Australia, 2002

Let me begin by

congratulating you, Sir, on your election as President

of the General Assembly at its fifty-seventh session. I

am also pleased to welcome Switzerland as a new

Member of the United Nations.

Let me acknowledge also two other significant

developments: the establishment of the African Union,

and the creation of the New Partnership for Africa's

Development. Both raise real hope for a new era of

political stability and economic growth for Africa.

We meet at this General Assembly in the shadow

of the terrorist attacks on this great city one year ago.

Those chilling events were an attack on the values of

the great civilizations represented here today, values

that are central to the United Nations Charter and this

Organization.

We can take some comfort in knowing that the

international community has responded, deliberately

and resolutely, to international terrorism. The coalition

in the war against terrorism led by the United States

and joined by others, including Australia has

accomplished a great deal. The Al Qaeda network in

Afghanistan has been disabled. The Taliban regime has

been defeated. Now the world is a safer and more

humane place.

But terrorism cannot be stamped out by military

effort alone. Together we must choke off support

financial and otherwise for terrorism. We must stop

the patrons and bankrollers of the trade in terror, and

together face this insidious threat. The decisive

response of the United Nations after 11 September,

embodied in Security Council resolution 1373 (2001),

created a framework for Member States to join forces

in suppressing, prosecuting and punishing terrorist acts

and terrorist financing.

All Member States must implement the

commitments made in resolution 1373 (2001).

Australia has strengthened its counter-terrorism

legislative and law enforcement framework. We are

party to 10 of the 12 anti-terrorism instruments and

will ratify another later this month. Australia is also

assisting other countries in the Asia-Pacific region to

implement their obligations.

We face another grave threat to international

peace and security, one that tests the very authority of

the United Nations. For over a decade, Iraq has flouted

legally binding obligations to disclose and eradicate its

programmes for weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has

defied United Nations resolutions, United Nations

inspections and United Nations sanctions, and it has

ignored some 23 of the 27 United Nations obligations

imposed on it under 16 Security Council resolutions.

The Secretary-General has been patient, flexible and

assiduous in his efforts to get Iraq to comply with

Council resolutions. But Iraq has refused to work with

the United Nations in efforts to dismantle its

programmes for weapons of mass destruction.

Until this occurs, Iraq is a grave threat to its

neighbours and to the world. Iraq's well documented

aggression towards its neighbours and its past use of

chemical weapons underline the potency of the threat it

poses. Grave concerns remain about Iraq's present

capabilities.

Up until 1998 United Nations weapons inspectors

did much good work in finding and destroying Iraq's

weapons of mass destruction program. But the work of

the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM)

was never finished, because in 1998 the inspectors

were effectively thrown out of Iraq. Four years later,

there is little doubt that Iraq has been working hard to

rebuild its chemical and biological weapons

programmes. Moreover, serious questions also remain

about Iraq's nuclear weapons programme.

This state of affairs cannot be left unresolved.

Iraq must give immediate, unconditional and

unrestricted access to inspectors to all areas, facilities,

equipment, records and Iraqi officials. In short, Iraq

must fulfil the requirements of all relevant Security

Council resolutions. If Iraq has nothing to hide, then it

has nothing to fear. Indeed, by meeting these demands,

Iraq and its people have everything to gain.

Let us also be very clear: Iraq's flagrant and

persistent defiance is a direct challenge to the United

Nations, to the authority of the Security Council, to

international law, and to the will of the international

community.

We cannot stand by and allow ourselves to be

ignored. Nor must protracted negotiations be allowed

to weaken and eventually paralyse efforts to allay fears

about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. We all must

demonstrate a clear, collective determination to uphold

the authority of the Security Council, and to ensure that

its resolutions on Iraq are implemented in full.

Otherwise, if Iraq's pursuit of these abhorrent weapons

is allowed to continue, we may shortly be asking

ourselves why we failed to act.

The terrorist threat has given new urgency to our

disarmament and non-proliferation goals, and puts

demands on us for a renewed effort to stop the spread

of weapons of mass destruction both to non-state

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and state actors. We have to be alive to the willingness

of terrorist groups to develop and use chemical,

biological or nuclear weapons.

Australia, for its part, intends to pursue practical

and effective measures through international non-

proliferation treaty regimes and export-control

arrangements. These regimes and arrangements have

delivered tangible security benefits, and should be

supported strongly.

We also need to deal with other transnational

challenges: not just terrorism but other transnational

crimes, including the smuggling of arms, drugs and

people.

Transnational crimes threaten all countries. They

require us to cooperate further in law enforcement,

intelligence and financial controls much like the war

on terrorism.

People-smuggling and trafficking, in particular,

are a truly transnational problem. This lucrative

criminal enterprise undermines the international

refugee protection system, and legal migration

programs, that have enabled millions to build new and

prosperous lives in countries like Australia. Combating

people-smuggling and trafficking in persons is

particularly important to Australia and to the Asia-

Pacific region. This year, Australia co-hosted a

regional ministerial conference with Indonesia.

Ministers from thirty-eight countries committed

themselves to stopping the people who deal cold-

heartedly in human cargo. We agreed that, in the first

instance, people-smuggling must be legislated against

as a serious crime. There is much more we need to do,

and Australia welcomes international discussion and

action on the issue, including within the United

Nations system itself.

Australia welcomes the addition of the

International Criminal Court to the international legal

framework. It is an example of positive international

cooperation which will complement the efforts of

States to end impunity for the worst violations of

international humanitarian law.

United Nations work in East Timor is another

outstanding example of how the organization can, and

does, make a difference in this case in response to a

humanitarian crisis. In May we celebrated East Timor's

independence. We are now about to welcome East

Timor as a new member of the United Nations. That we

have arrived at this point owes much to the resolve and

courage of the East Timorese. It owes much also to the

United Nations and United Nations authorized missions

that brought stability and order and renewed hope for

the future.

I congratulate the Secretary-General and the

Security Council for providing the United Nations

Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET) with the

necessary support, not just for peacekeeping and

policing, but also for developing stable governance in

East Timor. Sustained United Nations and international

support will be critical in East Timor's formative years.

Australia is determined to provide such support. I

would like to pay tribute to Sergio Vieira de Mello's

efforts in East Timor, and to congratulate him warmly

on his appointment as United Nations High

Commissioner for Human Rights.

HIV/AIDS is a global issue that tears at the fabric

of our society, and threatens the economic development

of entire continents. The United Nations General

Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in June last

year brought home to Member States their

responsibilities to marshal national and regional

responses to HIV/AIDS. Australia hosted a regional

ministerial meeting in Melbourne in October 2001.

Ministers agreed on the need to develop strategies to

fight HIV/AIDS, and on the need to share lessons and

cooperate in priority areas. We helped establish the

Asia-Pacific Leadership Forum on HIV/AIDS and

Development to engender greater cooperation in the

region, and we applaud the appointment of a United

Nations regional envoy for HIV/AIDS.

The United Nations has a heavy agenda. But it

cannot and should not try to do everything. To

make a difference it must be selective and focused,

matching its activities to its capabilities and to the

priorities that we, the Member States, set for it. The

Millennium Declaration gave us clear, agreed

priorities. And the Monterrey Financing for

Development Conference and the Johannesburg

Summit on Sustainable Development have built on

these, giving us a framework to shape and direct our

work. We also need to revitalize and reform the way in

which the key organs of the Organization the

General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council,

the Security Council function. The Security

Council, in particular, should be reformed, including by

expanding its membership.

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We also need to think again about the relationship

between these organs and the Secretariat: time is not a

free good, nor are meeting services, nor are the

Secretary-General's reports, and nor is the capacity or

will of Member States to provide resources without

limits. We need to look at how we can more effectively

use existing Unite Nations mechanisms particularly

the General Assembly and the United Nations

Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) as bodies

of review. And we are especially concerned that major

United Nations conferences have become so large and

unwieldy that their fundamental purposes have been

obscured.

Australia strongly supports the process of reform

proposed by the Secretary-General for his second term.

This provides a unique opportunity to address these

questions and to `re-tool' the Organization so as to

build on its strengths. As Member States, we are the

United Nations. The Organization is there to serve our

collective interests.

In order to address new threats and challenges,

the United Nations must be focused and responsive,

and its key organs must function efficiently and

effectively. We must continue to work together to

enable it to meet our expectations. I am confident

that together we can achieve success.