Estonia, 2000

Allow me to begin, Sir, by

congratulating you on your election as President of the

General Assembly at its fifty-fifth session. I wish you

all the best in carrying out your duties. I would also

like to welcome the Republic of Tuvalu to the United

Nations.

Last week my Prime Minister, Mart Laar, spoke

to the Millennium Summit on a number of issues

Estonia sees as being especially salient to the United

Nations this year. In my brief remarks today, I would

like to underline four in particular: first, the need to

reform the Security Council; secondly, efforts to raise

the effectiveness of peacekeeping; thirdly, the

importance of narrowing the global gap between rich

and poor; and, fourthly, the role of information

technology in furthering development.

The first concerns efforts to reform the Security

Council. The strong executive power vested in the

Council was originally designed for the Council to

provide a venue for speedy decisions and subsequent

action. In practice, however, the Council is

increasingly prone to indecisive waffling, which in turn

undermines its own authority and credibility, and thus

its effectiveness. In order to combat that effect, Estonia

believes that the voting procedures and mechanisms

governing the work of the United Nations most

powerful body must be revamped.

One such procedure that deserves our attention is

the veto. Some permanent members of the Security

Council have used the veto, or have threatened to do

so, in order to advance their own domestic and foreign

policy interests, irrelevant to the particular issue at

hand. Because the Security Council derives its

legitimacy from all Member States, it is the duty of the

permanent members to exercise their veto power

responsibly.

The composition of the Council, which still

reflects the power relationships current in 1945, is

another issue that calls out for resolution. From the

inception of the United Nations that year until just a

decade ago the people of my country were afforded

only rare glimpses of the goings-on at the United

Nations through tears in the fabric of the Iron Curtain.

When we finally re-established our independence, in

1991, we emerged onto the international arena only to

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discover that the Security Council, judging by its

composition, was still stuck back in 1945. This strikes

Estonia as being anachronistic, if not wrongheaded.

The guarantors of, and greatest contributors to, stability

in the world have in the course of half a century

changed fundamentally. We need not fear opening a

discussion on whether the moral and legal reasoning

underlying Security Council membership in the wake

of the Second World War is still appropriate for the

twenty-first century. If countries have fundamentally

changed, so should, and so can, the United Nations.

My second point regards peacekeeping. Earlier

this year my Government decided to forgo the discount

rate that meant paying only 20 per cent of our

peacekeeping assessment. Instead, we voluntarily and

unilaterally opted to shoulder 100 per cent of what is

expected of us. This is because Estonia regards

peacekeeping as being among the United Nations most

crucial assignments in fulfilling its historical mandate

of collective security. Security cannot be had at

discount prices. That is why Estonia is willing to pay

more for what we hope will be a better product.

Paying our own way is not enough to raise the

effectiveness of peacekeeping, however. What we

require, as Prime Minister Tony Blair said here last

week, is a far broader concept of security. The Security

Council took an important step last week towards

ensuring the security of people and frontiers with its

unanimous resolution to overhaul United Nations

peacekeeping operations. Those changes should create

a more potent and better financed force that can react

quickly where needed.

My third point focuses on the need to increase

equality around the globe. In his millennium report, the

Secretary-General called on all of us to focus on the

eradication of poverty. We can go a long way towards

levelling the playing field for all peoples by alleviating

debt and allocating more resources for development

assistance. It is not as simple as that, however. As my

Prime Minister, Mart Laar, said here last week, these

efforts must go hand in hand with good governance and

open markets. Without a commitment to these two

elements, no amount of aid or debt relief will bring us

closer to our intended goal.

The idea that open governments and open

markets are a prerequisite for good economic

performance leads me to my fourth and final point,

namely, the role of information and communications

technology in furthering development. In his

millennium report, the Secretary-General rightly

stressed the need to ensure that the fruits of new

technologies, especially information technology, are

available to all.

I personally took part in the High-level Panel of

Experts on Information and Communication

Technology, held here at the United Nations last April,

because we have some experience in these matters.

Estonia has the honour of finding itself among the 20

most computerized nations in the world. More

importantly, we have done this not as a rich country,

but as a nation with rather modest means.

Among the Panel's most important findings was

the undisputed, if not terribly original, conclusion that

information technology programmes are, in fact,

beneficial for development. Computer technology can

be a wedge, or it can be a bridge. It need not follow

that poor nations fall ever behind. Policies can be

implemented, as we have discovered, that turn the

“digital divide” into a “digital dividend”.

We have seen this in my country firsthand

through our Tiger Leap programme whereby every

school in Estonia has, for some time now, been

connected to the Internet. Even more clearly, we have

witnessed how access to information technology has

brought new possibilities to rural areas, the areas which

often bear the brunt of change. This is why Estonia

wholeheartedly endorses, and will actively participate

in, the United Nations plans to assist all Members in

making the information technology dream a reality.