Germany, 1994

First, I should like to

offer you, Sir, my personal congratulations on your election

as President of the General Assembly at its forty-ninth

session, and also those of the European Union, on whose

behalf I am addressing the Assembly today. We wish you

luck and success in your high office.

We thank Ambassador Insanally for the wise

leadership with which he guided the forty-eighth session

of the General Assembly to a successful conclusion.

I am addressing the Assembly on behalf of a Europe

that has become more closely integrated as a result of the

Maastricht Treaty, a Europe which in a few weeks’ time

will admit four new members, and which intends to

broaden its cooperation based on partnership with the

world’s other regions as well. I am speaking for a

Europe that is committed to world peace and development

and whose political actions are determined by its belief in

individual freedom, democracy and the rule of law, a

Europe which sees in the realization of justice a crucial

precondition for avoiding war and the use of force and

which is prepared to play its part in promoting the

economic development of all regions, the struggle against

hunger, and measures to protect the Earth’s natural

sources of life. But I am speaking above all on behalf of

a Europe that wishes to place the United Nations in a

better position to meet its foremost obligation as

guarantor of peace and security in the world.

Next year’s fiftieth anniversary of the United

Nations coincides with that marking the end of the

Second World War. The founding of the United Nations

was the response to that catastrophe, which had its origins

in Europe. Today we can look back on impressive

achievements by the United Nations. The 51 members in

1945 have grown into a membership of 184. The United

Nations has thus developed into a truly universal

Organization.

By recently concluding the negotiations on the Law

of the Sea Convention, the United Nations has made

outstanding progress in promoting the reconciliation of

interests and the peaceful settlement of disputes around

the world. The choice of Hamburg as seat of the

International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea is a token

of confidence in Germany and an obligation for my

country.

The achievements of the United Nations are

considerable, yet it is often the object of unfair criticism.

The United Nations can be only as good as its Members

allow it to be. It needs their active support. Many of its

personnel, both soldiers and civilians, have done their

utmost to help alleviate distress and save lives. No small

number of them have lost their own lives in the process.

We pay tribute to them and honour their memory.

15

Many of us believed that the ending of the cold war

would usher in an era of peace. Today we know,

unfortunately, that that hope was premature. Day in and

day out, hundreds of people are falling victim to hostilities

and thousands more are dying of starvation or disease.

What has happened and is still happening in Bosnia,

Somalia and Rwanda is appalling.

The European Union sees a response to these global

challenges in a strengthening of the United Nations and of

the multilateral system for the safeguarding of peace world

wide, in more intensive preventive diplomacy and conflict

prevention within the United Nations and regional

institutions, in respect for human rights in the world and for

the rule of law, and in closer development cooperation in

and among the regions.

We Europeans therefore welcome the report of the

Secretary-General on an Agenda for Development. An

Agenda for Development must soon find its place alongside

the Agenda for Peace. With his report, Mr. Boutros-Ghali

has again pointed the way for our Organization’s future

development and work. I wish to convey to him the

appreciation of the European Union. We pledge a

constructive contribution to the debate on this document.

Following the disaster of the Second World War,

Europe had the opportunity for political renewal and it took

that opportunity. We Europeans derive courage and

strength from that renewal. No other region in the world

has such a dense network of regional, intergovernmental

and supranational institutions, and no region in the world

has such close relations with other nations and their

organizations. In the field of security, therefore, it is our

aim to create a network of mutually supporting institutions

which will include, together with the European Union (EU),

the Western European Union (WEU), the North Atlantic

Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Conference on

Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). All must

work closely with the United Nations. NATO and the

WEU are already helping the United Nations to carry out

its difficult mission in the former Yugoslavia.

Because our interests are interwoven as they have

always been, we will not allow ourselves to be discouraged

by set-backs and will therefore do our utmost to bring

about a peaceful settlement in the former Yugoslavia. The

United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) has our

unreserved support. The terrible war of destruction in

Bosnia and Herzegovina must be brought to an end.

Federation is, we believe, a first and indispensable step

towards a peace settlement. Winter will be here soon and

the people will once again have cold and hunger to

contend with. But the precondition for lasting progress

and for peace is the will for reconciliation among all

ethnic groups. The European Union is trying to help, and

we shall continue to do so. For that reason we have

established an administrative office in Mostar, which

began its work in July under the courageous leadership of

Hans Koschnick.

The entire international community must constantly

make it unmistakably clear to the Bosnian Serbs that in

rejecting the peace plan they cannot reckon with tacit

approval. There must be no toleration of a policy of war

and expulsion. We seek a solution for the Croatian

territories under UNPROFOR protection which will be

acceptable to both sides. The territorial integrity of

Croatia must be respected. Autonomy arrangements will

have to be found for the Krajina Serbs. We Europeans

believe that an extension of the mandate of UNPROFOR

is absolutely essential for this purpose.

The United Nations envisages a world in which it is

not the law of the strongest but rather international law

that prevails. We Europeans share that vision. We are

even more convinced by what has happened in the former

Yugoslavia that a relapse into divisive nationalism must

be prevented.

We, the Members of the United Nations, must

summon the strength to make a great joint effort to

provide the United Nations and its Secretary-General with

the means to meet their global responsibility. The United

Nations must become what its founding fathers aspired to

in their noble vision nearly 50 years ago: mankind’s

principal guardian of the peace.

But we, the Members of the United Nations, must

above all be prepared to stand up for the cause of peace.

The members of the European Union have played, and

are continuing to play, a major role in helping maintain

or restore peace in many of the world’s trouble spots on

behalf of the United Nations. We Europeans are guided

by the following basic principles.

First, for its peace-keeping measures the United

Nations should be able to rely on the broadest possible

support and involvement of its Members. Such

operations ought to foster peace and unity among them

but not divide the community of nations.

16

Secondly, we Europeans will always be in favour of

giving priority to non-military means of safeguarding peace

wherever possible. But aggressors must also realize that

the United Nations is capable of military intervention where

other means of achieving the aims of the Charter have

failed, and that it has the will to take such action.

Thirdly, the use of military force cannot be an end in

itself. Successful peace-keeping presupposes an

unequivocal mandate based on international law, a

convincing political plan for settling the conflict, and the

equitable participation of the Member States.

Fourthly, we Europeans welcome the idea of stand-by

arrangements developed by Secretary-General

Boutros-Ghali. It can effectively help reduce the length of

time between the decision to mount a peace-keeping

operation and its actual implementation. Many members of

the European Union, including Germany, are willing to

contribute to stand-by arrangements.

Fifthly, in many countries military training is geared

solely to the traditional duties of the army. The specific

tasks of peace-keeping require a completely different kind

of training. The national preparation of Blue Helmets

needs to be coordinated to a greater degree by the United

Nations. What is needed for this are common training

guidelines and the training capacity of the United Nations.

Joint training and exercises are, at the same time, important

steps in confidence-building.

Speaking as the Foreign Minister of Germany, I would

add that last year I stated in the Assembly that my country

was willing to shoulder more responsibilities with regard to

United Nations peace-keeping operations. Today I can

confirm that Germany will be able to join fully in

peace-keeping operations of the United Nations, the

German Federal Constitutional Court having cleared the

way a few months ago.

The European Union looks for the revitalization of the

United Nations and its various organizations. In the course

of the forty-eighth session of the General Assembly a

working group considered all aspects of the question of

increasing the membership of the Security Council and

other matters related to the Security Council. The working

group had a substantive and constructive discussion. Its

report states that

"... while there was convergence of views that the

membership of the Security Council should be

enlarged, there was also agreement that the scope and

nature of such enlargement require further

discussion." (A/48/47, para. 8)

Security Council reform is an important issue which

requires a productive outcome. These days, the most

important decisions on security and peace are made in the

Security Council. We therefore look forward to a report

on enlargement of the Security Council membership and

related issues from the open-ended working group, and to

productive results.

Transparency in the Council’s decision-making

processes is important, particularly in peace-keeping,

where the interests of contributor nations are involved.

Indeed, the cost of establishing and consolidating peace

is enormous. The explosion of the peace-keeping budget

has almost brought the United Nations to a standstill. In

order to overcome the financial crisis, three tasks must be

accomplished.

The United Nations urgently requires more efficient

management and better organization. The creation of the

Office of Internal Oversight Services by the General

Assembly at its forty-eighth session was an important step

towards this objective, and the fact that a German has

been appointed as the first head of that Office is a mark

of confidence in my country. Members’ contributions

must be brought more into line with their actual capacity

to pay. The aim of comprehensive financial reform must

be to establish a scale that is transparent and reliable,

reflects Members’ financial situations, is automatically

adapted to changed national circumstances, and gives

consideration to the needs of countries with low per

capita incomes. But it is crucial that all Members be

willing to meet their membership obligations. We cannot

have a situation in which the United Nations has

difficulty carrying out its responsibilities because

individual Members feel exempted from their duties.

It is always better to prevent a fire than to have to

put it out. The European experience is that conflicts must

be prevented -but this is not a purely European

experience. We bank on the power of preventive

diplomacy, confidence-building and the early detection of

conflicts. The United Nations must further enlarge and

strengthen its instruments of preventive diplomacy. This

includes helping countries along the road to democracy

and observing elections. The establishment of and respect

for human and minority rights, as well as measures to

bring about economic and social stability, are other basic

elements of prevention.

17

The Declaration and Programme of Action of the

World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna calls

for more active implementation. Our priority must be to

support the High Commissioner for Human Rights. In

addition, we must substantially increase the resources

available in the United Nations for human rights activities.

It is, I believe, inadequate for the United Nations to provide

only 1 per cent of its funds for this task.

Work on the establishment of an international criminal

court must proceed apace. Human rights and the protection

of minorities are indivisibly linked. Ethnic or cultural

arrogance and the curtailing of minority rights are one

cause of the ever-swelling refugee flows in our world

today. That is why minorities need the protection of the

United Nations. We Europeans are striving to implement

this objective. In Europe, the Pact on Stability is designed

to promote political stability and the protection of

minorities.

We do not want to close our eyes to our own

shortcomings. There must be no room for racism and

xenophobia in Europe. That is why we have made it our

goal to develop a Union-wide strategy against racism and

xenophobia in the course of the coming year. We need

more efficient management of humanitarian relief actions.

The need for resources and measures to alleviate emergency

situations through disaster relief operations is likely to

increase rather than decrease.

We expect the United Nations Disaster Relief

Coordinator to ensure more effective coordination of

measures within the United Nations system. He must be

able to intervene before it is too late for the people

affected. I should like to stress that point. Work on the

drafting of a convention for the protection of the work of

humanitarian organizations must be brought to a speedy

conclusion.

One task of preventive policy as we understand it is to

combat terrorism. There is no justification for terrorism.

Drugs and organized crime are an ever-increasing danger

not only to our young people, but also to the social and

political stability of whole societies. To combat these

dangers we need international alliances, and we need them

urgently. The European Union offers comprehensive

cooperation and the experience it has gained in this field.

Disarmament policy, too, is preventive policy. Over

the past few years, major successes have been attained in

this field. These must now be made irreversible. The

START Treaties must be implemented quickly. In Europe,

the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces has proved to

be a milestone.

Uncleared mines are amongst the worst legacies of

war and civil war. We Europeans are in favour of the

establishment of a United Nations fund for mine-clearing

and of more stringent provisions under international law

to protect civilian populations.

The increasing proliferation of weapons of mass

destruction, the continuing operation of unsafe nuclear

plants and the smuggling of plutonium and other nuclear

materials are among the new global dangers of our age.

We must counter them at the national and global levels.

We Europeans urgently appeal to North Korea to fulfil its

international obligations. We in the European Union are

committed to the indefinite, unconditional extension of the

Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In

Geneva, we want to arrive at a universal and universally

verifiable comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty. I

believe that it is also high time that consensus was

reached there on negotiations to bring about a ban on the

manufacture of weapons-grade fissile material.

The European Union, together with its partners, is

providing considerable funds for improving the safety of

nuclear plants in the neighbouring countries to our east.

What happened at Chernobyl must never, ever be

repeated. That would indeed be terrible.

I appeal to all signatory States to ensure speedy

ratification and implementation of the chemical weapons

Convention at the national level in order for it quickly to

become fully effective.

The dangers I have just mentioned affect us all. As

those dangers have a global dimension, action by the

United Nations, too, is called for. At its summit meeting

on 31 January 1992, the Security Council rightly stated

that the proliferation of all weapons of mass destruction

constitutes a threat to international peace and security.

The United Nations, the Security Council and all of us

must resolutely shoulder our responsibility to overcome

these new threats.

A fair balancing of interests through the ever-closer

regional integration of States and ever-increasing

cooperation between regions of our planet in the spirit of

Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations are the

necessary response to the huge economic, ecological and

social challenges and the manifold ethnic conflicts we are

facing today - unfortunately, I might add. No one region

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alone can master the global tasks confronting us. Nor can

the United Nations accomplish everything itself. The

burden on the United Nations can be substantially reduced

with the help of regional associations and cooperation. We

should strive to achieve that objective.

For Europe, the post-war era has finally reached an

end. A few weeks ago, the last Russian soldiers left

Germany. Russian troops have also withdrawn from the

Baltic States and other Eastern European countries. Now

the aim must be to prevent new divides from emerging in

Europe. The European Union will become not a "Fortress

Europe" but a Europe based on partnership and solidarity.

The European Union is supporting the countries of

Central and Eastern Europe on their way to democracy and

the establishment of market economies. The peoples in the

reformist States fought for their freedom. We encouraged

them in their struggle and we will not now abandon them.

We will gradually smooth their path towards the

Euro-Atlantic institutions. It is important to mention that

there will be no pan-European order of peace without or

against Russia. The European Union has concluded

partnership and cooperation agreements with Russia and

Ukraine. The North Atlantic Alliance’s "Partnership for

Peace" enhances Europe’s security.

The CSCE, as a new instrument of conflict-prevention,

confidence-building and conflict resolution, can set an

example for other regions of the world. And it can, as a

regional arrangement under Chapter VIII of the Charter,

relieve the United Nations as the guardian of peace. At the

CSCE Summit in December the European Union will urge,

on the basis of a German-Dutch initiative, that the CSCE be

given priority in conflict settlement and prevention within

its area and that it be equipped accordingly.

The European Union wants to further extend and

tighten its network of regional cooperation. Transatlantic

relations with the United States and Canada remain the

cornerstone of European policy. The Summit meeting

between the European Union and the United States in

Berlin in July this year confirmed our resolve to further

strengthen transatlantic relations.

We are seeking closer relations with the countries of

Asia. In Germany a few days ago we discussed with the

Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) the

possibilities for even more intensive political and economic

cooperation. We are following with interest ASEAN’s

initiative to launch a policy dialogue on security in

South-East and East Asia, and I wish to emphasize the

European Union’s interest in and willingness to cooperate

more closely with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

Council (APEC).

The European Council meeting in Corfu reaffirmed

that it attaches great importance to relations with the

countries of Latin America and with their regional

associations. The institutionalized dialogue with the Rio

Group has become for us an important element for the

consolidation of democracy and peace. We intend to

broaden the cooperation agreement with the States of the

Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR).

Through its policy on the Mediterranean, the

European Union will have made available a total of

roughly $9.6 billion between 1975 and 1996. Europe

attaches great importance to security in the

Mediterranean.

From the outset the European Union actively

supported the Middle East peace process, playing a

leading role in international assistance for the

development of the Palestinian economy and society.

With the roughly $600 million earmarked for direct aid

from 1994 to 1998, the European Union is the

Palestinians’ largest international donor.

Cooperation in southern Africa has made great

strides. The course South Africa has embarked upon

under Nelson Mandela shows that it is possible for former

adversaries to be reconciled and to shape a common

future, given the necessary political will and wise

leadership. At the Berlin conference with the States of

the Southern African Development Community (SADC)

early this month the European Union initiated a new

phase of cooperation with southern Africa.

We in Europe want closer dialogue with the

Organization of African Unity (OAU) on conflict

prevention and security cooperation because we want

partnership with the countries of Africa and thereby a

greater United Nations peace-keeping capacity.

Agreement on an agenda for development is

becoming ever more urgent. One billion people in this

world are still living in absolute poverty. Global

expenditure on arms still amounts to as much as the

income of half of the five and a half billion people on our

planet.

Poverty, increasing demographic pressure and

irresponsible harming of the environment have made the

19

dangers to peace and stability greater, not smaller. The

Conference on Environment and Development in Rio and

the International Conference on Population and

Development, which ended in Cairo a few days ago,

confirmed that there are no simple answers to global

problems. The two conferences none the less sent out an

encouraging signal: there is growing recognition that we

must tackle such problems together, and this I believe is a

very important basis for the World Social Summit, which

will be held next year in Denmark.

In many countries women are still excluded from

active participation in public life. We expect the World

Conference on Women, to be held in Beijing next year, to

heighten awareness of this.

In the Maastricht Treaty we Europeans for the first

time made development policy an integral part of a treaty

system for Europe. We undertook to seek the sustainable

economic and social development of the South, to promote

its integration into the global economy and to combat

poverty.

Despite the huge budget difficulties facing its member

States, the European Union has increased its development

assistance from over $1 billion in 1988 to almost $3 billion

today. Funds for emergency disaster relief and food aid

were increased to $1 billion this year. Even more

important than such financial transfers, however, is the task

of integrating the countries of the South into the world

economy. Without doubt, the conclusion of the Uruguay

Round improved the chances of growth for all States

participating in world trade. The aim now must be for the

Treaty to enter into force on 1 January 1995, as planned,

and for the newly-established World Trade Organization to

commence work.

The treaty-based cooperation between the European

Union and the other regions of the world is designed to

further liberalize world trade. Every region should be able

to participate in the European market. That is why we

want to complete the forthcoming review of Lomé IV,

including the new finance protocol, on time, and we are

working to achieve that end.

Speaking here last year I suggested the development

of an early detection capacity for environmental disasters in

developing countries, and for the European Union I can

today say this: World-wide energy consumption is

increasing, although the use of fossil fuels is already

endangering climatic stability. In particular, we, the

industrialized countries, therefore need a more

environment-friendly and resource-friendly attitude on the

part of producers and consumers and increased recycling

of raw materials. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions

must be tackled as a matter of urgency.

The destruction of the forests continues mercilessly.

Soil erosion, loss of bio-diversity and impaired

regeneration are the consequences. This destruction must

be halted. We Europeans will seek better international

cooperation in the United Nations for the sustainable

utilization and protection of the forests. The United

Nations is the guardian not only of peace, but also of the

environment.

The historian Arnold Toynbee was right when he

concluded that people are entirely capable of learning

from disasters and finding responses to historic

challenges. Today we Europeans know that only

integration and cooperation lead to the desired goal, and

the international community’s response to the global

problems is and has to be to strengthen the United

Nations. Our central tasks for the future are: first, to

secure peace world-wide; secondly, to respect human

rights and the rule of law; and, thirdly, to create the

conditions for lasting stability through economic and

social development.

Our common goal is to create a better world for all.

But the determination with which we implement this goal

in practice is the precondition for success against which

we will be measured.