Belarus, 1993

I wish sincerely to congratulate the representative

of Guyana on his unanimous election to the distinguished

post of President of the General Assembly at its forty-eighth

session. This is an expression of great respect for him and

his country. I cannot fail to note the enormous amount of

hard and complicated work, deserving of the highest

appreciation, that Mr. Stoyan Ganev, a representative of the

friendly, fraternal Bulgarian people, carried out in that post.

We welcome and congratulate the Czech Republic,

Slovakia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,

Monaco, Andorra and Eritrea, which have this year become

Members of the United Nations.

The end of the twentieth century will undoubtedly go

down in history as a time of tectonic shifts in international

relations. With our own eyes we have seen the huge

tectonic plate of the cold war, with its intense confrontation

between two super-Powers and two ideologies, sink into the

past. Living space for a new world order has been opened

up. What will it look like?

The end of the last century was filled with dire

forebodings reflected in a surrealistic quest, and those

forebodings have, unfortunately, been borne out. The

difficult twentieth century has become the century of

confusion for the human soul and human society, and of the

extreme tension of antagonisms that have many times

brought civilization to the brink of destruction.

Today feelings and expectations are different. At the

end of the century, it would seem, the foundation is being

laid for harmonizing new ways of life in the international

community.

But the establishment of a new world order is not as

painless as one might imagine. Changes in the balance of

power and the dynamism of international relations often

mutate unforeseeably into chaotic scenes of tense

contradiction and conflict. World Powers, alliances of States

and newly emerged countries are searching for their identity

and rethinking their role in an entirely new world.

Not always can an organizing vector or a system of

values, guidelines and ideas inspiring all of us be felt in this

world.

In this situation, there is a new perception of the

potential role of the United Nations. I believe that this

organizing role of the United Nations is more lofty, more

significant and more realistic than the one formerly assigned

to it in the post-war decades, which in fact was unfeasible in

the context of confrontation between the super-Powers. It is

precisely this role for the United Nations in a new world that

the Republic of Belarus advocates most actively.

It is at this precise moment that the potential of both

the United Nations Charter and the Organization itself as a

centre for harmonizing and coordinating the action of nations

is being realized. The United Nations, as the Secretary-

General, Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, has emphasized is truly

becoming irreplaceable.

Undoubtedly, the new role of the United Nations

requires a new level of efficiency in the Organization,

particularly in its main bodies - the Security Council and the

General Assembly. The Republic of Belarus supports the

reforms aimed at helping the Organization adapt to the

fundamentally new realities and making the procedures of its

main bodies more democratic. But in surging forward, one

should not lose contact with the ground under one’s feet.

Reforms, responsibilities and the future are those reference

points on which we believe we should constantly focus our

attention.

26 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

At this decisive moment, the Security Council is

becoming the centre of attention, like a magic crystal ball in

which one can discern the future. Naturally, reforming the

Council, including expanding its membership, requires an

especially responsible approach. Mindful that in these new

conditions, this most important United Nations body cannot

remain the same as it was designed and created almost half

a century ago, we support a careful search for consensus on

all issues related to its reform. Changes in the Security

Council - especially today, when its work has become much

more intensive - should not hamper the productiveness of its

efforts. To a large extent these efforts depend, in our view,

on well-coordinated activities among all of the Council’s 15

members, on their adherence to the purposes and principles

of the Charter of the Organization and on their highly

conscientious, responsible attitude, proved, through real

deeds, to the entire international community.

The Republic of Belarus, as representatives know, is

one of the candidates for a non-permanent seat on the

Security Council for 1994 to 1995. Today, on the eve of the

golden jubilee of the United Nations, the fiftieth anniversary

of its creation, it is appropriate to recall that at the time of

the inception of the World Parliament back in 1945, Belarus

was a founding member of the United Nations, having been

among the first to sign its Charter.

It is appropriate to recall here that we have gained a

certain amount of experience through working in the

Security Council from 1974 to 1975. It is also true that we

have been represented in that important body the fewest

number of times compared to our friends and colleagues in

the regional group, but we hope that this injustice will be

redressed at the forthcoming elections.

The new historical conditions which led to the creation

of the Commonwealth of Independent States, with Minsk as

the host city for its coordinating organs, have made us take

a fresh look at our role and at our possibilities of

participating in the life of the international community. This

is also attested to by the joint support of the Commonwealth

and of a number of friendly States for Belarus’s candidature

for non-permanent membership in the Security Council. For

us, the submission of the candidature of the Republic of

Belarus for membership in the Security Council does not

represent merely a spontaneous political gesture nor a

hankering for pro-forma prestige. Historical circumstances

are such that the experience and the potential of Belarus, at

this very difficult moment in the formation of a new world

order, can be of great importance to the international

community.

Let us take a look at this experience and potential in

those areas which have become very important for

preserving global peace and security, as is widely recognized

and attested to even by this current debate.

I deal first with the proliferation of weapons of mass

destruction. As representatives are aware, Belarus is one of

the four States that inherited strategic nuclear potential from

the former Soviet Union. In our case, this is an important

modern arsenal located in the heart of the European

continent on mobile strategic missiles. It directly affects

global security, the nuclear balance and nuclear non-

proliferation. Belarus, however, renounces the prestige of a

nuclear State, the sword of Damocles referred to here by

President Clinton, and has chosen non-nuclear status.

Having made the appropriate commitments, we are

fulfilling them in practice. In 1992 we were the first to

remove tactical nuclear weapons from our territory; in fact,

that was done ahead of schedule. Last February, the

Parliament of Belarus virtually unanimously ratified the

Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) and the Lisbon

Protocol to that Treaty, and also took the decision to accede,

as a non-nuclear State, to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation

of Nuclear Weapons. In July of this year the instruments of

accession were deposited in Washington, Moscow and

London.

I wish to emphasize that since May 1992 - that is, since

the signing of the Lisbon Protocol - we have never given

any grounds for anyone to doubt the honesty, logic and

consistency of our actions. Of all the States which are the

nuclear heirs to the Soviet Union, Belarus was the first, and

still the only one, to have rejected nuclear weapons in

practice. Moreover, it did so without any preconditions or

reservations. Thus, for the first time in the history of the

international community, a sovereign State has voluntarily

renounced a real opportunity to possess and develop nuclear

potential. This is truly a large-scale contribution by Belarus

to global security and the non-proliferation of nuclear

weapons. I wish to emphasize once again that our words

and deeds are not at variance.

Having put forward from this lofty rostrum in 1990 the

idea of creating a non-nuclear belt from the Baltic to the

Black Sea, we have, to the best of our abilities, been

transforming our territory into part of such a belt. We hope

that in due course our idea will be supported and developed

by our neighbours.

Of great concern to the international community is the

threat of illegal exports from the territory of the former

Forty-eighth session - 29 September l993 27

Soviet Union of nuclear materials, technology and

equipment, which can fall into irresponsible hands.

Responding to this danger, Belarus was the first State of the

region to enter into a large-scale agreement with the United

States to set up a stringent system for export control. Work

on implementing this agreement is already under way.

Other initiatives put forward by my country are no less

familiar to the United Nations. After many years of effort

by Belarus, there has been agreement on international

machinery that has the potential to prevent States from

replenishing their arsenals with new types of weapons of

mass destruction. During this session we intend to continue

our active work in this area.

Taking an authoritative position on these issues,

Belarus, on behalf of and on the instructions of the States of

the Commonwealth of Independent States, intends during

this session to present a joint declaration by the

Commonwealth of Independent States on issues of the

non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their

delivery systems.

I turn now to reductions in conventional weapons. Our

country does not manufacture battle tanks, and never has.

Yet we now have more tanks per capita than any other

European State - another part of the difficult heritage of the

former Soviet Union. When we decided to accede to the

Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, we knew full well

that Belarus would have to eliminate 1.7 times more tanks

than the United States, 10 times more than the United

Kingdom and 50 times more than France. That

disproportionate burden is not taken into consideration in the

Treaty, since the Republics of the former Soviet Union had

no opportunity to participate in its preparation.

At stake, however, was the fate of a highly important

international agreement on which many European countries

had been working for more than 20 years, and so as not to

torpedo all that work and set Europe back many years we

undertook that excessive burden, at great cost to ourselves.

Now, Belarus is making an enormous contribution to

strengthening regional and international security by

destroying the weapons of what was the most powerful

military tank district in the former Soviet Union. We are

doing this with extreme difficulty, because of the problems

of the present transitional period. I would note that this

often results in a lack of understanding among our own

people: during an energy crisis, we are destroying tanks

while we lack the energy resources to carry out our crop-

sowing campaign.

Weapons are immoral, just as the Moloch of war is

immoral. But the process of disarmament has turned out to

be far from idyllic: a catch-phrase of our century - "Guns

before butter" - has been fulfilled in a most unexpected way,

for the destruction of the guns has done nothing to increase

the supply of butter.

In reducing its conventional weapons, Belarus is guided

by the interests of all, and is entitled to expect reciprocity

from other States in overcoming its difficulties.

On the whole, the heritage of the former Soviet Union

has been a difficult one: an economy among the most

highly militarized, and large military contingents. Suffice it

to say that at the start of 1992 there were three times as

many soldiers and officers per thousand civilians on our

territory as there were on average in the USSR.

Working sincerely to keep Belarus neutral, our

Parliament and our Government have adopted a policy

intended to demilitarize the national economy, including a

50 per cent reduction in our army over five years and the

development and adoption of a defensive military doctrine.

Having lived over the centuries through the horror of

numerous wars, and having lost in their flames millions upon

millions of its citizens, the Republic of Belarus will do its

utmost to ensure that the firestorm of military confrontation

will never again consume its territory.

I shall deal now with ethnic conflicts.

Acute and bloody ethnic, religious and intercommunal

clashes have become a dangerous feature of the new world.

The deep, often irrational, roots of these conflicts pose an

especially difficult challenge to the entire international

community, for they do not respond to simple prescriptions

for settlement. In Belarus, profound social transformations

are taking place against a background of unique mutual

tolerance among varied ethnic, cultural and religious groups

within our society. Not a single drop of blood has stained

the soil of Belarus during this difficult time of transition.

We shall continue to do our best so that Belarus, nestled in

the very heart of the European continent, can continue to set

an example of political, ethnic and religious balance.

Belarus is unique in its humanistic spirit, which can

guarantee stability and irreversible democratic reform, and

28 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

we sincerely offer to the Security Council our experience of

coexistence among different ethnic groups and the centuries-

old tradition of national, cultural and religious tolerance that

is a feature of our country.

I am sure that tolerance can be an important key to the

resolution of any conflict. With international effort, we can

succeed. It was tolerance in the highest sense of the word

that made possible a recent handshake, which finally opened

the way to what had seemed the impossible: a Middle East

settlement. It is tolerance that will determine the success of

the process under way in South Africa, and it is a lack of

tolerance that is delaying the settlement of the crisis in

Bosnia.

Instability; ethnic and religious clashes; ethnic and

regional separatism; internal political strife: they have all

reached tragic levels in the post-Soviet areas. In a number

of cases, they have grown into local military conflicts, and

even wars. The internal stability of Belarus and its position

at the centre - serving as host to the coordinating bodies of

the Commonwealth of Independent States - give Belarus the

potential to be a peacemaking mediator in such conflicts.

For example, we sincerely wish to help settle the

problem of Nagorny-Karabakh. Belarus remains ready to

assist in convening the international conference on Nagorny-

Karabakh, under the auspices of the Conference on Security

and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), to be held in our

capital, Minsk, on a date to be determined by the

participants.

We believe that the neutrality proclaimed by Belarus is

an international asset. This constitutional objective enables

us to adopt a wider, unbiased approach to determining our

positions on various issues. We do this taking due account

of the realities of today’s world and of our place in that

world. We strive to pursue our policies in such a way as to

lay the foundation for a prosperous and neutral Belarus.

Specifically, we are moving towards the development and

implementation of the principles of democracy.

The Belarus Parliament is in the final stages of

considering our new Constitution, which will consolidate the

irreversibility of the democratization of our State. We are

building a new political structure: new political parties,

national, social and political movements, and hundreds of

civic organizations have been officially registered and have

begun their political activities.

Among these organizations is the League for the

Protection of Human Rights. The evolving human-rights

status of Belarus is up to international standards. As early

as 1991 we ratified the Optional Protocol to the International

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and recognized the

competence of the Human Rights Committee, in keeping

with article 41 of the Covenant.

Belarus commends the results of the second World

Conference on Human Rights, held this year in Vienna. The

Conference in particular reiterated the obligations of States

to ensure completely and effectively all human rights and

fundamental freedoms without any discrimination whatever

against persons belonging to national minorities. We attach

great importance to this provision.

Belarus has created and is still creating all the

necessary conditions for national minorities that live in its

territory so that they can fully enjoy human rights. But at

the same time we are far from being indifferent to the

treatment of Belarusians who live beyond our national

territory and will continue in future to follow closely the

situation of more than 2 million ethnic Belarusians who live

in different countries of the world.

Economic reforms are gaining ground in the Republic.

A gradual movement towards a market economy has

increased the level of openness of the economy and has

limited the State’s monopoly in a number of areas of life.

Concrete steps towards creating a private sector have been

taken. The law on private landed property, which is of

fundamental importance in this respect, has been in force

since 1 September. The adoption of these legislative acts,

like the laws on property, entrepreneurship, and foreign

investment, has created the basis for the further development

of market relations. Right now Belarus is on the threshold

of a wider stage of its privatization.

The Republic of Belarus, like other States of this

region, is vitally concerned about developing and

strengthening multilateral cooperation in the economic field.

We believe that there are forms of discrimination and

limitation with respect to the States of Central and Eastern

Europe which should, along with the cold war, become a

thing of the past. Any delay here will be at variance with

the political and economic realities of the world.

Belarus is striving to lift barriers and limitations in the

field of trade and has taken a decision to start negotiations

on its accession to the General Agreement on Tariffs and

Trade (GATT). We also hope that very soon the Uruguay

Round will be successfully completed.

Forty-eighth session - 29 September l993 29

Integration on a new level of economic activity within

the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is especially

urgent for us. Belarus was one of the main initiators for

setting up an economic union within the framework of the

CIS and of concluding an appropriate agreement to that

effect. It is with great pleasure that I state that an agreement

on setting up such an economic union was signed recently,

under the chairmanship of Mr. Shushkevich, in Moscow at

the meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the CIS.

This opens up favourable prospects for the economic

stabilization of the Commonwealth of Independent States and

for the gradual overcoming of the most acute problems of

this transitional stage. I am convinced that the agreements

reached in Moscow will mark a transition towards radically

new relations, that is, market relations, and will inevitably

lead to the formation on that basis of the eastern European

commonwealth, a geopolitical and economic group of a

market type that will gradually, but at the same time

consistently and unswervingly, become integrated into

European and world economic structures.

These new prospects encourage us also because they

will help Belarus, I hope, in the near future to strengthen its

real capacity to pay and settle to a large extent the problem

of our financial obligations to the United Nations.

We are well aware of the acuteness of the financial

situation of the Organization. That is why, despite our own

extremely difficult economic and financial situation, the

Government of Belarus recently made a contribution

amounting to $3.5 million to the budget of the Organization

and, in effect, has fully settled its arrears. I wish to assure

Members of the United Nations that we will

continue to do what we can within our very limited

resources. But the United Nations itself through its main

organ the General Assembly must take steps to have the

financial obligations of Belarus strictly match our real

capacity to pay. In particular the new realities warrant a

decision without further delay on the relocation of our

country from Group B to Group C in the scheme of the

apportionment of expenses for United Nations peace-keeping

operations.

At the beginning of my statement I mentioned the great

hopes for the future which Belarus places on United Nations

activities. However, there is one very special area for us in

which United Nations assistance is vitally important, and that

is the environment and our "eternal wound that does not

heal" - Chernobyl - the most terrible nuclear disaster.

Along with the growth of cancer, especially among

children, of great concern to us recently has been the social

and psychological stress among our people. The birth rate

has fallen dramatically and the number of psychogenic

diseases has been growing rapidly. People are overwhelmed

by a concern about their health and the health of their

children. This has also affected the pace of the Republic’s

transition to new social and economic realities. We call

upon the United Nations, in close cooperation with the

Commission of the European Communities, to continue their

efforts to further study and overcome the consequences of

the Chernobyl disaster. We hope that in the process of

reforming the United Nations system and its Secretariat the

necessary institutional and programme mechanisms will be

worked out to further carry out Chernobyl-related activities

in the interests of the entire international community, taking

into consideration the great significance and uniqueness of

the lessons of the Chernobyl tragedy.

The activities carried out by the new United Nations

Coordinator on Chernobyl, Mr. Jan Eliasson, the beginning

of whose work is greatly appreciated by us, gives us hope

that the United Nations potential will be used actively

enough to yield tangible practical results.

In the post-Chernobyl era we need moral and

psychological support, sometimes simply compassion. In

this connection I should like to recall the words of a great

Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who is connected to

Belarus by birth. He once declared that beauty and the

nobility of human relations would save the world. To that

I would add compassion because they in effect are

inseparable since beauty is always noble while compassion

and nobility are always beautiful.

Belarus, living through the post-Chernobyl nightmare,

having over centuries survived the nightmare of many raids,

invasions and wars, poverty and hardship, understands the

pain, the suffering, of the peoples of the developing

countries as no other country does. Poverty, diseases, child

mortality, in many parts of the world cannot leave people of

good will indifferent. Indeed it is immoral to fail to take

note of this. I am convinced that the new world order will

entail a fairer distribution of the world’s wealth and it will

be marked by assistance to those who for decades have been

unjustifiably doomed to poverty, stagnation and predictable

backwardness and have had to be content with the remaining

crumbs of the wealth produced by them but then

redistributed and not in their favour.

As one of the original members of the Commission on

Sustainable Development, our country is striving to

30 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

contribute to its work in a way that reflects the ecological

and economic interests of all groups of States in a balanced

manner. We support efforts to elaborate an international

convention on desertification; the search for a solution to the

problems of the small developing island States; and the

search for new and additional resources for developing

countries.

Aware, under the conditions of post-Chernobyl realities,

of the significance of ecological problems in finding a

solution, Belarus has been actively supporting the

implementation of the decisions and recommendations of the

first-ever summit in history held in the interests of the Earth.

The Parliament of the Republic of Belarus has already

ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity and is now

examining the issue of acceding to the Convention on

Climate Change. We support priority consideration of

ecological problems within the context of international

cooperation, and the Republic of Belarus supports the idea

of transforming, in the near future, the Commission on

Sustainable Development into the United Nations council on

ecological security. We are ready to contribute to the

elaboration of its structure and mandate.

The United Nations is moving from the old epoch to

the new one with an imposing baggage. Certain parts of it

have already become obsolete and will be of interest only to

historical researchers; others contain the grains of that new

future role to be played by the United Nations in this quickly

evolving world which I have already spoken about - for

example, a positive and future-oriented experience of large-

scale peace-keeping operations in Namibia and Cambodia.

Standing on the threshold of the third millennium, one can

hardly envisage all of the details of the general picture of the

future world. However, the prospects that lie ahead are what

matters most, and they are clearly visible. From the role of

cease-fire organizer to the role of peace guarantor, from the

role of peace guarantor to the role of co-organizer of life in

the international community, a wise and authoritative

arbitrator whose political will is without doubt recognized by

all: that is the way we see the role of the United Nations in

the next century. Meeting the challenges of the time,

Belarus is ready to work together with other friendly States,

including, if this is the will of the General Assembly, within

the Security Council of the United Nations.