Cape Verde, 2000

Let me

congratulate you, Sir, on your election to preside over

this fifth-fifth session of the General Assembly. I am

confident that your well-known experience in the fields

of politics and diplomacy will ensure the success of our

work.

To your predecessor, Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab,

I would like to convey my delegation's appreciation of

his dynamic and successful leadership of the fifty-

fourth session.

I would like also to congratulate the Secretary-

General, Mr. Kofi Annan, for the remarkable

contribution made by his report, We the peoples,

which provides a solid foundation for our discussions

and for our common efforts to place this Organization

increasingly in the service of our community of

nations.

It is with satisfaction that I extend my warmest

congratulations to Tuvalu, a member of the community

of small island developing States, on its admission to

the United Nations.

During the current session of the General

Assembly, important meetings will take place that will

address issues vital to the international community.

These issues include financing for development; racism

and racial discrimination, xenophobia and related

intolerance; and the development of the least developed

countries. These global meetings will certainly

significantly enrich the set of consensus documents

which we have successfully produced, particularly

during the 1990s, and which are intended to provide us

with essential frameworks for the optimization of an

updated international cooperation.

As is well known, this resource has not been

exploited to any great extent. North-South dialogue

continues to be affected by reciprocal accusations

between worlds separated by gross disparities in the

level of well-being.

The world needs to be governed well and in a

spirit of cooperation if we really wish to achieve

development, justice and peace in a climate of social

stability.

And yet, on both the national and international

levels, the privileged continue to deny others open

participation and a fair share. Thus, the question of

governance arises at all levels. But at each level, those

in whose interest it is to maintain the status quo use the

other level's deficiencies to justify their own inaction.

It is a perverse logic to think that our partners' errors

authorize us to err as well. This is a pattern of

behaviour, and even an assertion, which has been

portrayed as reflecting a reality of life; how this is to

be overcome has yet to be clarified.

It will be some time before we see even the

immediate results of that great dialogue between world

leaders, the Millennium Summit. However, we are

confident that results will not fail to emerge. At the

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highest level, the meetings between international

leaders served as a platform for the growing, insistent

affirmation that we have the know-how and the means

to solve the problems of our societies and of the

common ground on which we live. What we lack is the

appropriate implementation of decisions and the

necessary will to do so. By this, I mean the political

will to accomplish collectively what is necessary and

sufficient so that we may achieve progress for all

humankind, a long-time goal of our ideology and our

discourse.

Awareness of the need for this political will stem

from the underlying belief that we make up, and are

part of, an interdependent international community

whose essence links the destinies of all to the success

or failure of a single endeavour.

Meanwhile, in the blend of competition and

cooperation that characterizes international relations,

the scale is still weighted in favour of a framework of

inequalities, asymmetries and egotism that increasingly

impairs our capacities and our imagination in the effort

to achieve general progress and well-being.

Thus, a vital question is that of the extent to

which we will see, at the international level, and

particularly in the case of those who benefit most from

the current situation, a growing belief in the existence

of true independence and in the urgency of the need for

coordination and cooperation commensurate with such

global interdependence.

At the same time, we need to view globalization

not as it is today exclusive, fragmented and offering

opportunities only to a select few but rather as a

process that will increasingly reveal and establish the

world as a single body.

The Millennium Summit once again posed the

question of the role of the United Nations in the

twenty-first century. I believe that our universal

Organization has an essential role to play as a catalyst

for the tangible realization of the concept of

international community inscribed within its Charter

and as a basis for its political vision. In the world of

today and tomorrow, where events are the result of

action by a variety of decision makers, the promotion

of such an endeavour by the United Nations

presupposes the involvement of all parties

concerned that is, Governments, of course, but also

parliaments, the general public, organizations of civil

society, the private sector, the media, and so forth. All

of them can and should be included in this undertaking,

the purpose of which is to reveal the convergence

transcending the apparent contradictions.

As a free, universal association of States, the

United Nations has as its mission, and should make

itself able, to gather the world's voices and to give

them room for dialogue in pursuit of higher platforms

of understanding. In that regard, the fundamental

values embodied in the Millennium Declaration

provide a lasting source of inspiration.

In the short term, however, we need a consistent

set of measures in order to create an enabling

environment for development in which poverty

eradication can be sustainably achieved. The priorities

to be considered in developing such measures will vary

to some extent. In the areas of greatest poverty, such as

the African continent, it is certainly essential to reverse

the decline in public health and to devote the necessary

resources to improving the quality and expanding the

scope of public education. In today's world, there can

be no development unless the people have reached a

minimum level of health and education, and unless the

country in question has reached a reasonable level of

infrastructure, without which it cannot viably accept

the economic investment that it needs.

Furthermore, countless developing countries

continue to hope for lasting solutions to the core

problem of an unsustainable debt burden, solutions to

replace the long string of half-measures, always too

little and too late, with which this issue has been

addressed in the past.

Even with adequate economic policies, a

responsible administration and a productive society,

States' capacity to make real, continued progress will

be significantly limited if they face restricted access to

international markets and if tariff and non-tariff

barriers are imposed on them. Particularly in the case

of the least developed countries, these constraints may

make it impossible for them to integrate into the global

economy.

Before closing, I wish to express my deepest

concern at the form and intensity of the conflicts that

continue to affect the daily lives of various countries

and their peoples, with disastrous consequences at the

internal and regional levels. In that regard, it is with

the greatest apprehension that we view the current

situation in Sierra Leone, a country of our subregion;

and we hope that the recently developed measures

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involving the coordination of efforts by the United

Nations and the Economic Community of West African

States (ECOWAS) will help restore to the people of

Sierra Leone the peace and stability to which they are

entitled.

Cape Verde continues to follow closely the

situation in Angola, a country with which we share a

long history. Owing to the refusal of UNITA to respect

the relevant Security Council resolutions and to comply

with the provisions of the Lusaka Protocol, the

humanitarian drama that affects the Angolan people

and, in particular, the massive numbers of refugees and

displaced persons, has reached intolerable levels. The

international community should therefore give the

highest priority to providing humanitarian assistance to

Angola.

In East Timor, the laudable efforts of the United

Nations augur well for the exercise of direct

sovereignty and self-determination in the near future.

However, there are signs of continued efforts to disrupt

this process. The recent murder of international civil

servants serving as peacekeepers merits the deepest

condemnation of the international community and

adequate measures by the Security Council.

The role of the United Nations, increasingly

focused on the value and dignity of human beings,

requires each of us -- large and small, rich and poor --

to wager confidently on the solidarity of our common

efforts as the touchstone in our collective search for

solutions to the problems affecting our planet.