Botswana, 2003

Allow me, first of all,

to express once again to the Secretary-General and to

all United Nations personnel the condolences of my

Government and the people of Botswana for the

terrorist attack on United Nations headquarters in

Baghdad on 19 August. We are outraged that an attack

of that magnitude was carried out against international

civil servants, whose sole mission in that country is to

help Iraqis rebuild their country. The death of Special

Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and a number of

his staff is indeed a loss to the United Nations family

that we shall all feel for a long time to come.

May I now pay my respects to you, Mr. President,

and congratulate you on your election as President of

the General Assembly at its fifty-eighth session. I

pledge to you the full support of my delegation. Let me

also pay tribute to our illustrious Secretary-General,

Mr. Kofi Annan, for his dynamic leadership of the

Organization, in particular for his unshakeable

commitment to the reform of the United Nations. I

assure him of the unwavering support of Botswana in

the discharge of his onerous responsibilities.

The fifty-eighth session is beginning at a time

when we are faced with formidable challenges to the

cohesion of the international community and to the role

of the United Nations in maintaining international

peace and security. We have just witnessed the war in

Iraq, which caused deep divisions and recrimination

among the Member States of the United Nations. It is

important that the Member States set aside their

differences and promote the Organization as a force

that can rally nations, both big and small, around

common causes. For the United Nations to succeed in

its mission, it is important that all Member States

respect the Charter.

Although now fewer in number, conflicts

continue to bedevil the African continent. Fighting is

still going on in many parts of Liberia, although there

is a semblance of peace in the capital, Monrovia. It is a

welcome development that the Security Council has

decided to send a peacekeeping mission to that war-

torn country. The peace process in CÙte d'Ivoire,

though holding, is still fragile. Only recently, a military

coup took place in Guinea-Bissau. Botswana strongly

condemns the coup, which further tarnishes the image

of Africa. We welcome the news that, through the

mediation of the Economic Community of West

African States(ECOWAS) and the African Union, the

military in Guinea-Bissau has agreed to hand over

power to a civilian interim administration until

elections are held, in two years' time.

Those conflicts continue to drain Africa's energies

and to undermine the continent's capacity to focus on the

equally challenging tasks of development and poverty

eradication. The vicious cycle of war, poverty, hunger

and disease has left African people in despair. They

wonder whether in this new millennium the dawn of

peace and tranquillity that they so aspire to will ever

come. The inability of the international community

thus far to act resolutely to address those conflicts will

no doubt make it more difficult for the continent to

implement its major programmes, such as the New

Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).

The conflict in the Middle East continues to be a

matter of grave concern. All initiatives towards a

peaceful settlement, including the road map promoted

by the Quartet, have so far failed. The decision by

Israel and others to insist on determining who in the

leadership of the Palestinians they will do business with is

an unacceptable precondition for genuine negotiations.

Worse still, the threat to expel the democratically elected

leader of the Palestinians, Mr. Arafat, is a recipe for

further strife that could result in more loss of life on both

sides. That development should be condemned by all

who want to see peace in that land.

In Iraq, despite formal pronouncements that

hostilities have ended, the country is still not at peace.

Instead we see an escalation of violence, with many

people, including coalition troops, being killed every

day. The situation clearly calls for an intervention by

the Security Council to ensure that the Iraqi people are

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given the mandate to govern themselves and that the

United Nations is given a bigger role to play in the

reconstruction of the country.

Botswana firmly believes that the various

challenges that the international community faces today

can best be tackled under a multilateral framework. The

United Nations remains the foremost body for promoting

the Agenda for Peace. Small States such as my own

place great hope in multilateral partnership and

cooperation, for on their own or in their small regional

groupings the challenges they face are formidable. We

therefore call upon Member States to rededicate

themselves to the noble ideals of the Organization.

As we direct our energies towards peace and

security, we must also remain focused on the twin

challenges of development and poverty eradication.

Those are global challenges requiring global solutions

and the active participation of all nations.

Our performance in efforts to eradicate poverty

cannot be considered successful by any measure.

Poverty still remains a blemish on humankind's

attempts at socio-economic upliftment. The policies,

strategies and programmes to address the situation have

not had the desired effect. It is estimated that about 1.2

billion people around the world still live in poverty,

and a large proportion of them live in Africa. It is

unacceptable that in this day and age, when billions of

dollars are spent on armaments, space technology and

other advances in human endeavour, such a large

number of people are still poor and marginalized.

We should bear in mind that there is a clearly

established link between poverty, on the one hand, and

the political instability and insecurity that the world is

witnessing today, on the other. Poverty breeds

resentment, anger and despair. People condemned to

the margins of society feel that they have nothing to

gain by participating in the democratic process of

governance. Instead they believe that they have nothing

to lose by using violent means in expressing their

grievances, for in their perception, the international

community is indifferent to their suffering.

Three years after the Millennium Declaration was

adopted by our heads of State, the General Assembly

should take full stock of the progress achieved towards

the fulfilment of the commitments contained in it.

Botswana welcomes the report of the Secretary-

General on the implementation of the Millennium

Declaration. It is the intention of my delegation to

participate actively in the debate on this matter.

We need to measure in concrete terms whether there

has been an increase in the flow of official development

assistance. We need to measure whether we have been

able to mobilize enough domestic and international

resources for development, including foreign direct

investment and private capital flows. We need to measure

whether we have resolved the external debt crisis. We

need to measure how far we have gone towards

establishing fair and equitable international monetary

and trading systems. Above all, we need to measure

how much we have achieved in the global fight against

the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In that context, it is regrettable

that the recent talks in Cancun on trade, a key factor in

poverty reduction and development, collapsed.

Earlier, I referred to the need for the international

community to address the problem of poverty with all

the resources at its disposal; for the failure to do so will

only increase the level of frustration and anger and

feelings of powerlessness among the poor, which will

in turn will provide fertile ground for radicalism and

extremism.

Botswana strongly condemns international

terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Terrorism,

like poverty, is now the biggest threat to civilized

norms of international discourse. The recent senseless

and deliberate attack on the United Nations office in

Baghdad is a stark reminder that even the United

Nations servants of peace and humankind are not

immune from acts of terror. We must support the

appeal by the Secretary-General for the adoption of

urgent measures to provide protection and security to

United Nations staff wherever they serve. We believe

that the United Nations must be empowered to play a

pivotal role in mobilizing international consensus

around measures to curb the scourge of terrorism. In

that respect, Botswana remains ready to cooperate in

any way possible with the relevant United Nations

agencies.

My delegation was most pleased that a high-level

meeting of the General Assembly was convened on 22

September this year to focus on sharing best practices

and the lessons learned in the fight against the

HIV/AIDS pandemic. As one of the countries most

affected by that scourge, my Government accords the

highest priority to tackling HIV/AIDS. My delegation

fully supports the conclusions reached by the high-

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level interactive panel on the critical issues that must

now be addressed, namely, political leadership; stigma

and discrimination against people living with HIV/

AIDS; the importance of broad-based partnerships; and

resource mobilization on a very large scale. We call

upon our development partners, both in Government

and in the private sector, to dig deeper into their

pockets to support the efforts of developing countries

struggling so hard to meet their obligations to control

that scourge.

Turning to the Secretary-General's reform

proposals, while progress has been made in respect of

the rationalization of the functions of the Secretariat,

especially in the economic and social fields, formidable

hurdles still remain in connection with the reform of

the Security Council. The Open-ended Working Group

on the Question of Equitable Representation on and

Increase in the Membership of the Security Council

has, in our view, done all that is humanly possible to

solicit a wide range of views and to try to bridge the

differences that have emerged. But, regrettably, little

progress has been made. It is clear to us that this

matter, which is of vital importance to the whole

Organization, will only move forward if there is political

will on the part of some key Member States. This issue

cannot continue to defy our collective wisdom after 10

years of deliberation. A compromise solution must

emerge soon or history will judge us harshly.

We welcome what now seems to be an emerging

consensus towards the revitalization of the General

Assembly. The speeches delivered in the Assembly

have been correctly observed by the Secretary-General

in his report as being repetitive and sterile. The agenda

tends to be too long, and often results in a duplication

of issues. We share the proposal to keep the agenda

short and focused, with a number of issues clustered.

Long speeches should be replaced by more focused

debates and interactive dialogue. We strongly believe

that those modest reforms would make the

deliberations of the General Assembly more interesting

to our stakeholders. They would also enable issues of

vital importance to be fully debated, and thus make it

easier to implement the decisions reached.

In conclusion, I wish to reiterate Botswana's

commitment to the United Nations and its agenda. To

us the United Nations is the embodiment of our

collective will to accomplish the Millennium

Development Goals.