Bhutan, 1993

I have the honour to convey

to all members of the Assembly the warm greetings and

good wishes of His Majesty Jigme Singye Wangchuck, King

of Bhutan, for the success of the forty-eighth session of the

United Nations General Assembly.

I begin by congratulating you, Mr. President, on your

unanimous election. We are confident that with your wide

knowledge and experience you will provide proper direction

to our discussions. We would also like to pay a tribute to

our outgoing President, Mr. Stoyan Ganev, for the exemplary

manner in which he led the Assembly at the last session.

We extend a warm welcome to the peoples and

Governments of Andorra, the Czech Republic, Eritrea, The

Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Monaco and the

Republic of Slovakia on their joining the family of nations.

We are confident that their membership will add to the

strength and vitality of the Organization.

We would like to pay a special tribute to our Secretary-

General, Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, for his dynamic

leadership. His initiatives have already started to steer the

course of the United Nations into new and bold directions.

His report to the Assembly is clear and concise and provides

a good basis for the work of this session.

Forty-eighth session - 6 October 1993 19

The momentous events taking place around us in this

new decade continue to pose challenges and offer

opportunities of an unprecedented scale. The handshake on

the White House lawn between Prime Minister Rabin and

Chairman Arafat opened a window for peace and tolerance

in the Middle East after a century of hatred and suspicion.

When President Clinton called the agreement the "peace of

the brave", he paid just tribute to their courage. Deep-seated

emotions will continue to blur reason and not all groups will

take to the road of healing at the same pace. We join those

calling on extremist factions on both sides to desist from the

use of force. My delegation hopes that the agreement will

lead to a comprehensive and durable peace on the basis of

relevant Security Council resolutions. We appeal to the

international community to give even stronger support to the

implementation of the agreement in all its aspects.

With regard to the situation in the Persian Gulf, we

urge all parties to abide by Security Council resolution 833

(1993). It is our view that for the full recognition of

Kuwait’s sovereignty, the boundary as demarcated by the

United Nations must be internationally respected.

My delegation is happy with the progressive

dismantling of apartheid and the process towards universal

franchise in South Africa. We have recently heard in this

forum Mr. Mandela’s historic call to end all sanctions

against South Africa, a call which must be speedily

honoured.

We applaud the positive results of United Nations

involvement in Cambodia, El Salvador and Haiti. These

successes, however, have not yet been replicated in Somalia

and Bosnia. My delegation strongly condemns violence

against United Nations peace-keeping and humanitarian

workers. As the need for peace-keeping in other parts of the

world grows, it is clear that in future the terms of every

intervention must be carefully defined.

My delegation welcomes the reduction in the

international arsenal of nuclear and other weapons and we

support the continuation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty

beyond 1995.

With regard to the nuclear situation on the Korean

peninsula, we urge the Democratic People’s Republic of

Korea to comply fully with the International Atomic Energy

Agency (IAEA) Safeguards Agreement in order to avoid any

suspicion and speculation.

In an age focused on reducing the world’s nuclear

arsenal, further testing is unnecessary and inconsistent. We

urge all nuclear States not to carry out further tests and to

continue negotiations towards a comprehensive test ban.

While the world’s nuclear arms and other weapons of

mass destruction are being dismantled, we are aware that

conventional weapons are used in all present-day conflicts.

No country which supplies arms can dissociate itself from

the moral responsibility for the use of such arms. We fully

support the United Nations Register on Conventional Arms

and urge the reduction of the international arms trade.

Over the past two years, considerable emphasis has

been put on streamlining the United Nations Secretariat and

making it more efficient. At the last two sessions the

General Assembly has directed its attention not only towards

reforming and revitalizing the United Nations but also

towards making the General Assembly a more effective and

responsive forum. While some progress has been made, the

discussion on reforming and restructuring the United Nations

continues. We cannot expect the United Nations, formed

nearly five decades ago with just 50 members, to remain

unchanged and yet be able to fulfil the hopes and

expectations of the current 184 Members in a vastly different

world. Clearly, the reforms and revitalization cannot be

limited to managerial and organizational changes: the roles

and responsibilities of all the principal organs of the United

Nations must be taken into account.

My delegation believes that during our discussion on

reforming the United Nations, the time is opportune to

enlarge the Security Council. The expansion of its

membership must be taken up together with the issue of

accountability. While it is necessary to preserve the Security

Council’s new-found effectiveness, it must always be made

accountable for its actions to the General Assembly.

The need for reform and restructuring seems in recent

months to have been somewhat overshadowed by the

Organization’s financial difficulties and questions of

effective operations and proper accountability. We fully

agree that it is necessary to minimize waste and streamline

operations. These issues, however, must be pursued

independently of the concerns over the financial health of the

United Nations. We urge all Members to pay their assessed

contributions promptly. We are of the view that the current

level of assessment has fully taken into account both the

financial capacity of Member States to contribute and the

role they have assumed in the Organization. There is a

saying in my country that one must load the pony according

to its ability to carry the burden. Although the United

Nations has travelled far in the last three years, it is clear

20 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

now that we cannot keep overloading it without putting the

necessary means and resources at its disposal.

The Second World Conference on Human Rights, held

in Vienna this year, clearly recognized that social progress

and political stability cannot be ensured without respect for

human rights. The Conference also recognized that human

rights and social progress can be promoted and preserved

only in a healthy economic and natural environment. For

our part, we are fully committed to advancing the human

rights of all our people.

This year, as agreed to in Agenda 21 of the Earth

Summit, the Commission on Sustainable Development has

been established. The work of this Commission will provide

a new direction for the preservation of the environment and

give added impetus to developmental activities. We

recognize that while all development must take place at local

and national levels, there are clearly regional and

international dimensions for which solutions must be found

at the global level. Bhutan looks forward to participating in

the upcoming global conferences on population and

development, the World Summit for Social Development and

the Fourth World Conference on Women.

The recession that has afflicted much of the world

economy in the past year has not shown any signs of

improvement. In such conditions, it is hardly surprising that

the economic performances of most of the world’s least

developed countries have continued to be dismal. Per capita

income for the one tenth of the world’s population which

lives in these countries has fallen in the past three years

despite the adoption of the United Nations Programme of

Action in 1990. While the least developed countries have

begun to initiate bold and painful structural reforms in their

economies, budget constraints on donor nations and

competing claims on aid resources have continued to slow

down the flow of official development assistance to the least

developed countries. While expressing our gratitude to

donors who have met and even exceeded official

development assistance targets, my delegation would like to

appeal to the others to follow suit so that the reforms can be

sustained and promoted.

The sluggish international economic climate in the last

two years has been further compounded by a spate of

unusually harsh natural disasters that have affected many

parts of the world. We would like to express our heartfelt

sympathies to all those in the United States of America,

Japan, Nepal, and India who have suffered heavy loss of life

and property because of recent natural calamities. The

capacity to respond to such disasters should be placed high

on the international agenda. This includes long-term

investment in environmental conservation and other

measures, including early warning facilities, to protect

against natural disasters.

Bhutan continues to make considerable progress in the

field of social and economic development. We are currently

in the process of decentralizing the administration in terms

of decision-making and implementation of development

projects. We are also giving priority to the development of

human resources. In all our nation-building activities, we

have sought to protect our rich natural environment and

distinctive national identity. In our efforts, we have

continued to receive generous support from India, Japan,

Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Kuwait, Austria,

Norway, Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia, and

from various specialized agencies and bodies of the United

Nations, particularly the United Nations Development

Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund

(UNICEF), the United Nations Fund for Activites (UNFPA),

the United Nations Capital Development Fund, (UNCDF),

the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD),

the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations

Volunteers (UNV), the Food and Agriculture Organization

of the United Nations (FAO), the World Health Organization

(WHO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and

Development (UNCTAD), and the United Nations

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

(UNESCO). I take this opportunity to express the sincere

gratitude of the people and Government of Bhutan to our

development partners.

This is an age of multilateralism, and the United

Nations is the centre around which this new age will

revolve. The United Nations is no longer just the

Forty-eighth session - 6 October 1993 21

preserver of world order but an active promoter of peace and

human advancement. Increasing cooperation among its

Members since the end of the cold war has made it possible

for the Organization to become more effective in pursuing

these objectives. The long-term success of the United

Nations, in our view, will depend on how democratic it

becomes in its functioning and to what extent it will involve

all its Members, large and small, in the decision-making

process. We hope that the United Nations will become the

centerpiece of a more just and equitable world order and will

speak for the whole of humanity rather than just for a

privileged few.