Botswana, 1994

The Government and

people of Botswana salute your elevation to the Presidency

of the forty-ninth session of the Assembly. Your election by

acclamation is a fitting tribute not only to your personal

distinction but also to the African continent, on whose soil

you were bred and nurtured. It goes without saying,

therefore, that the confidence we repose in you as you

guide our deliberations is beyond measure.

The Secretary-General’s legendary tenacity of purpose

at the helm of our Organization has continued to serve us

very well indeed. He remains undaunted by the

complexities of the problems he faces as the world’s chief

diplomat and peacemaker in an era marred by the

continuing absence of peace. We salute him and his staff of

dedicated international civil servants.

Let me also pay a deserved tribute to our dear brother,

last year’s President, Ambassador Samuel Insanally, whose

tenure of office was most effective, productive and creative.

We wish him a happy, hard-earned retirement from the

service of our General Assembly.

The new world order remains a misnomer. Misery and

wretchedness are the order of the day in many parts of the

world. The post-cold war era was to be the era of

democratization, peace and development, so we hoped. Yes,

democratization has taken root in many parts of the world,

including our own continent, Africa. That is to be

celebrated, and should be celebrated. Unfortunately, the

energies and resources that the international community

could be deploying to help buttress and nurture emerging

democracies have to be expended on the search for

solutions to a multiplicity of intractable civil wars.

Tragically, some of these civil wars show no sign of

amenability to solutions. They have become perennial; so

is the United Nations mission to mitigate them. This places

the United Nations in a terrible dilemma, both moral and

material. Unfortunately, there is very little choice for our

Organization. It would be absolutely unconscionable to

abandon a Bosnia or a Somalia to its own wretched

devices.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the United

Nations peacekeeping commitments are threatening to

overwhelm the Organization’s capacities. Financial

resources to sustain these commitments may soon dry up,

if indeed they are available, in tandem with the drying up

of support for peace-keeping generally, particularly

among the big contributors.

The past year has been a year of mixed blessings for

Africa. The continent won a major victory with the

liberation of South Africa from the shackles of apartheid

and racism. Three-and-a-half centuries of white minority

domination have ended, and the construction of a new

non-racial society has begun in earnest in South Africa.

We heartily congratulate all the people of South Africa,

in their racial and cultural diversity, on the wisdom and

courage they have shown in coming to terms with their

common destiny. We welcome the new South Africa into

our midst with open arms.

Southern Africa, the erstwhile cockpit of conflict,

has suddenly found salvation and begun the process of

reconstruction and regional cooperation and integration.

Since peace and stability are universal prerequisites for

orderly economic and social development, both of which

we have begun to savour in southern Africa, there is

every reason why we should be excited about the future

of our region.

With the holding of multiparty elections in the sister

Republic of Mozambique, the process of democratization

in the region will have come closer than ever before to

culmination. Increasingly, the region is being guided in

the ordering of its political affairs by a set of common

democratic values. Through the Southern African

Development Community’s economic fraternity,

mechanisms are being developed to promote regional

approaches to the protection of human rights and the

safeguarding of the democratic milieu that the region has

laboured so hard and shed so much blood to bring about.

As an example, I would mention the case of

Lesotho, about which members will have heard.

Recently, when democracy was placed in danger there,

the region, through the good offices of three Presidents of

southern African countries - Zimbabwe, South Africa and

Botswana - sprang into action to engage the Basotho

leaders in a dialogue, which happily culminated in the

cherished Lesotho democracy being saved without a shot

30

being fired. It was regional conflict-resolution and

diplomacy at their very best.

Yet we remain troubled and pained by the fact that not

all is well in other parts of the African continent by any

stretch of the imagination. Our south western sister

Republic of Angola has never had a moment of tranquillity,

peace or stability ever since it attained its independence 19

years ago. Blood has continued to flow in that tortured

country in ever-increasing profusion, even as we are told

the Lusaka talks are on the verge of a successful

conclusion. This is the precious blood of innocent Angolans

shed needlessly because the multiparty democracy

demanded by UNITA and its supporters was won three

years ago, only to be subjected to another round of brutal

civil war. We remain hopeful, however, that the marathon

talks in Lusaka, capital of the Republic of Zambia, will

produce an agreement for the parties to implement without

reservation.

The Somali tragedy remains intractable. The presence

in the fractured country of 18,000 United Nations peace-

keeping troops, including Botswanans, has not made much

of a difference in the restoration of peace and tranquillity

to the Somali people.

Now we are faced with a threat to abandon the

country to its fate. The international community has every

reason to be frustrated and exasperated by what looks like

a total absence of any intention on the part of the warring

Somali factions to reconcile and give their nation a chance

to drag itself out of the quagmire of civil war. We

understand this frustration and exasperation, and yet we

would find it absolutely unconscionable for the United

Nations simply to uproot itself from Somalia when it is

abundantly clear that such a course of action would have

catastrophic consequences. The decision to withdraw the

United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II) must

be carefully weighed against the obvious consequences of

the vacuum it will create.

There is also Liberia, whose agony clearly knows no

limit. The madness that is being displayed by the warring

factions there is surely beyond comprehension. Is the

newly intensified fighting which has caused another exodus

of refugees to neighbouring countries and wasted more

innocent lives the way to thank the monitoring Group of the

Economic Community of West African States (ECOMOG)

and the international community for the cost in lives and

material they have suffered and incurred in an attempt to

save Liberia from self-destruction? The first world is

already showing signs of extreme weariness about the cost

of peace-keeping. Soon even ECOMOG may run out of

the means and the will to persist in its seemingly

impossible mission to save Liberia from itself. And as

long as Liberia is in the state in which it is there is the

certainty that peace in the region at large will be and

remain imperilled.

Although the carnage has ended in Rwanda, the

tragedy that has befallen its people has not. The

Rwandese nation cannot reconcile so long as chunks of it

are languishing and dying in refugee camps in foreign

lands. Rwanda cannot endure any more cycles of civil

war and genocidal massacres. The tens or hundreds of

thousands of refugees encamped at present in the

neighbouring countries must be helped to return to their

homeland lest out of the frustrations of exile in their

squalid refugee camps they ignite another cycle of

genocide.

On the perennial question of Western Sahara,

Botswana shares the view that it is taking far too long to

hold a referendum in the Territory to allow the Sahraoui

people to decide their future. The Territory cannot and

must not be allowed to mark time forever in a limbo of

uncertainty as if the fulfillment of the aspirations of its

people can be delayed until their final submission.

Beyond the African continent, the agony of Bosnia

and Herzegovina has continued to outrage the conscience

of mankind. The senseless bloodletting in that tormented

region of Europe remains stubbornly impervious to

solution. Peace plan after peace plan has failed to

impress one side or the other, and the result is that the

patience of the international community, which has to

deploy enormous resources to maintain a massive

peace-keeping presence in the area, is being tested beyond

endurance. The question we ask is: How can the

perpetrators of that cruel conflict ever make sense out of

it? We appeal to them to stop the carnage. Meanwhile,

we urge the International Tribunal set up to bring to

justice the authors and perpetrators of that barbarous war

to spare no effort in doing so.

We hope that in the Caribbean, the people of Haiti

will take advantage of the massive assistance they are

receiving from the international community to normalize

the situation in their country. They have a golden

opportunity to do so and to resume the journey they

started three years ago towards a democratic future.

There may be no second - or third - chance.

31

Botswana believes that the time has come for Cuba

and the United States to negotiate an amicable end to their

protracted estrangement. Intractable problems all over the

world, are being resolved through negotiations, and we do

not believe that the cold war between Cuba and the United

States is beyond resolution by negotiation. Botswana

values the friendship of both countries and cherishes the

hope that soon there will be peace and reconciliation

between the two neighbours.

The Middle East has broken out of the straitjacket of

no war- no peace. We hail the agreement clinched last year

between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization

(PLO) and the rapprochement between Israel and Jordan

symbolized by the signing of the Washington Declaration

to bring to an end the state of war between the two

countries, and we urge that no stone be left unturned in the

quest for a comprehensive solution to the problems of that

very important area of the world.

Unfortunately, the sound of the drums of war in the

Gulf area are piercing our ears once again. We hope that

this time the parties involved in the war dance are merely

trying to exorcise the demons of the politics of

brinkmanship, without any intention whatsoever of bringing

world peace to the brink and beyond.

The arbitrary division of the island of Cyprus remains

unrepaired. We urge the parties to reintensify their search

for a mutually acceptable dispensation that will make

possible the reunification of the island and its people.

The same applies to the two Koreas. The people of

the North and South are Koreans in every sense and soon

they must realize that, like the people of South Africa, who

have just triumphed over racial division, they too can

triumph if they try harder, over ideological division.

We live in the age of dialogue and negotiation, the age

of reconciliation and forgiveness. No one will be excused

for refusing to negotiate an end to a disagreement.

Over the past two decades my country has experienced

an unprecedented period of economic growth. Between

1970 and 1992 Botswana achieved an annual real growth

rate of 12 per cent per year in gross domestic product.

After being viewed as one of the world’s poorest countries,

with a per capita income estimated at $70, Botswana

suddenly became Africa’s success story, a success born out

of a stable, democratic political system and a free-market

economy. Our democratic system is now so entrenched

that it has become our nation’s second nature. The happy

result is that Botswana is free from any ethnic or tribal

conflict.

Regrettably, we have not been spared the wrath of

the world recession and have thus experienced dramatic

declines in growth rates. Our economic growth, heavily

influenced by the development of minerals, particularly

diamonds, has experienced adverse effects arising from

the fall in the price of diamonds. Our country has

entered the most challenging period since independence.

Africa as a whole is engaged, in one form or

another, in economic and political reforms that need the

support and cooperation of the donor community and the

multilateral financial institutions. Poverty is an

underlying factor of underdevelopment that many African

countries have to contend with today. Regrettably,

implementation of the structural adjustment programme,

welcome as it is in the restructuring of African

economies, has in many instances worsened the social

conditions of the poor in the short term. This is why

Botswana looks forward to the forthcoming World

Summit on Social Development, where we will have the

opportunity to address these anomalies in a very serious

manner.

Botswana is encouraged by the ongoing process of

reform and revitalization of the United Nations in the

economic, social and related fields. The adoption of

General Assembly resolution 48/162 has brought about

unprecedented changes in the working of the United

Nations system, at the level both of the Economic and

Social Council and of the Second Committee of the

General Assembly; we welcome all of this. It is our hope

that these changes will bring about efficiency and

effectiveness in addressing the needs and concerns of

developing countries at the policy-making and operational

levels.

With regard to reform of the Security Council, I can

do no better than quote the African Common Position

Paper on United Nations Reforms:

"The expansion and equitable representation in the

Security Council has become imperative because of

the need to democratize and make the Council more

32

efficient and transparent. In this era, the democracy

that is being preached at national level should pervade

the international system. It is thus necessary to review

both the composition and the decision-making process

of the Council, in line with the above principles, and

taking into account the relationship between the

Council and the General Assembly. In implementing

these ideals, it is necessary to bear in mind the need

for equitable geographical representation, which

emphasizes increased permanent membership for

developing countries, particularly in Africa."

We are due to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the

founding of this Organization. The United Nations has

amply vindicated its existence. It survived the distractions

and ravages of the cold war with its sense of purpose

relatively intact. Botswana’s fidelity to the purposes and

principles of the Organization’s Charter remains unstinting.

It is therefore our cherished hope that the next century will

usher in an environment in which the Organization will

thrive in the pursuit of these purposes and principles.