Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1997

I wish from this rostrum to

congratulate His Excellency Mr. Hennadiy Udovenko on his

unanimous election to the presidency of the General

Assembly at its fifty-second session. I am certain that the

successful conduct of the work of this session will justify

the confidence we all have in his outstanding qualities as a

statesman.

I wish also to pay tribute to his predecessor,

Ambassador Razali Ismail, whose ability and intelligence

won the high regard of us all.

Let me pay tribute also to the Secretary-General,

Mr. Kofi Annan, for his dedication to the cause of

international peace and security and for his in-depth

knowledge of the issues on which the future of world

peace depends.

I want to emphasize my country’s commitment to

the Charter ideals of peace, security, democracy, human

rights and development. It is for the triumph of those

ideals that we have struggled. The Democratic Republic

of the Congo is among the few countries that from time

immemorial, owing to its geostrategic placement and its

vast human and natural resources, has borne the burden

of a sombre history of suffering and outrageous violations

of human rights and the rights of peoples.

In 1885, when Africa was being colonized, my

country was set up as a State that was the personal

property of the King of the Belgians; it endured violence

and blatant violations of human rights connected inter

alia with the exploitation of red rubber and other kinds of

forced labour. It became a Belgian colony in 1908, and

was later to experience a decolonization process that was

not merely botched, but was disastrous because my

country became part of the global stakes in the East-West

strategic rivalry.

After my country acceded to independence in June

1960, at the height of the cold war, the symbol of our

sovereignty, Prime Minister Patrice Emergy Lumumba,

was martyred to that sovereignty.

Under the complaisant eyes of the international

community, a bloody and reactionary dictatorship was

formed in the very heart of Africa, in the strategic

interests of the dominating West, with the mission of

destabilizing neighbouring countries. Thirty years later,

thanks to the political changes that took place in the

world in 1989, the international community saw

regretfully the disastrous results of the support it had

given to a regime that was a State in name only.

The disasters caused by these years of bloody and

ignoble dictatorship are so well known that there is no

need to recount them. The World Bank, the International

Monetary Fund and all the bodies of the United Nations

system have studies, evaluations and gripping and moving

15

testimony of what the Mobutu regime represented at the

end of the twentieth century.

The opening of this fifty-second session of the General

Assembly coincides happily with the emergence in Africa

of a new generation of leaders who are totally dedicated to

the cause of African renaissance and who are inspired by

the decisive will to take in hand the destiny of the continent

and to play their role in the community of nations.

Among these individuals is Mr. Laurent-Désiré Kabila,

whose struggle for the restoration of the Republic dates

back to 14 September 1960, the day when the first

Congolese democratic experience was interrupted.

The triumph of the Congolese revolution on 17 May

1997 is, after the defeat of apartheid in South Africa, the

historic event of greatest political importance in modern

Africa. It represents the triumph of the return to pan-

Africanism, the only road to salvation for Africa in the

circumstances of today’s world.

The massive and spontaneous adherence of the

Congolese to this armed struggle and the support received

from friendly countries and from the entire world is enough

to underline the positive nature of this liberation struggle.

The Congolese people are grateful to all for their

support of the coming to Kinshasa of a progressive new

power concerned with a state of law and improving of the

well-being of the people. The victory of the Alliance of

Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo over the

Mobutu dictatorship is indeed a victory of progressive and

pan-African Africa over obscurantism, pessimism,

morbidness and defeatism, which for such a long time were

pretexts for certain Powers to keep political and strategic

control of the continent. In that country in which the State

and the Republic were moribund, the Government of public

security, led by President Laurent-Désiré Kabila, is working

tirelessly and incessantly to restore the State and to rebuild

the Republic.

The efforts at domestic stabilization through

reorganization of the State and the reconciliation of

opinions and the return to work of the civilian population

are accompanied by other efforts aimed at achieving peace

and regional stability in order to create economic and

political conditions conducive to productive national and

foreign investment.

Our African policy is designed to improve bilateral

relations with all the States of the region, help them adapt

better to the new geopolitical context and strengthen

cooperation and regional integration. Along with the

objective of promoting economic development, we are

also working to achieve the prevention, management and

resolution by Africa of the regional conflicts and crises

that are paralysing our continent.

This desire to change our foreign policy is based on

our domestic policy, which is designed to rely primarily

on our own efforts and to give greater importance to

regional and South-South cooperation in our trade

activities. Here, emphasis will be placed on trade

promoting productive commerce and investments leading

to the transfer of new and appropriate technology.

We intend, moreover, to pursue efforts designed to

improve our bilateral and multilateral relations with all

our partners to ensure greater understanding for and

commitment to our programme of national reconstruction.

This programme essentially addresses urgent actions and

steps for rehabilitation, and their highly humanitarian

nature deserves the unconditional support of the

international community.

This Government programme comprises the

following priorities: infrastructure for transportation and

communication, agriculture, health and social services,

national education, job creation and the elimination of

unemployment, safety and protection of individuals and

property and, in addition, peace and national and regional

stability.

In the four months in which we have been leading

the State, we have been able to achieve encouraging

results, in particular at the political and diplomatic levels.

These include ensuring the safety of the population

through the restoration of justice; guaranteeing the right

of ownership; efforts to eradicate corruption, which had

become institutionalized in our country; the reintegration

of the military personnel of the former armed forces of

Zaire and the establishment of a national republican army;

the establishment of good regional relations, in particular

through the holding in Kinshasa of a summit of Heads of

State designed to work on strengthening regional

cooperation; the working visits to Kinshasa by the

Presidents of Uganda, Rwanda, Eritrea and Tanzania, as

well as the visits of the Congolese Head of State to

Angola, South Africa, Rwanda, Namibia and Zambia.

Furthermore, our Government has participated in meetings

held in the subregion on specific regional issues. We

should also note that President Kabila has been consulted

by the actors in the current crisis in Brazzaville.

16

Economic steps include overcoming inflation and the

revaluation of the local currency, the decline in food prices,

the provision of essentials to urban centres, a monetary

reform project now under way and the restructuring of the

central bank.

Social and cultural steps include a resumption of

cultural and artistic life, a resumption of primary and

secondary education despite a difficult situation for parents

who work for the State, providing drinking water for the

capital and electrification and public road projects.

In the debate at this session on proposals for

reforming the United Nations, I would like, at the outset, to

state that the strategic objective of all of the reforms

envisaged must be to provide better conditions for the

proper functioning of the Organization so that it can fulfil

its founders’ dream of a lasting, democratic, responsible

and credible Organization.

The first stage of the effort must be to assess the

impact of the cold war on the original system of collective

security. Since the cold war paralysed the system set out in

the Charter, the end of the cold war should create

conditions favourable to the triumph of the collective

security regime provided for in Chapter VII of the Charter.

The second stage will be to analyse why the continual

progress of preventive diplomacy is accompanied by

inefficiencies at the operational level in peacekeeping and

peace-building. Furthermore, we must also consider the

political powers of the main agent of preventive diplomacy

to ensure that they conform to institutional limits.

Our position with regard to the administrative reforms

of the United Nations and the enlargement of the Security

Council is that of Africa as a whole, as set out and

defended by the Secretary-General of the Organization of

African Unity. We are opposed to cosmetic reforms and to

having members of the Security Council acting as mere

figureheads.

Our interest in reform should not make us forget the

numerous conflict situations and threats to peace and

international security throughout the world. Today Africa

continues to occupy centre stage with regard to armed

conflicts. Central Africa in particular has become a powder

keg as a result of uncontrolled armed bands crossing almost

all our borders, bands who, in the guise of refugees, are

destabilizing the entire region.

That is why we urgently appeal to the United Nations

to do everything it can to end its present policy of burying

its head in the sand, which can only result in weakening

and destabilizing those, such as the Democratic Republic

of the Congo, that have a role to play in the subregion.

It is now clear that the crisis in Brazzaville, for

example, is increasingly escaping the control of the

parties to the conflict, and requires an urgent Security

Council meeting. This crisis is unacceptable to the

Congolese in both Brazzaville and Kinshasa. The

Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has been

subjected to deliberate shelling from neighbouring

Brazzaville, which has been receiving refugees fleeing

that country and which, since 29 and 30 September 1997

has suffered loss of human life, without being a party to

the conflict, believes that the conflict has reached the

limit of what can be tolerated, given the damage to its

people and the threat it represents to regional and

international peace and security. Just this morning we

learned that more shells had fallen on Kinshasa, and this

is unacceptable to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Central African Republic, which was badly

battered by the rebellions in the Kasayi camp, must

benefit from special cooperation from the United Nations

to strengthen the Inter-African Mission to Monitor the

Implementation of the Bangui Agreements, which is

already operational on the ground.

We firmly support the Lusaka Protocol, which is

designed to re-establish peace and stability in Angola, a

country with which we share a frontier of 2,600

kilometres. We therefore demand that the Protocol be

strictly respected, and we condemn the repeated violations

of its terms by UNITA.

With regard to Burundi, we support the Arusha

process, and adhere to the principle of democracy and

security for all.

In Sierra Leone, we hope to see a return to legality

and the democratic exercise of power.

We welcome the return of peace to Liberia, and the

electoral victory of President Charles Taylor, and we hope

that this experience will become a landmark and a point

of reference for neighbouring States. The march towards

democratization in Africa is inevitable and irreversible,

but the road is one which only the Africans can set out on

and walk down.

I should like to hail here the American initiative to

hold a ministerial-level meeting of the Security Council

17

to strengthen the capacity of African States to build peace

through conflict prevention and management and by the

improvement of good governance.

The situation in the Middle East remains worrying.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo urges all parties

strictly to respect the Madrid and Oslo agreements, and in

all cases to give priority to genuine dialogue. The prize of

peace is won through tolerance.

In the Far East, the reunification of Korea is a

peaceful process that the Democratic Republic of the Congo

fully supports. We hope for a positive outcome to the

negotiations under way.

Global peace is also threatened by environmental

problems and by the continuation of the debt crisis of the

least developed countries. The Democratic Republic of the

Congo, which has significant global forest reserves, appeals

to the international community for assistance in preserving

its forest heritage.

My country, whose foreign debt amounts to $14

billion, calls upon the major donors to demonstrate greater

solidarity and adopt a more responsible and consistent

approach to possible solutions. In the specific case of the

Congo, which has been devastated, we wonder what good

those billions of dollars did, as the country is in a state of

total ruin — without roads, bridges, schools or hospitals. It

is public knowledge that these funds never reached the

Congo, and were for the most part deposited in American,

European and Asian banks. That is why we call for the

pure and simple cancellation of this debt; if necessary, we

will request the cooperation of the United Nations for the

restoration to the Congo of the $14 billion, now circulating

in the world.

We should like here solemnly to express our gratitude

to the Governments of the Republic of South Africa, the

Kingdom of Belgium, the Swiss Confederation and the

United States for their cooperation in this matter, and hope

that everything possible will be done for a positive outcome

to the processes under way.

In any case, the insolvency of my country and of other

African countries is a global problem that requires

consistent global treatment. It is therefore unfortunate that

international cooperation in this area is only serving to

intensify it and, furthermore, that any new contribution to

national reconstruction is conditional on the payment of

arrears.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo supports all

the initiatives and recommendations relating to the

restoration of cultural property confiscated in the past by

colonial Powers. In the same spirit, we support the

establishment of an international criminal court, which

would have competence over political economic, social,

cultural and humanitarian crimes.

Disarmament issues and their relationship with

development are also on our foreign policy agenda. While

welcoming the Secretary-General’s initiative to establish

a new department for disarmament, the Democratic

Republic of the Congo would have liked to have been

apprised of how matters stood regarding the Conference

on Disarmament in Geneva to avoid duplication of

efforts.

We hope that the United Nations will continue its

efforts to guarantee a world free from nuclear weapons

and that efforts aimed at general and complete

disarmament in regard to conventional weapons bear fruit.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a party to

the Ottawa process on anti-personnel landmines. It

condemns both manufacturers and users and hopes that

condemnation of these weapons will go hand in hand with

a genuine will to find international settlements for civil

wars and to prosecute individuals responsible for those

wars for crimes against humanity.

I could not conclude my remarks without mentioning

the general situation in the Great Lakes region,

particularly the Rwandan refugees and the United Nations

commission of inquiry on the allegations of massacres in

the east of our country.

The world campaign for human and humanitarian

rights orchestrated against the Alliance of Democratic

Forces for the Liberation of Congo and against the

Government of His Excellency the President,

Mr. Laurent-Désiré Kabila, in some ways recalls the

deplorable and unfortunate United Nations intervention in

the Congo in 1960.

Our position is that the problem of refugees, whether

they be Hutus or not, must remain a humanitarian issue

and can in no way become a political issue. Therefore,

any attempt to politicize it should be condemned because

it goes against the spirit and letter of the Charter of our

Organization.

18

With particular regard to the question of the alleged

Rwandan refugees and the allegations that they were

massacred, the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues

to repeat, for anyone who wants to listen, that it has

nothing to hide. Moreover, we have never concealed our

moral concern regarding the Rwandan women and children

who were taken hostage and fell victim to Rwandan

extremists bent on genocide. What we do dispute in this

matter is the fact that the former Rwandan armed forces

and the militia, the INTERAHAMWE, are classed as

refugees, which totally disregards the provisions of the

Geneva Conventions and the relevant convention of the

Organization of African Unity (OAU).

Here, I should like to call to witness the Security

Council, some of whose members rightly refused to

subscribe to the idea of an international intervention force

led by Canada for the simple reason that the real Rwandan

refugees had returned to Rwanda. The armed bands who

went from Kibu as far as Congo (Brazzaville), the Central

African Republic and regions of Angola controlled by the

União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola

(UNITA) are not refugees. They are hostage-takers and no

one has the right to ignore that.

In two and a half years, the United Nations High

Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and all kinds of

humanitarian agencies could not repatriate more than 100

refugees to Rwanda. While they spent more than $1 billion,

to the tune of $1.2 million per day, the Alliance of

Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo was able to

assist in the voluntary repatriation, in conditions of full

security and dignity, of over 700,000 Rwandan refugees in

four days. In the same way, the Alliance of Democratic

Forces for the Liberation of Congo had called more than

three ceasefires for humanitarian reasons. That same

movement had opened humanitarian corridors — road, rail

and air — to allow for and assist the repatriation of

Rwandan refugees. That same movement had fed and cared

for the so-called refugees, whom today it is accused of

having massacred, in the equatorial forest.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a place of

refuge and anyone who is being persecuted anywhere in the

world will find asylum there in accordance with the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1951 Geneva

Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the

relevant OAU convention. Thus, the Congolese from

Brazzaville were welcomed shortly after the Rwandans

were repatriated but, paradoxically,

(spoke in English)

these refugees did not receive the same attention from the

international community as the Rwandan refugees. They

happen to be second-class refugees.

(spoke in French)

Can people at least realize what kind of and how

great a toll the presence of Rwandan refugees, particularly

of members of the former Rwandan armed forces and

INTERAHAMWE, in the Congo will have taken? Has

anyone taken the trouble to assess the impact of the

activities of these phoney refugees on the territory of the

Congo?

And since we could not speak of refugees without

mentioning the United Nations commission of inquiry, I

would like to make the most of this opportunity to draw

the attention of this Assembly to the clearly humanitarian

nature of the mission of the commission. In no way

should it turn itself into a political mission, as it has been

trying to do so far. It should be understood that its

deployment in the field must not violate our independence

and sovereignty. Our confidence in the international

Organization is neither a sign of weakness nor a failure to

see, in this particular case, that there are plans afoot to

use these structures to undermine certain forces.

The Government of the Democratic Republic of the

Congo has accepted, and I repeat,

(spoke in English)

we have accepted that the team can do its work and we

are expecting it to go ahead and do the work. Our

Government will do anything in its power to make sure

that the team does its work. However, the team will then

have to answer a certain number of questions, especially

in the eastern part of our country. Mainly, who did what,

when, why, with whose help? The team will have to tell

us why the refugees were armed. The team will have to

tell us who armed them. Why were they not disarmed?

The team will have to tell us how many amongst the

refugees were really refugees and how many were

pseudo-refugees. The team will say how many Congolese

people were butchered by these people who have been

called refugees, but more importantly, the team will tell

us if there was any continuation of Rwandese genocide on

Congolese soil because, as the Assembly knows, the same

people who committed genocide in Rwanda crossed the

border with their arms, with their machetes, with their

ideology, and they continued their work in our country.

And, more importantly, the team will establish the

19

responsibility of everybody in that matter. But let me repeat

again, our Government is willing to help the team, to give

full access to the team, so that the team can go ahead and

do its work.

(spoke in French)

I should like to conclude my statement today with a

message from Mr. Laurent-Désiré Kabila, President of the

Democratic Republic of the Congo, which reads:

“My country has lost a great deal of time

because of the injustices of the cold war. My people

ask only one thing: to build the well-being and

prosperity they need, in full sovereignty and with

respect for the sovereignty of others. We thank all

those countries that are willing to assist us in our

recovery.

“We have no other ambition. We are only

convinced that the world opinion that will satisfy us

can come only from ourselves. What we ask of the

other nations of the world is that they assist us in

seeing that those who are not in agreement with our

view of things cannot thwart us.”

World peace is one and indivisible, and the principle

of collective responsibility obliges all of us to take that into

account.