the Tenth

United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and the

Treatment of Offenders.

We call for the accession of the maximum number of

countries to universal conventions against terrorism and

support the Russian proposal on a United Nations

convention for combating acts of nuclear terrorism.

Armenia, likewise, supports the initiative of holding a

conference or a special session of the General Assembly

against terrorism in 2000.

On 1 October, Armenia will sign the Statute of the

International Criminal Court, thus becoming the eighty-

seventh State to do so.

Maintenance of international peace is one of the most

important functions of the United Nations. The challenges

that the international community faces today are diverse and

complicated. This holds true especially for the reform of the

Security Council, since ensuring peace and security

throughout the world depends on a Security Council which

functions effectively. Security Council resolutions, including

those on peacekeeping operations, should be unbiased and

universal and reflect a common approach to conflicts, based

on internationally accepted principles and criteria. One way

to strengthen the role and function of the Security Council

is to ensure a more equitable representation of the

membership of the United Nations in that organ, in

accordance with the sovereign equality of States and other

relevant provisions of the Charter, and to make its work

more transparent. Representation in the Security Council

that is more equitable can be achieved by increasing the

number of its members, taking into account the growth in

the membership of the United Nations.

After this brief comment on matters that concern

Armenia's current affairs, its membership in the United

Nations and the outstanding issues of the Nagorny

Karabakh conflict, allow me a moment of reflection. We

are often so preoccupied by immediate crises that

lingering, chronic and fundamental phenomena do not

always get our full attention.

At this end of the century and millennium and on

the threshold of a new era, we would not be candid if we

did not admit to a certain disappointment, a certain sad

recognition that we, as a collectivity, a community of

nations, have not come as far as people everywhere

would have wished us to come. I am sure we are not

alone in our disappointment as we look around us and see

that the hopes of 1989 have not been fully realized in the

last 10 years: Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor are all,

historically speaking, very much in the present.

It is not for lack of charters, conventions and

universal declarations that tragic events and murderous

actions are committed, often by States, and even in the

name of those same charters, conventions and

declarations. After the Second World War, after the end

of the cold war, we might have been justified in expecting

some respite from the organized display of man's

inhumanity to man, of fratricidal war between citizens

and State attempts to exterminate some part of its own

people. But of course very recent experience tells us that

the persecution of innocent civilians on no other grounds

than their ethnicity, religion or national origin continues

unabated.

Armenia and Armenians have a unique history

through which to interpret these events. We notice the

ever more frequent use of the term “genocide” in

continent after continent and we are reminded of our own

tragic experience as genocide victims at the beginning of

this century. It is sad but true that the genocide of

Armenians, which began in 1915, opened this century of

horrors. We at least are convinced that nothing contributes

as much to the repetition of horrors as the reluctance and

unwillingness with which those complicit in them tell the

truth, or even their avoiding doing so at all. Denying the

reality of evil, portraying it as merely relative and

rendering it banal have done much to have evil seen as a

political event to manipulate and equivocate and

prevaricate about in the name of realpolitik.

In Armenia, our democracy and future prosperity

depend on there coming a time when, through peace, the

Caucasus will fulfil its promise as a region of neighbourly

cooperation and economic growth. Without regional

political stability, the regional economic prospects for all

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countries of the Caucasus will remain precarious. And

unless the security needs and the aspirations of the people

of the region are satisfied, there can be no political

stability.