Cuba, 1996

A year ago, from this same rostrum, I began my

statement by reading some 10 hair-raising news items of

the moment from the international press, on bellicose

conflicts, violence and death in the cities and deadly

epidemics claiming new victims. Intending to do this again

today, I found that the situation remains the same, or is

perhaps even worse. Unfortunately, the world wasted

another 12 months without doing anything to stop such

catastrophic events.

As if it were necessary to illustrate this with specific

facts, even as we gathered here we once again witnessed

the bloodshed of the heroic Palestinian people. First and

foremost, I denounce the new Israeli aggression and the

policy of hegemony that defends these acts, and I express

support for our Palestinian brothers in their struggle for

their legitimate right to finally have an independent state,

with Jerusalem its capital.

Also about a year ago, the Prime Minister of

Malaysia, the country of the President of the General

Assembly, very rightly stated that the United Nations

should support the collective needs of peoples and nations

in order to serve humanity as a whole, and that it was

therefore necessary to correct the trend of making them an

instrument of the wealthy and the powerful. Today it must

be recognized that we are meeting again without having

removed that danger.

Hence, in expressing my Government’s satisfaction at

having President Razali lead us in our work, I cannot but

express confidence that his diplomatic professionalism, his

personal achievements and his long and proven experience

in the work of this Organization will give him strength in

leading us in a remarkably difficult and complex session of

the General Assembly.

Far from being more democratic and universal, the

Organization in which we come together today is tending

to tighten more and more the exclusive circle of those who

govern it. The just demands heard from this rostrum are

now sounding the alarm at the march of ideas being

promoted mainly in our host country.

Just a few weeks ago, the Chairman of the United

States Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued an

ultimatum for the United Nations to carry out reforms in

accordance with the prescriptions of that country or else

face the consequences. His articles in renowned

publications question precisely the principles on which this

institution is founded, particularly the principle of

sovereign equality of States.

For this influential United States politician and those

who identify themselves with his primitive views, there is

only one argument: some States deserve more privileges

than others. In this way they try to make a dead letter of

the principle of sovereign equality of States, the

cornerstone of the Charter adopted over 50 years ago in

San Francisco.

But there is more: the Government of the United

States of America, which owes the United Nations the

shameful amount of over $1.5 billion, assumes, with no

embarrassment whatsoever, the right to determine

unilaterally who can or cannot be the Secretary-General

of the United Nations and to declare how an Organization

deliberately deprived of the resources required for the

fulfilment of its functions should or should not be

managed.

Eighty per cent of the work of the United Nations

system is devoted to assisting the developing countries

and to strengthening their ability to help themselves. This

endeavour includes the aspiration to receive fair treatment

in international economic relations; to try to save children

from starvation and disease; to promote emergency

assistance to refugees and disaster victims; to attempt to

combat crime, drug addiction and disease; to promote

education and the development of human resources; and

to tackle the enormous task of halting or slowing the

progressive ecological deterioration of our planet.

These are precisely the functions that the notorious

United States Senator is trying to abolish, and it is

because of the existence of those programmes that the

managerial approach of the Secretary-General is so

fiercely attacked.

That position of the planet’s most powerful country

is not aimed against one person; rather, using the question

of the Organization’s efficiency as a pretext, it stands

against the United Nations mandate to attend to the needs

of the great majority of mankind. It is a new and gross

attempt to impose on the community of nations the will

of a single State in the management of the multilateral

forum of cooperation that should be the most

representative and democratic one in the world.

We should ask ourselves if we, the members of this

Assembly, can passively accept the threat posed by this

unilateral imposition. It is fitting to recall what Harry

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Truman said of the Charter of the United Nations at the

San Francisco Conference in 1945:

“If we fail to use it, we shall betray all those

who have died in order that we might meet here in

freedom and safety to create it.

“If we seek to use it selfishly — for the

advantage of any one nation or any small group of

nations — we shall be equally guilty of that betrayal.”

(Documents of the United Nations Conference on

International Organization, San Francisco, 1945,

vol. 1, p. 687)

Further comment is unnecessary; subsequent history

has been quite eloquent enough. But the most dangerous

thing, as has often been said, is that the United Nations is

merely the reflection of the world in which we live. This

domineering unilateralism shows up even more crudely in

the daily conduct of international relations. In a world in

which relations of respect, good-neighbourliness and

cooperation among the peoples and Governments should be

fostered every day, the fact is that one Power, resting on its

unquestionable economic, military and technological might,

seeks to impose rules and norms of conduct on the rest of

the world, thus undermining the sovereign rights of each

and every one of our nations.

What political, legal or moral reason underlies and

legitimizes the missile attack against the Republic of Iraq

by the United States Armed Forces just a few days ago?

What principles or claims can be used to cover up the

unilateral and unjustified use of force? The Security

Council did not yield to that unilateral aggression, but it has

not been able to formulate a clear position on the matter

because of its well-known structural and procedural

deficiencies and also because of the tolerance and impunity

with which the international community has recently

accepted the haughty arrogance of a Government that

assumes the right to punish sovereign nations at its whim

under spurious pretexts.

There is no justification for trampling the territorial

integrity of a full-fledged Member of this Organization, and

even less for that action to be taken by a single

Government, nor for threatening the peace and security of

a region inhabited by tens of millions of persons. And all

this has taken place while the political experts of the

aggressor country could not agree on which was its

strongest motivation: the wretched oil interests or the frenzy

of the ongoing carnival-like electoral campaign in the

United States.

It is incredible that world politics can be paralysed,

that foreign ministries postpone decisions and that

Governments advance or delay responses to national or

international dilemmas, thinking only of their

repercussions in that North American simulacrum of

democracy. Anything can happen, and no country, legal

precept or moral principle seems to be safe. Fortunately,

the super-elections are held only every four years,

because if they took place annually, like the sessions of

the General Assembly, living on this planet would be true

madness.

The Helms-Burton Act, aimed against everyone’s

sovereignty and against Cuba, a sovereign State, was

conceived as an additional effort to subdue our people

through hunger and poverty. It is an eloquent example of

the absurd will to impose imperial designs on sovereign

and independent countries in the conduct of their own

international and trade relations. For that reason, it has

been unanimously rejected by the international

community. That law, ignoring the General Assembly

resolutions on the issue, is intended to strengthen further

the blockade against our country.

For a century — and especially during the last 37

years — the Cuban people have had to face the

hegemonic vocation of successive United States

Governments. The extraterritorial ambitions of our

neighbour, its attempts to question the sovereign decisions

of another State and its violation of the universally

recognized principles of international trade are realities

with which Cuba has been familiar for a long time.

When we denounced the crime that was about to

take place, it was neither to frighten nor to play with

anyone. The Helms-Burton Act, the most sophisticated

bungle of the economic war against Cuba, attacks many

countries and compels them to experience in their own

sovereignty what we Cubans have been facing for a long

time. The world can now better understand what so many

years of continuous offences and extraterritorial acts have

meant for my homeland.

Another instance of unipolarity and of the attempt to

dictate the conduct of sovereign States is the law known

as D’Amato-Kennedy, which has also received universal

repudiation. It repeats the philosophy of imposition and

ratifies the tendency to apply United States law beyond its

borders. The argument for this is the alleged war against

terrorism, when, in fact, the United States was the main

promoter of terrorism in its dirty wars in Nicaragua, El

Salvador, Angola and South Africa, against the

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Palestinian patriots and in many other countries — the

United States has always supported the bloodiest regimes

that have ever existed in this world.

There are just causes and unjust causes. No one will

ever have the right to kill innocent people, regardless of the

objectives being pursued. This does not negate any people’s

right to use weapons against its oppressors: to fight cleanly,

yes; to kill innocents, never. A State cannot be allowed to

arrogate to itself the right to accuse, condemn and sanction

other nations and to impose by force an illegitimate crusade

that often serves to disguise the real terrorists.

Cuba — which has been the victim of many terrorist

actions and has for many years faced repeated attempts on

the lives of its political leaders, as well as sabotage,

biological warfare, the destruction of a passenger plane in

flight and the hijacking of aircraft, and which suffers even

today from armed infiltrations and which has been, above

all, the victim of brutal economic terrorism — expects a

joint and conscious effort from the international community

to address the terrorism that has its origins in Langley,

Virginia — that is to say, at the Central Intelligence

Agency — and later spreads to many countries of the

world.

Drug trafficking, in our opinion, should be dealt with

in the same manner. The drug issue should not be

transformed into an instrument of pressure against

underdeveloped countries, many of which do not have

sufficient resources to tackle this scourge. This problem has

taken on global dimensions and can be confronted only by

sharing responsibilities and using the mechanisms offered

by the United Nations.

The policy of conferring arbitrary certifications is

unacceptable, and even more so is its use as a pretext to

interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign nations. The

country whose enormous rates of consumption have become

the main market for and driving force behind this criminal

industry, the country in whose territory the greatest profits

of this business are generated, does not have the moral

authority to assign responsibility to or demand it from

others. What would happen if the world, truly concerned by

the scourge of drugs, were to decertify unanimously the

greatest drug consumer? To put it another way, people who

live in glass houses should not throw stones, and he who

has a beam in his eye should not be so concerned about the

mote in another’s.

No one can disregard the immense influence of the

United States in the so-called post-cold-war period, but

mankind would be making a mistake if it were to look

with indifference upon the currents of thought within that

country that entertain the possibility of governing the rest

of the world or of acting with utter disregard for the

rights and interests of other peoples. We are facing a

King Kong escaped from his cage, destroying and

crushing everything around him, aimlessly and out of

control.

We are not trying to convince this forum that the

United States is the source of all the evils of the planet,

but it would be a mistake to ignore reality and not to take

timely preventive actions — preferably collective ones —

to admonish to sanity the persons charged with guiding

that country politically, to do so with a minimum of

responsibility and to understand that the power of any

nation, important as it might be, has its limits.

The world is more plagued by uncertainty today than

when the new world order was demagogically proclaimed.

On the threshold of the new millennium, the numbers of

armed conflicts between States, ethnic groups and

religions have increased. What we see everywhere is not

a new order but, rather, a disquieting world in perfect

disorder. The social and economic consequences of these

conflicts have no parallel in contemporary history, but we

cannot simply pretend that military imposition, coercion

and sanctions are a universal panacea that can solve the

numerous humanitarian problems of the world.

Inequalities, rampant underdevelopment,

globalization and the interdependence that is increasingly

turning into the worst form of dependency should

disappear so that these new conflicts may, in turn, be

eradicated for ever from this world, which, based on

injustice, is becoming increasingly ungovernable.

Economic models based on neoliberal philosophy

have spread throughout much of the third world with the

support of the international financial institutions. Although

these models have generated deceptive, apparently

attractive macroeconomic indicators, in practice they go

hand in hand with an increase in poverty, marginalization,

environmental degradation, disease, ignorance, social

conflict, a loss of national resources and sovereignty —

in short, with the most brutal and increasingly irreversible

underdevelopment.

This neoliberal school of thought is based on

artificial paradigms that should be unmasked. It is false

that the market, with its magical invisible hand, is the

definitive solution for the immense disruptions affecting

the international economy and that it is the miraculous

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remedy that would liberate many countries, home to the

vast majority of the earth’s population, from

underdevelopment and poverty.

It is false that absolute privatization, which can benefit

only the few, brings well-being to the legions of the poor

and the wretched living in the third world.

It is false that geography determines the economic

power of peoples.

It is false that genetics determines which human

beings are born to be poor and wretched and which are

born under the shining star of wealth and extravagance.

It is false that the State or Government is the main

source of corruption and inefficiency and should renounce

responsibility for welfare, health and education, leaving

these obligations mainly in private hands whose motivations

will always be limited and discriminatory and are frequently

based on greed.

It is false that the poor, the oppressed and the

exploited should have a lesser role in ultra-modern

societies.

It is false that social justice and equity always have to

be sacrificed for the sake of commercial efficiency.

It is false that the total removal of protection for

national industries in the developing countries will yield

higher productivity, wealth, employment and well-being for

their peoples.

It is false that the sovereignty of nations is an

outmoded principle of international coexistence and that

Governments and countries are ready to abandon it because

of the strength of transnational capital and the social-

political models exported by the North.

Finally, it is false that the neoliberal models that have

been sold to us will raise the indicators or levels of human

development set as objectives by the United Nations.

One should check the statistics and compare annual

reports, not just between one country and another, but also

between indicators for the third world from one year to the

next in areas such as infant mortality, poverty, education,

life expectancy, access to drinking water, human

settlements, schooling for children, and doctors per number

of inhabitants.

All these falsities, many of them recorded in United

Nations documents, hide the bankruptcy of development

prospects for most of the poor countries, which is already

threatening world stability and aggravating the ecological

deterioration we all recognized several years ago at the

historic Rio Conference. The poor are already falling into

the immense and ever wider chasm separating them from

the rich, who continue to grow disproportionately and

irresponsibly without realizing that sooner or later their

own weight will also drag them down into the same pit.

And, in this aberrant context, what are we to say

about the arms race? The rivalry between the big Powers

and the arms race have supposedly disappeared. Why,

then, in spite of the adoption of international instruments

supposedly to that end, is there such resistance to real

nuclear disarmament that will free humanity for ever from

that scourge? Who is responsible for the fact that the

recently adopted Treaty to ban all nuclear tests does not

cover simulated laboratory tests in which new lethal

weapons will be perfected by those who monopolize

them, or any commitment to the destruction of arsenals?

Unless we discover life in other galaxies, where will the

enemies endangering the big Powers come from?

Fifty-one years after the creation of the United

Nations, instead of seeing wealth and development extend

from the North to the South, we see the growing threat of

underdevelopment moving inexorably from the South to

the North.

It is said that hunger and poverty are on the rise. In

fact, what has also happened is that wealth is more and

more concentrated, increasingly exclusive and limited,

while walls higher than the one that fell in Berlin are

being built.

Let us be frank: the North is not as rich as it seems,

nor is the South as poor as they want to make it. Almost

all the wealth of the North comes from the wealth and

resources of the South. And all the hunger and poverty of

the South is nothing other than the legacy of over 500

years of exploitation and disregard for our human rights.

If we cannot reverse this situation collectively, by

sharing the burden and improving living conditions in the

developing countries, no one will be able to stop the

waves of migrants attracted by the siren’s song of wealthy

and opulent societies.

The United Nations has a vast arsenal of documents,

resolutions and initiatives conceived for those purposes

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but never implemented. Soon it will be too late. Today we

can still act.

While all this is happening, the blockade of Cuba

continues. With the Helms-Burton Act, it has become even

clearer that it is not just an embargo, because in the last

few months, the United States, through its words and deeds,

has sent the world sure signals that what is really being

waged against my country is a long and dirty economic war

for total control over our sovereignty and our markets.

The criminal blockade, as part of its frightening

network of measures created over 35 years, has now a

Draconian law that publicly calls for a world crusade to

change forcibly the Cuban constitutional order and undo a

revolution defended by our people at the cost of their lives.

What have we come to when United States diplomats,

on the ugliest mission since the Viet Nam war, tell the

world that they are granting it a few months’ sovereignty

before trampling upon it if the world does not join their

war on Cuba?

I am fulfilling the mandate bestowed on me by the

free people of Cuba to proclaim in front of the

international community of nations that we will persevere

in our efforts to defend our social, political and economic

actions aimed at ensuring equality, justice and well-being

for all Cubans.

Our own experience is the best contribution we can

make as a nation towards meeting the enormous

challenges facing humanity, as has been shown by Cuba’s

economic, political and social achievements in the last

year. A country that has overcome a serious economic

crisis, that maintains its governability, that grows and

develops with the solidarity of many, that expands its

relations throughout the world and that grows stronger —

this is a country with a future.

The socialism we have chosen for our homeland is

our only emancipatory, moral and ethical alternative, with

roots firmly planted in the history of our nation. It is a

path that we chose in freedom and sovereignty, a path

that we shall not renounce and that no one imposed on us.

We wish to live in harmony with all the countries of

the world, including the United States. Cuba wants and

needs peace. But let us be clear: Cuba is not and never

will be willing to sacrifice, under pressure from anyone

or in exchange for anything, the independence,

sovereignty and self-determination that it has achieved

and defended at such a high price.

Today, in that blue Caribbean that shelters us, we

Cubans will continue with our heads held high, with our

feet on the ground and with our eyes on the future. Thus

do we defend our choice: to live in the free and sovereign

homeland dreamed of by our founding fathers and

achieved by our fathers and grandfathers.

Let there be no doubt. We shall overcome.