United Kingdom, 1998

Today’s world offers

one clear lesson: to survive and prosper, we have to work

together better. That much is clear.

We share a global environment. We depend on each

other for development and prosperity. Regional conflicts

affect us all. Our peoples suffer together under the

shadows of drugs and terrorism.

We can no longer separate what we want to achieve

within our own borders from what we face across our

borders. Rapid change of the sort we have seen recently

can inspire fear. But we must face and conquer that fear

together.

And if our finance, our trade, media,

communications and even our culture are, day by day,

more and more transnational, it would be strange and

potentially dangerous if our politics remained locked in

the old compartments built just after the Second World

War. If the challenge is international, then the response

must be international too. We must launch a new era of

international partnership in which we modernize those

institutions that allow us to cooperate and to work

together.

The United Nations has a real record of

achievement. That is true. But it is true also that it has

had its failures. It has stood by or intervened ineffectively

when brutality was abroad. It has sometimes delivered

words when action was needed.

But the United Nations is no more than its Member

States. Its failures are our failures. The values of the

United Nations Charter are as valid now as when they

were written. But we have to find new ways of applying

them.

So I believe in the United Nations, but I also believe

it must modernize, and do so urgently. All parts of the

United Nations need proper accountability to go with

secure funding, better management and more effective

coordination in all their activities.

Our Secretary-General has given us a lead. But it is

now up to us, the Member States, to give him our full

support. We must not allow reform in the United Nations

to falter.

And let me emphasize today that we need to

strengthen too the authority of the Security Council. This

means broadening its composition: new permanent

seats — for the developing world as well as for Germany

and Japan. More non-permanent seats alone would be an

unacceptable compromise. We have been talking about

this now for five years. It is time for decisions.

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We face many challenges, but none more immediate

than the contagion of recession spreading from those

countries currently in difficulty to affect the wider world

economy. The solutions do not lie in misguided attempts to

impose new panoplies of controls on international capital

movements, or in a retreat from open trade. Rather, we

must all recognize that the absence of proper financial

structures and disciplines in individual countries, coupled

with a lack of transparency, will be punished by the

markets sooner or later.

However, we can act. We can devise new mechanisms

to support a process of change: rules to encourage greater

transparency in international and national financial dealings;

better supervision and regulation of financial operators;

adequate resources for the international financial institutions

to deal with short-term liquidity problems; structural reform

programmes for countries in difficulty, programmes that

take account of the social effects of the restructuring we are

asking for.

The only way to tackle such complex problems is a

new, high-level, international collaborative effort. Global

problems will require global solutions. As Chairman of the

G-8, Britain will play our full part in ensuring the necessary

look at the international financial architecture and how it

can be improved for a new age. This is a priority, I believe,

for us all.

However, we know that, unlike in the 1950s, this

cannot be left simply to a few developed countries. Getting

the financial framework right is only a start. We must

create the conditions for sustainable development in all our

countries.

The international community has set itself exacting

targets. Most important is the target to halve the proportion

of people living in abject poverty by the year 2015. Our

own development effort is now geared to the eradication of

poverty. I told last year’s special session that we would

reverse the decline in our development assistance. Recently

we have announced that we are raising our development

budget by £1.6 billion, and our support for health,

education and water projects in Africa by 50 per cent. We

have helped pay for the World Health Organization’s

campaign to roll back malaria. We are trying to put our

money where our mouth is.

Of course, however, these development programmes

only work if the conditions are right, and too much money

has been wasted over the years. That is again why the work

the United Nations is doing to create strong development

partnerships is so important and must be given our full

backing. I call today on all parts of the United Nations

system, including the Bretton Woods institutions and the

World Trade Organization, to give top priority to effective

coordination of their development efforts. The poor of

this world will otherwise be the losers.

If we want to eradicate poverty, we also need to

ensure that the least developed countries benefit from this

global economy. That means, for example, letting them

sell their goods without imposing tariffs on them. It

means actively helping them benefit from globalization.

And it means rejecting any false allure of protectionism.

The European Union is committed to zero tariffs for

these countries by the year 2000. And I would urge all

developed countries to follow suit.

We also have to ease the debt burden on the poorest

countries. Britain has proposed the Mauritius Mandate to

speed up assistance for those in the debt trap who are

genuinely ready to help themselves out of it. By the year

2000 all qualifying highly indebted countries should have

embarked on a systematic process of debt reduction, with

the aim of a permanent exit from their debt problems. But

we need to make sure it happens. Again, a huge

collaborative effort between the countries represented here

today will be needed.

Development must not be at the expense of the

environment. We all know this. But, again, this is a

challenge to us. The success of Kyoto was a close-run

thing. Buenos Aires will be hard work, but it has to work.

Countries with the biggest emissions must come forward

quickly with credible plans to meet their Kyoto

commitments. We in Britain will shortly publish a

consultation paper on how we will meet our obligations.

And I hope that others will come forward and do the

same.

The world has high expectations of the United

Nations as the guardian of global peace and security. The

United Nations should not get involved if regional

organizations are better able to tackle a local conflict. But

sometimes we must demonstrate collective global will.

And if we act, we must act decisively. Clear principles

must be our guiding hand. Let me set some out briefly.

First, prevention is always better than cure. The

resources spent on averting conflict are tiny compared to

the expense of peacekeeping once the guns start to fire.

The United Nations is building up its capacity in this

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area, but it needs more support — and again Britain

pledges to play its part.

Secondly, where we do have to send in the Blue

Helmets, they should be given a clear and achievable task.

There must be no repeat of Bosnia, where peacekeepers

were inserted into a live conflict and told to make safe

areas safe. But they were not given the means to do so.

United Nations peacekeepers need a way out as well

as a way in. They must have the tools to do the job, and

clear and effective command.

Thirdly, the United Nations needs to be able to act and

respond fast. Fast action can prevent a conflict escalating,

underpin a fragile truce, save lives. Again, we in Britain are

trying to play our part. The reshaping of Britain’s armed

forces following our Strategic Defence Review is

transforming our ability to contribute to peacekeeping and

humanitarian operations: more and better equipped rapid-

reaction forces, additional strategic lift and better logistics

capability.

I can announce today that within six months we will

conclude a specific agreement with the United Nations to

ensure that it can make rapid use of what we have to offer

when it is needed — the first such agreement by a

permanent member.

Fourthly, peacekeeping has to be accompanied from

the start by peace-building, to restore justice, democratic

institutions, prosperity and human rights. The Security

Council has to deal with the symptoms of conflict, not

simply with its causes. It needs to work with the rest of the

United Nations, the World Bank and the International

Monetary Fund if it is to have lasting impact. Again, I will

be asking the Secretary-General to put to us new proposals

dealing with the consequences and the causes of conflict to

make this a reality.

Too many of those conflicts sill abound. There are few

higher priorities than restoring peace to the Great Lakes

region. The Middle East peace process remains an apparent

deadlock. We have managed to make progress in Northern

Ireland, and the support of the world community in our

doing so has given us great strength and courage to carry

on. We owe a debt of gratitude for that support, and I hope

that the world will continue it. I believe now is the time for

a further move forward in the Middle East, too. Again, we

in Britain are ready to play our part in bringing this about.

I want to focus, however, on one other area of

urgent concern: Kosovo. It almost defies belief that, yet

again, the security forces of President Milosevic´ are

ignoring the clear will of the international community and

inflicting brutality and repression on those they claim to

see as fellow citizens. Of course, we recognize that the

unacceptable actions of the so-called Kosovo Liberation

Army have contributed to the present appalling situation.

But nothing can justify scorched-earth tactics and forcible

creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

We have some clear responsibilities in this situation

as an international community. First, we must make it

clear that our patience with broken promises — phoney

assurances that are not honoured — is exhausted.

Continuation of military repression will inevitably lead to

a new kind of response. Secondly, we must impress on

both sides the need to negotiate, with a realistic

appreciation of what is possible, and point the way to a

mutually acceptable solution. Thirdly, we must make it

clear that we have to meet the immediate humanitarian

needs of the refugees in Kosovo and prevent, by any

means necessary, the humanitarian disaster which we can

see just over the horizon as winter approaches.

We propose a new Security Council resolution

calling for an immediate ceasefire and demanding an

urgent end to the trampling of the rights of the inhabitants

of Kosovo. It should be adopted this week, and President

Milosevic´ would ignore such a resolution at his peril.

The international community faces another serious

challenge in Iraq. The Security Council is unanimous in

insisting that Iraq resume cooperation with the United

Nations, and Kofi Annan courageously reached an

important agreement with the Iraqi leadership about the

United Nations Special Commission earlier this year.

Again, this agreement has to be honoured, and we will

play our part in ensuring that it is.

Finally, we face two global scourges which can

undermine our institutions and, indeed, our way of life:

drugs and terrorism. We all know the growing links

between drugs and crime and instability in so many

countries. The insidiously corrupting effect drugs have on

all who come near them — growers, smugglers, pushers

and users alike. We have, as we know, to tackle every

link of the drugs chain, but we are in danger of losing

sight of the size of the mountain we have to climb. If we

are honest with ourselves, this is a war that we are risking

losing, but we must win. Britain, again, is spending a

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further £200 million at the national level on our priorities,

but our collective efforts need a much stronger focus.

We are not short of organizations looking at this

problem; indeed, there may well be too many. But we are

desperately short of results: cutting supply lines, eliminating

illicit crop cultivation and stopping the profits of the drug

dealers. We have a new instrument, the convention against

organized crime. Too many countries still provide sanctuary

for the proceeds of crime. We must demand together that

those countries root out the traffickers and their dirty

money — hit the drug barons where it hurts. The

convention will provide practical means to achieve this, but

the negotiations are dragging. Let us set ourselves the task

of completing them by the millennium, at the latest.

The fight against terrorism has also taken on a new

urgency. The past year’s global roll-call of terror includes

Luxor, Dar-es-Salaam, Nairobi, Omagh and many others.

Each one is a reminder that terrorism is a uniquely barbaric

and cowardly crime. Each one is a reminder that terrorists

are no respecters of borders. Each one is a reminder that

terrorism should have no hiding place and no

opportunity to raise funds, and that there should be no

let-up in our determination to bring its perpetrators

justice. This applies to the new phenomenon of stateless

terrorism as much as to its more familiar forms.

As a start, it is surely vital that all countries sign up

to the 11 international conventions to ensure that terrorists

have no safe haven. We have ourselves, again, in Britain,

just passed new legislation to ensure we can tackle

terrorist conspiracies aimed at third countries. But we

must go further. We can hope to defeat terrorism only if

we all devote ourselves to doing so. So I welcome the

recent initiative by the President of France to tackle fund-

raising for terrorism on an international basis. As

Chairman of the G-8, I again offer today to host a high-

level conference in London this autumn to deny the

terrorists this means of support. Effective new measures

on an agreed international basis could make a real

difference.

I have covered many points in my speech to the

Assembly, but my main point is really a very simple one.

We face multiple new challenges as we approach the new

century. Our only hope, as we all know, of tackling these

challenges successfully is tackling them together. We

need effective international cooperation and modern

institutions to deal with our political problems and our

economic problems. We need the United Nations system

pulling together as never before. We need to revitalize

and modernize our international institutions to deal with

the crisis in the global economy. But, above all, we need

political will and a sense of urgency. The problems of our

modern world are too pressing, their consequences too

immediate, their impact too far-reaching for us to hesitate

or to look away any longer. We are being given a

warning to act, to give purpose and direction in resolving

these challenges we face together, or pay the price. And

the time to do it — to respond to that warning — is now.