Federated States of Micronesia, 1995

I am

honoured to address the fiftieth session of the General

Assembly. I wish at the outset to extend to His

Excellency Mr. Diogo Freitas do Amaral my

congratulations on his election to preside over the General

Assembly. We are pleased that the stewardship of this

anniversary session is entrusted to a distinguished and

seasoned diplomat. I wish to express my confidence in his

capable leadership and assure him of the cooperation of

my Government in the discharge of the mandate of his

office.

In this connection I wish to thank his distinguished

predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Amara Essy of

Côte d’Ivoire, for his dedication and excellent guidance

of the work of the Assembly during its forty-ninth

session.

I also wish to convey my Government’s gratitude to

the Secretary-General, Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, for his

tireless efforts in the search for peaceful solutions to the

many volatile situations and humanitarian and

development issues around the world that are challenging

the Organization’s attention.

My Government takes this opportunity to extend a

warm welcome to our neighbour, the Republic of Palau,

the newest Member of the United Nations.

A few weeks from today, Member States of the

United Nations will join together to celebrate the fiftieth

anniversary of the Organization, taking note of its

accomplishments and its share of failures with a view to

charting an effective role for its future.

The new global map before us today presents the

Organization with a unique opportunity as the primary

global institution. The challenge of leadership is before

us. However, this opportunity will be missed if financial

resources and the political will of its Member States are

lacking.

In this connection we wish to support the statement

made by the Chairman of the Group of 77 and by China

last week with respect to the progress report of the High-

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level Open-ended Working Group on the Financial Situation

of the United Nations.

I also wish to express my Government’s strong

support for the ongoing programme of reforms within the

Organization. We support institutional reforms that will

eliminate duplication of work, waste and fraud and thereby

enhance the effectiveness of the Organization.

With reference to the scale of assessments, my

Government finds merit in the argument that the principle

of the capacity to pay seems to have fallen by the wayside

in the determination of assessments. Studies point out

disturbing disparities in the existing scale as compared with

individual Member countries’ share of the global economy.

Naturally, it is the smallest Member States that are being

penalized by such disparities. My Government associates

itself with the report issued by the Committee on

Contributions at its fifty-fifth session, held in June of this

year, which called for a lowering of the floor.

The issue of human rights, implicit in the United

Nations Charter, has been the topic of many debates and

international conferences in the context of the work of the

United Nations. We welcome the programmes of action

generated by these meetings and hope that the international

community will find the determination to allocate the

necessary resources for their implementation.

My Government joined in the consensus of the parties

for the unconditional extension of the Treaty on the Non-

Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) five months ago.

With regard to the ongoing negotiations with respect to a

comprehensive test-ban treaty, my Government welcomes

the commitment by the United States to a zero- yield

threshold, and we urge similar assurances by the other

nuclear-weapon States.

On the other hand, during the past few months we

have been deeply troubled by the occurrence of nuclear-test

explosions in China and the South Pacific. These events can

be seen only as detrimental to the principles of the Treaty

on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and

endangering the prospects for success in negotiating a

comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty.

In the important area of development, my Government

fully supports the ongoing work on the Agenda for

Development and the call for new approaches that would

elevate development and economic policy to their deserved

place, on a par with world peace and security. In the

Secretary-General’s recommendations of 11 November

1994, he stated that the

“United Nations cannot be a strong force for peace

unless it is also a strong force for development.”

(A/49/665, para. 9)

My Government fully associates itself with the declaration

of the Foreign Ministers of the Group of 77 calling for

restoration of the issue of development to the heart of the

United Nations agenda, the centrality of the United

Nations in promoting international cooperation for

development and the creation of a balance between

United Nations activities for development and its other

activities.

My Government welcomes the entry into force of

the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in

November of last year, as well as the establishment of the

International Seabed Authority. While there is much work

ahead in months to come with respect to the Seabed

Authority and the International Tribunal for the Law of

the Sea, we are confident that the spirit of compromise

that brought us to where we are today will continue to

prevail and guide our efforts.

In this connection, my Government is also very

pleased with the successful outcome of the negotiations

on straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks

this past July. My Government looks forward to the

signing of the relevant agreement in December of this

year. At this juncture, allow me to express my

Government’s appreciation to Ambassador Satya Nandan

of the Republic of Fiji for his excellent leadership as

Chairman of the Conference on that subject. As Pacific

islanders, we take pride in the immense contributions of

one of our own sons.

The Government of the Federated States of

Micronesia is firmly committed to environmentally

sustainable development. We urge all members to follow

closely the crucial work of the Commission on

Sustainable Development this year and to support the

important work of Under-Secretary-General Nitin Desai

and the Secretariat in this difficult but essential

endeavour. In this connection, we continue to place great

importance on the implementation of the Programme of

Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island

Developing States.

At its meeting last month the South Pacific Forum

adopted the Convention to Ban the Importation into

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Forum Island Countries of Hazardous and Radioactive

Wastes and to Control the Transboundary Movement and

Management of Hazardous Wastes within the South Pacific

Region, also referred to as the Waigani Convention. It is an

important arrangement that strengthens and supplements the

effect of the Basel and London Conventions within our

region.

The subject of climate change and global warming,

phenomena that are influenced by mankind’s emissions of

greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, remains of deep

concern to the people of the Federated States of Micronesia.

Unfortunately, though, it seems that much of the world

does not at present share our feeling of urgency regarding

the continuing debate over this problem.

The developments during the past year relating to the

Framework Convention on Climate Change have to some

extent been encouraging, but the process still suffers greatly

from the strong political and economic forces that obscure

the Convention’s clearly stated objective: the stabilization

of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at safe levels.

Everyone agrees that this objective can be reached only

through difficult adjustments within the industrialized

countries and assistance to the developing world in

acquiring environmentally clean technologies. It is also

understood that this must be done in stages over a certain

period of time. But the first steps must be initiated at once.

The First Conference of the parties of the Convention,

held in Berlin earlier this year, made the very crucial

determination that the initial undertakings by industrialized

countries to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions were

inadequate. Regrettably, the Conference did not see fit to

adopt as a next step the protocol formally submitted by the

Alliance of Small Island States, which would have applied

a reduction formula endorsed by scientists back in 1988 as

reasonable and necessary. Instead, the best the Conference

could do was to mandate a working group to develop

during the next two years a protocol or other legal

instrument requiring specific future reductions. At the first

meeting of this working group, held recently in Geneva, it

was clear that powerful forces remain dedicated to

defeating this process by whatever means they can apply.

Opponents of the Framework Convention have been

very ingenious in casting doubts over scientific knowledge

relating to climate change, but we hope that the upcoming

second assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change will establish once and for all the clear

legitimacy of this concern and the need for action. The

Panel has found, among other things, a likelihood of

continuing sea-level rise of more than 18 inches, or half

a metre, by the year 2100 if nothing is done. Besides the

obvious disastrous effects upon islands and their

populations, many heavily populated river deltas and their

cities would be made uninhabitable.

The eminent Director of the University of

Maryland’s Laboratory for Coastal Research recently

described the measurement of sea-level rise as the

“dipstick of climate change”. I would respectfully suggest

that while sea-level rise is certainly the indicator, it is our

islands and low-lying coastal areas that are the dipstick,

but we are helplessly fixed and immovable.

I therefore call on this body at this session to take

due notice of the accumulating knowledge relating to

climate change and to reaffirm the urgent need for

meaningful greenhouse gases emissions-reduction

measures within the context of the Framework

Convention.

I am pleased to inform this Assembly that the

Government of the Federated States of Micronesia has

recently ratified the Convention on desertification, and my

Government will deposit its instrument of ratification in

due course.

The Federated States of Micronesia sees an

interrelationship between the three environmental

Conventions — on biological diversity, climate change

and desertification, respectively. And only through a

collective approach and support can we have a chance to

restore, protect and sustain our global environment. My

Government joins in solidarity with all Members to work

towards solutions through global cooperation.

The current series of underground test explosions

which France has carried out in the South Pacific, and

which it is continuing in the face of unprecedented

international outrage, is regrettable for many reasons, but

I focus here on the particular danger which these tests

pose to the environment of our Pacific region.

The history of nuclear testing in the Pacific region,

both north and south, is an ugly chronicle of willingness

to gamble with the lives and homes of millions of island

inhabitants. In the region of Micronesia, and in particular

the Marshall Islands, despite broad assurances that testing

was safe, we are learning only now, years later, that the

disastrous effects on the health of island peoples have

been far worse than science could have predicted at the

time.

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An established principle of international law prescribes

that a State must ensure that its actions within its

jurisdiction or control do not cause damage within other

States or within areas beyond the limits of its national

jurisdiction. That principle is embodied in article 4 of the

Convention for the Protection of the Natural Resources and

Environment of the South Pacific Region, otherwise known

as the Noumea Convention. Together with nine Pacific

countries and the United States, France is a party to that

Convention. It is also an expressed principle in the

Convention on Biological Diversity, to which France is also

a State party.

The Noumea Convention and the Convention on

biological diversity also contain clear requirements

regarding advance, transparent environmental impact

assessments of projects which might have harmful effects

on the environment. No in-depth, comprehensive

environmental impact assessment of France’s underground

nuclear testing programme in the South Pacific has ever

been carried out.

France has sought to reassure the world by saying that

the test area will be open to any assessment desired, as

soon as its present tests are over. Without question, France

will bear a heavy responsibility to ensure against future

leakage, the probability of which is very high. Picture the

shattered substratum of a small atoll which has undergone

over 120 nuclear explosions, one of which caused a tidal

wave. Surely, each succeeding explosion increases the

likelihood of leakage from the accumulation of radioactive

materials concentrated below. In my Government’s view,

the proposition deserves assessment before further tests

proceed, especially since France’s obligation under both of

the treaties I have mentioned includes observance of the

“precautionary principle”.

We hope that the collective voice of this body at this

session will finally convince France that it must respect the

interests of the Pacific region and the world by ending the

nuclear degradation of Polynesian atolls and taking the

necessary actions to prevent future radioactive leakage from

them.

A common thread throughout these remarks has been

one of hope because, at its fiftieth anniversary, more than

ever, this Organization is the greatest hope for a future in

which nations, in cooperation with one another, can address

the bewildering array of problems whose implications,

while local in their effects, far transcend national

boundaries.

Our small, relatively young nation, remote and

underdeveloped, joins with many others in similar

circumstances in feeling blessed that, at this juncture in

history, there is a sense of universality within the

community of nations. At a time when the earlier

“doomsday mentality” no longer lies at the foundation of

international relations, it gives us hope that the passing of

that phase will now make room for more serious

contemplation of the future of the planet we all must

share.

It is good that we are celebrating this important

milestone in human history, this fiftieth anniversary of

our forum for the world’s nations, but if it is to be more

than just a forum, we must all keep a vision of our

purpose in coming here each year and in expending so

much effort throughout the year at conferences and at

home to exchange our respective views.

In the end, we must find ways to transcend the

national assumptions about each other and determine to

create a level of real cooperation which will consolidate

the effectiveness of our individual efforts. That is why

today the United Nations is more important than ever —

indeed, why it is crucial. It is through this Organization,

and through no other, that the breakthrough to which I

refer can be achieved.

And so I close, as I opened, with reference to the

opportunity that makes this Organization our strongest

basis for confidence and our hope for the future. We

know that we are not alone in these views, and we look

forward to working very hard during this, the fiftieth

session of the General Assembly, to do our part in

making it, not only a well-deserved celebration, but a

springboard to a bountiful future to which our

descendants will look back and say, “They did not let us

down.”