Cuba, 2001

Before delivering my statement, I would like to express

our condolences to the United States, the Dominican

Republic and other countries represented here that have

lost citizens among the many passengers and crew

members who perished in yesterday’s tragic crash of

American Airlines flight 587, and I hereby extend these

condolences to their families.

The war in Afghanistan must be stopped. The

Government of the United States must acknowledge

that it has made a mistake, and must halt its ineffective,

unjustifiable bombing campaign against the Afghan

people.

Judging by its results, it would seem that this war

has targeted children, the civilian population and the

hospitals and facilities of the International Committee

of the Red Cross. As to its methods, no honest voice

would be raised in this Hall to defend the endless

slaughter, with the most sophisticated weaponry, of a

dispossessed, starving, helpless people. As to its

doubtful purposes, this war will never be justified from

the point of view of ethics and international law. Those

responsible for it will one day be judged by history.

Cuba has opposed this war from the very

beginning as an absurd, inefficient method to eradicate

terrorism, and reiterates that it can only bring more

hatred and ever-increasing dangers of new actions of

this kind. No one has the right to continue murdering

children, aggravating the humanitarian crisis and

visiting impoverishment and death on millions of

refugees.

If the United States obtained a military victory by

eliminating all regular and irregular Afghan

resistance — something that is not at all easy in

practice and extremely costly on a moral level, for it

would represent a real genocide without attaining the

objective that we must pursue — the world would be

farther away than ever from achieving peace, security

and the eradication of terrorism.

Cuba’s discourse is not founded on ill feelings

against the country that has been our most pitiless

adversary for over 40 years. It is inspired by a sincere,

constructive spirit and a sense of respect for and

sympathy towards the people of the United States,

which suffered an unjustifiable and atrocious terrorist

attack. It is also based on the aspiration for peace and

justice for all the peoples of the world.

What Cuba expresses in this Hall, with full

openness, may not be to the liking of those who run the

United States today, but it will be understood one day

by the American people, whose generosity and sense of

justice were proved to the Cuban people when it had

the support of 80 percent of the public opinion in this

country in our struggle to prevent a kidnapped Cuban

child from being torn away from his family and

subjected to ludicrous political manipulations and cruel

psychological tortures.

What Cuba is saying from this rostrum, as we

well know, is what many people have been saying in

the corridors of this building. What international

coalition are we talking about? What is its legitimacy

based on if it has started by scandalously disregarding

the General Assembly? The United States has not

fostered international cooperation. It has rather

imposed its war on a unilateral basis and has stated in

an unprecedented way that whoever does not second

them is for terrorism. How long will the precarious

support obtained last, since it is not based on

harmonized objectives and voluntary agreement, but on

the imposition of will through threats and pressures?

You can be the strongest, but not necessarily

right. You can inspire dread, but not sympathy and

respect. Only from genuine international

cooperation — in which all countries, big and small,

participate with a full understanding of everyone’s

positions, with broadmindedness and tolerance in the

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methods used, within the framework of the United

Nations and the strict respect for the principles

enshrined in its Charter — can a truly effective and

lasting alliance emerge to fight terrorism.

The world was surprised to learn of the official

announcement of the United States to the Security

Council that it reserved the right to decide on an attack

against other countries in the future. What is left of the

Charter after this? Can this unprecedented threat by

any chance be interpreted as an exercise of the right to

legitimate defence, enshrined in the Charter as the right

of a State to deal with acts of aggression until the

Council adopts the necessary measures, and not as a

vulgar excuse to unleash attacks against other

countries? Is this announcement, or is it not, the

proclamation of the right of a super-Power to trample

upon the still fragile and incomplete standards that

protect the sovereignty, security and rights of peoples?

Cuba calmly and firmly rejects that language. We

have not done so out of concern for our own security,

because there is no power in the world that can subdue

our spirit of independence, freedom and social justice

and the courage to defend it at any cost. We did so,

because we believe that it is still possible to halt the

escalation of a useless, brutal war that threatens to

further plunge into hopelessness, insecurity and death

the poor peoples of the planet, who are by no means

responsible for any act of terrorism, but will be — and

already are — the main victims of this senselessness.

Only under the leadership of the United Nations

will we be able to defeat terrorism. Cooperation, and

not war, is the way. The coordination of actions, and

not the imposition of will, is the method. Our objective

must be to obliterate terrorism by removing its root

causes — and not the hegemonic assertion of the

strength of a super-Power, thus turning us into

accomplices to its arrogance and arbitrariness.

Therefore, Cuba — which has already responded

to the Secretary-General’s appeal by deciding to

immediately ratify all of the international legal

instruments on terrorism — resolutely supports the

adoption of a general convention on international

terrorism. Of course, this will be possible only in the

context of the General Assembly, which — though now

completely ignored by those who are promoting the

new campaign — has, over the past 10 years, despite

the silence and apathy of the Security Council, adopted

the principal resolutions and declarations calling for an

outright combat against terrorism.

This will allow us finally to define terrorism with

accuracy. We have to prevent attempts from being

made by a handful of actors with vested interests to try

to label as such the right of nations to fight for their

self-determination or against foreign aggression. It

must be clearly established that the support, abetting,

financing or concealment of terrorist actions by a State

is also an act of terrorism.

Cuba, which is working on its own anti-terrorism

law, which should be in effect shortly, unreservedly

endorses the proposal to convene an international

conference on terrorism under the auspices of the

United Nations. This has been a longtime aspiration of

the Non-Aligned Movement and should enable us, as a

result of open discussions, collective action and

respectful and non-discriminatory agreement — and

not of threats, terror or force — to find a way to fully

eliminate terrorism and its causes. Here I am speaking

of terrorism committed not only against the United

States but against any other country — even if

emanating from the territory of the United States, or

tolerated by, or with the complicity of, its authorities,

as has been Cuba’s painful experience for over four

decades.

Only four days ago, the Pakistani media

attributed to a character who is well known and very

familiar to the United States a statement supposedly

made from Afghan territory saying that he has

chemical and nuclear weapons and is threatening to use

them against the United States if it uses similar

weapons against Afghanistan.

Everybody knows that Afghanistan does not have

the slightest ability to produce or launch nuclear or

chemical weapons. Only a terrorist organization or

leader could come up with the idea of executing an

action of this kind using nuclear or chemical weapons.

Of course, theoretically this could be possible, as a

consequence of the irresponsible behaviour of the

major nuclear Powers and as a result of the arms trade,

corruption and illegal trafficking in all sorts of military

technology. Indeed, several of those Powers have acted

as accomplices to, and taken part in, the traffic in

fissile material and the transfer of nuclear technology,

as suits their interests. However, in reality, given the

conditions of war in Afghanistan, it would be

ridiculous to resort to those threats. To do so would be

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to show tremendous political and military ignorance. If

one lacked such means, this would be a dangerous

bluff, and if one did have them, it would be absolute

madness to threaten to use them.

If the threats contained in the statement published

by two Pakistani newspapers are true, they deserve the

strongest condemnation, as would the eventual use of

such weapons against Afghanistan. That would be a

stupid reaction, since, under those circumstances, the

only thing that poor, suffering country would have to

gain would be a universal condemnation of the use of

such weapons. Such threats serve only the interests of

the extremist and belligerent forces within the United

States, which favour the use of the most sophisticated

weapons of mass destruction against the Afghan

people. The best weapon for a country that is the

victim of aggression is to earn and keep the sympathy

of the world, and not to allow anyone to violate the

ethical principle that no one has the right to kill

children, not even if others are doing it. There is no

justice in killing innocent people to avenge the death of

other innocents.

Cuba has stated without hesitation that it is

opposed to terrorism and to war. Cuba, which is not

under obligation to anyone, will continue to be

consistent in its positions. Truth and ethical

considerations should prevail above all else.

The way events have unfolded, the increased

level of hatred and the intensification of passions and

potential dangers have shown the absolute truth of the

assertion that war has never been, is not, and never will

be the way to eradicate terrorism.

The most critical socio-economic crisis ever —

the result, halfway through the last decade, of the

resounding and irreversible failure of neo-liberalism

and neo-liberal globalization — has been dramatically

aggravated by this war, which was imposed by one side

but whose consequences we all have to bear.

This war must be stopped, not only because its

consequences for the Afghan civilian population, but

also because of the danger of destabilization in that

region. It must be stopped in order not only to save

thousands of Americans — mostly young — and

thousands of Afghans and other nationals from a

senseless death, and not only to preserve international

peace and stability, but because this conflict makes it

impossible to achieve the objective set by the United

Nations 15 years ago: the right to development for all,

and an equal opportunity to attain it, and because it

renders obsolete the decision made only a year ago to

work together in order to eliminate poverty from the

face of the Earth.

Will we be willing to organize a coalition against

poverty, famine, ignorance, diseases and the scourge of

AIDS that is currently decimating the African

continent; a coalition for sustainable development, for

the preservation of the environment and against the

destruction of the planet?

A coalition has been assembled to avenge the

grievous and unjustifiable death of over 4,000 innocent

people in the United States. Let us come together to

seek justice for this great crime — and let us do so

without war; let us come together to save from death

the hundreds of thousands of poor women who die

during childbirth every year; let us come together to

save from death the 12 million children who die of

preventable diseases before the age of 5 every year in

the third world; let us come together to bring medicine

for AIDS to the 25 million Africans who today are

hopelessly awaiting death; let us come together to

invest in development at least a portion of the billions

already spent on bombing a country in which almost

nothing has been left standing.

Cuba demands that the General Assembly, the

Security Council and the United Nations Organization

as a whole take up once again, as top priorities, the

debate of these problems on which depend the lives of

4.5 billion inhabitants of the third world, whose rights

and hopes have also been buried under the rubble of

the World Trade Center.

Cuba reiterates its categorical condemnation of

the terrorist acts committed last 11 September. Cuba

reiterates its condemnation of terrorism in all its forms

and manifestations. Cuba reiterates that it will not

allow its territory ever to be used for terrorist acts

against the people of the United States or of any other

country.

Cuba has the will to do this because it has

suffered terrorist acts for over 40 years; because in

Cuba there are still the relatives of the nearly 3,500

Cubans killed as a result of acts of aggression and

terrorism; and because justice is still demanded by the

more than 2,000 Cubans disabled by acts of aggression

and terrorism. Some of Cuba’s sons and daughters who

fought against terrorism have become the victims of

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cruel persecutions, merciless treatment and unjust and

slanderous trials.

The people of the United States are victims not

only of terrorism and panic but also of the lack of

truthful information, manipulation and the questionable

curbing of their freedoms. Cuba does not nurture any

hatred towards the American people, whom we do not

hold responsible for our suffering caused by terrorism,

acts of aggression and the unfair economic war that we

have had to withstand during almost an entire lifetime.

We share with the American people the aspiration of

one day having relations based on respect and

cooperation.

If anyone here takes offence at these words

uttered on behalf of a small, generous and courageous

people, I apologize. We speak in a straightforward

manner. Words exist to uphold the truth, not to conceal

it. We rebel against injustice and oppression. We have

the moral resolution. We defend our ideals with our

lives. Our support can be won for any just cause, but

we will not be overcome by force, or allow absurd

slogans or shameful campaigns to be forced upon us.

For many years now, we have proclaimed that for

us Cubans, the historical dilemma is: “Motherland or

Death!” From this comes our confidence and sureness

that we are and will continue to be a worthy, sovereign

and just people.