Georgia, 1992

One does not

usually say anything personal from this podium. I would submit, however, that

my position does allow me to depart from this role. Exactly two years ago, I

finished my address here and left this very podium for what I thought was the

last time. Yes, I foresaw my resignation from the post of Foreign Minister of

the Soviet Union, as I also foresaw menacing changes coming.

Before coming here again I reread that address. The ideas that inspired

it are, I think, still valid today. They helped me make a forecast that has

been borne out by current events. I said then that all the peoples of the

Soviet Union were entering the political arena and reassuming their age-old

national names.

All of them, including my country, are being dogged by the merciless

onslaught of the economic crisis, which I also spoke about in my appeal to the

international community to set up an international mechanism capable of

mitigating its adverse effects.

I said then that after the end of the cold war new and sinister figures

would appear on the world political scene, and that the breakdown of attempts

to take the road to democracy would give rise to chaos and new dictatorial

regimes. I followed my prediction about the threat of new armed conflicts

emerging, of mass hostage-taking and the spread of terrorism with the

conclusion that regional structures security structures - operating under

United Nations auspices must be set up.

Even that long ago, two years, I keenly felt the need to really think in

terms of doctrine about the new realities of the contemporary world, to

re-examine the old principles of our interrelationships, in both the inter-

and intra-State areas, and to work out new ones.

When I spoke then I was speaking as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of a

great Power. Now I am speaking as the representative of a country that is

microscopic in comparison. However, the dramatic change in scale does not

reduce the size of the problems. In that tiny part of Earth called Georgia,

which history has nailed to the geopolitical cross, have converged, in a

manner that passes understanding, all the woes and contradictions that the

Empire fed into its genetic code and constantly generated, and which continue

to rack us even now that the Empire is dead. Everything I thought and spoke

of, foresaw and predicted has befallen Georgia, my country. And there was no

need for clairvoyance, either; all you needed was to know the system you were

dealing with. One of the greats once said that predicting important events in

the future was no more difficult than successfully guessing the past: if past

events leave traces, then, logically, future events must have roots.

The system was doomed. In August 1991, there was an attempt to save it

using its own typical methods: conspiracy, flouted laws, the use of force. I

had on many occasions warned about the possibility of a coup and totalitarian

revanchism. If the necessary conclusions had been drawn from these words of

warning, then we would have been dealing not with the chaotic collapse of a

huge Power, but with relatively painless and controllable transitions to a new

status quo and to the formation of new States. The swiftness of the death

throes and the speed of the disintegration took the world community by

surprise. It was caught off guard, and is now seeing how new offshoots of

violence, new offshoots of catastrophe, are sprouting from the exposed

rootstock.

Georgia will serve as a typical example. Here we have deep

socio-economic crisis. Here the fall of the Empire was attended by the rise

of a dictatorial regime. Here several internal conflicts were provoked, and

separatism threatens to break up a small country and splinter its historic

territory into dwarf States. Here subversion, terrorism and mass

hostage-taking rule. And, finally, here as nowhere else is the danger so

great that the existing internal conflicts will merge with the ones in

neighbouring States and grow into regional or even continental wars fought

along national or religious lines.

I would recall that, like some other countries, Georgia was incorporated

into the Soviet Union by military force. That force was inspired by an

ideology that placed the interests of the class struggle far above common

human goals and national values. In the light of this ideology, the integrity

of territories and borders that had been shaped over time was of no

significance: they were redrawn and parcelled out again to follow the lines

on the battlefield of proletarian internationalism. The State, political,

administrative and territorial structure so formed was such that it contained

within itself the germs of dissatisfaction, smouldering enmity and potential

conflict within republics and between them.

Time bombs were planted for our futures. While the power of ideology and

repressive compulsion kept this heterogeneous community together, the bombs

lay idle. As soon as that power was removed, they went off, and today a blast

front of enormous power is destroying whole States.

Georgia too is threatened. The history of Georgia's struggle for

statehood spans many centuries. For many centuries, this struggle went

together with the formation of a distinctive national culture and the defence

of its faith and language. In the year 337 AD, Christianity, as the State

religion, blessed the country's impulse towards unity within its own common

borders. Having become a powerful State in Western Asia by the eleventh and

twelfth centuries, Georgia established cultural centres both within its own

borders and in various other States beyond.

My portrait of Georgia would not be complete if I missed out one very

important feature: from time immemorial, as part of the flow of peoples,

ideas and cultures, Georgia has upheld racial and religious tolerance as a

basic tenet of its way of life. Forced to do battle with the most powerful

foreign adversaries, Georgia did not suffer from either xenophobia or

religious fanaticism. In its capital city, Tbilisi, within an area of one

square kilometre, one can see a Georgian Orthodox church, an Armenian

Gregorian cathedral, a mosque, a synagogue and a Lutheran church. Christian

from the fourth century on, Georgia has also seen Islam take root in some of

its historically important provinces. And never was there enmity or discord

between them, nor was anyone denied the right to live according to his or her

own beliefs or traditions.

Unfortunately for all of us, the slings and arrows of history brought

down this unity, from within as well as from outside, and something similar is

happening now. I consider it my duty to draw your attention to the Caucasus

region, as, here and now, a new and serious hotbed of interethnic, regional

and international tension is emerging.

This new source of Shockwaves is within the mainstream of contemporary

geopolitical trends: the displacement of a global confrontation onto regional

levels. This displacement has taken the form of large-scale armed conflicts,

such as the ones we are seeing in some countries of Europe, around the

Dniestr, at home in Georgia and in Transcaucasia, and in Central Asia.

This vacuum of ideas abhors its own emptiness. We should have started

thinking about events in the huge expanse from Bosnia to Tajikistan, including

the Caucasus, and studying them, long ago, to find out the whys and

wherefores. Sound politicians and statesmen as well as ordinary people,

whether Christian or Muslim, who live in this vast area or elsewhere have a

duty to halt this most dangerous process. The threat of large-scale conflicts

kindled and enflamed by fundamentalism of whatever kind is too

serious to be ignored. And the danger is that much greater when fanaticism is

exploited by fundamentalists of a Bolshevist stripe.

Although they have various causes, the new conflicts do have some

features in common, particularly the following: they all began and are

developing against a background in which a number of factors are operating

either simultaneously or partially. These are an ethnic patchwork; a variety

of religions and denominations; socio-economic inequality; and a troubled

historical and political past.

In the case of the Caucasus, these factors which are common to all the

regions in question must be added to the specificity of its geopolitical

situation. At the meeting point of powerful geopolitical forces, it has from

time immemorial served as a buffer zone between South and North, Christianity

and Islam, as an arena in which they played out their aspirations and

interests.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union has left an opening for new

rivalries to appear. Because of their political, economic and military

weakness, the new States of the Caucasus are not able to fill this vacuum and

establish reliable safeguards for their own security. External forces apart,

various internal groupings are trying to turn the vacuum to their own

advantage under the cover of nationalistic, pseudopatriotic, separatist, and,

most recently, even religious guises with their own, self-serving political

agendas.

The activities of the so-called Confederation of the Mountain Peoples of

the Caucasus, which has flouted the sovereignty, the territorial integrity and

the borders of the Republic of Georgia, have made this clear in one way or

another. Against the will of the people of the northern Caucasus and their

legally elected governments, this illegal, in essence openly terrorist,

militarized organization, serving no State, has called for any means to be

used, including mass terror; has declared our country, and its capital city, a

disaster zone; and has been sending mercenaries and terrorist killers, in the

guise of volunteers, across our frontiers. Under our very eyes, the flames of

war are rising, and are even now threatening to engulf not only Georgia alone.

Right before our eyes a new war is blazing up, threatening not just

Georgia. There is only one conclusion to be drawn: in comparison with the

other "hot spots" of the post-communist world, the risk of conflict in the

Caucasus is higher, and the Caucasus therefore endangers international peace

and security more.

Georgia is at the very centre of where the problems of the Caucasus

meet. Yet again, as so often before in our history, Georgia's fate, its

statehood and its very existence are marked on the map. Faced with the

complex interactions of internal and external forces, we are striving to

implement an active, balanced policy. Within the country, our policy is one

of democratic transformation, national reconciliation and peaceful settlement

of conflicts, while externally it is one of the development of friendly

relationships with all the countries in the region and cooperation with the

world community.

We are grateful to our neighbours through history: to Turkey, with which

we have concluded a friendship treaty; and to Iran, with which we are

developing friendly contacts, to the mutual benefit of both countries. Our

centuries-long links with the peoples of Transcaucasia, Armenia and

Azerbaijan, and with the republics of the Northern Caucasus and with Ukraine,

give us an excellent foundation for close cooperation in the interest of our

countries.

Of particular importance to us and not to us alone are our relations

with Russia. Russia has assisted us in setting up machinery to settle the

Georgian-Ossetian conflict. Twice now Russia has borne witness to the

principle of the territorial integrity and inviolability of the borders of our

State, and has joined in the process of achieving a peaceful settlement in

another conflict, in Abkhazia.

A stable, prosperous and democratic Russia is a factor on a global scale

and global in significance. A threat to Russia from the forces of

totalitarian revanchism is a threat to us all. In the conspiracy against

Georgia which is now coming out into the open, Russia's red-brown

reactionaries are standing shoulder to shoulder with the extreme

fundamentalists, home-grown fascists and separatists. The world must know

about this, and the world has a duty to help reinforce a stable, democratic

Russia and, by so doing, help both us and its own self.

Those are the facts of our political life today. Those facts are why we

keep trying to achieve the establishment of a Transcaucasian mechanism for

consultation and agreement. We propose that we should begin to establish a

system of collective security in the Black Sea-Caucasus region, and, in this

regard, we very much appreciate Turkey's initiatives. We support the new

institutions of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE),

whose goal is conflict prevention and the protection of the rights of national

minorities. Our doors are wide open to fact-finding missions from European or

world organizations.

However, today this is not enough. The end of the cold war has put the

need to develop a more effective system of global security on the agenda. The

pace of events is outstripping us; the European process is falling behind, and

has been very late with its response to the challenges of a time of

transformations. There has been a significant lag too in the United Nations

reaction to the major changes in various regions of the world, with the

changes in the former Soviet Union in the forefront.

We welcome the bold initiatives of the Secretary-General aimed at making

the Organization more dynamic and capable of responding quickly to the needs

of the day. His report "An Agenda for Peace" (A/47/277) quite rightly raises

the question of the United Nations taking a multi-tiered approach to the

problems of the modern world. It is a good thing that an authoritative,

independent commission has been set up to examine the role of the Organization

under current conditions.

There is no need to fear reforms when reforms are so necessary,

especially, in our view, in the two interrelated fields of peace-keeping and

nation-building in the newly independent States. I have a number of

suggestions to make about these two fields.

My first suggestion concerns the establishment of a global monitoring

network for the monitoring, prevention and settlement of internal conflicts.

Special United Nations observers at "hot spots" and regional bureaux, missions

and information centres would help us obtain a clear picture of events and

develop specific responses. The machinery for doing this should be based

right in the regions where conflict is occurring; in our example, in the

Caucasus it could be based on the United Nations office in Tbilisi. We would

also suggest expanding the mandate of the CSCE High Commissioner for national

minorities so that, if required, he could inform the Secretary-General and our

Organization's Commission on Human Rights. The most important thing is that

this should be got off the ground as quickly as possible. Similar

institutions with the same mandates could be established within other regional

organizations too.

The United Nations needs a special body to collect and process

information on potential ethnic conflicts and to draw conclusions and issue

recommendations based upon it. Another of its functions would be to forecast

conflict situations at an early stage in their gestation.

The International Court too could be brought in to consider conflicts.

The role and the capabilities of the Security Council must be looked at

anew. We have more than once raised the issue of whether the Military Staff

Committee should not become more actively involved. Now that the cold war is

over but the number of "hot spots" is burgeoning, the Security Council cannot

do without this, or another similar structure, if it is to carry out its

function under the Charter in full measure.

It must be made binding on the States Members of the United Nations to

inform the Security Council of imminent conflicts. Failure to comply must

call down sanctions. We commit ourselves to sending the United Nations and

its Security Council annual reports on the state of affairs in the areas of

the protection of human rights and national minorities, and on crisis

situations which could lead to serious complications within the country or the

region.

This problem has yet another facet: information. Rivalry spills over

into the newspapers and on the airwaves, and the side with the best

technology, the most money and the widest access to the media and to media

people wins. Public opinion becomes one-sided and unfounded, but this again

is half the battle. The worst thing is that this guerrilla warfare in the

media nourishes the soil of conflicts and makes them more difficult to

settle. We see a possible way out of this by establishing centres to

disseminate objective information under the auspices of the international

organizations.

My second suggestion concerns the problem of refugees. Ethnic conflicts

have increased their number manyfold: no one now knows exactly how many there

are. No one knows what resources are needed to help them and what we should

start doing first to rule out the possibility of fresh conflicts after they

return home. Here too a system of observers is needed, as is an aid

organization larger in scale than what we have now and capable not only of

providing material support but of making the whole process more manageable.

In our view, the work of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees

needs root-and-branch reform.

My third suggestion is that there should be general and comprehensive

control over the proliferation of arms. The clans of ethnic mafiosi spawned

under the totalitarian system are accumulating the colossal sums needed to

acquire weapons and to suborn soldiers into taking part in hostilities and

passing out materiel to the irregulars on the quiet. The national security

forces and law-enforcement agencies in the young independent States are being

overwhelmed by this epidemic of out-of-control arms races. What we need are

international rapid deployment forces a sort of Interpol of Blue Helmets -

an independent disarmament monitoring agency and the introduction of regional

arms registers.

My fourth suggestion is for United Nations rapid deployment forces in the

field of international legal thought and theoretical and doctrinal

developments. The traditional system of legal guidelines is lagging

hopelessly far behind the onrush of geopolitical changes. The world is facing

arbitrary and one-sided interpretations of a whole range of internationally

recognized principles. Arbitrary, wild-cat declarations of sovereignty have

led in practice to encroachments on the territorial integrity of States and on

the inviolability of their borders, and to large population groups being

turned into second-class citizens; it has also caused and will cause many

bloody conflicts.

Unfortunately, separatism and extremism, when combined, are the ruin not

just of States but of legal systems too. The top dogs of the separatist

movements are bending the rules so far they are turning them into

caricatures. If extremist separatism is not stopped, what awaits is a world

splintered and in collapse, with the anarchy and chaos lasting into the

twenty-first century.

On no account can some principles be made absolute at the expense of

others. It is morally wrong for one group to go for self-determination as if

they do not notice that for centuries, side-by-side with them, on the same

land, there have been peoples living, peoples that cannot physically be

removed. This is the problem to beat all problems of today's world.

Every aspiration, every claim, every norm and category should be measured

in terms of the human scale of politics, whose priorities are the equality of

the rights of each citizen, of everybody, regardless of nationality,

ethnicity, language or religion. In the light of this approach, we see that

not only do national minorities need to have their rights protected, but so do

the citizens of the majority, however paradoxical that may sound. Otherwise,

we may face an updated form of apartheid and ethnic dictatorship, like we have

in the conflict zone of Abkhazia, where the minority has managed to impose its

will on the majority.

How could this have come about? What we have here is a classic example

of self-interested bending of the law. Thanks to a discriminatory electoral

law, electors of a single nationality, comprising no more than 18 per cent of

the population, send more deputies to the parliament of the Abkhazian

Autonomous Republic than the electors in another that makes up more than half

the population there, and the rights of the other national groups are being

trampled on too: it takes only a third as many votes to elect one Abkhazi

deputy as it does to elect a Georgian, a Russian, an Armenian and so on.

At the end of the day, this kind of legal extremism leads to bitter

confrontation. The governing elite, reflecting as it does the mood of the

extremist wing of the minority, is ruling by Draconian diktat and is going so

far as to wrest territory that has been Georgia's from time immemorial away

from it.

Separatism is immune to dialogue and compromise: this we know from our

own experience. Separatism does not want talks, rejects the methods of

rational politics and even balks at implementing what it has agreed. It

switches meanings, calling aggression and occupation "movement of military

sub-units within our own territory". How can this be? And in Georgia, on

Georgian soil, where Georgians and Abkhazis have lived, still live and will go

on living together?

In the near future the General Assembly will consider a draft declaration

on the rights of national minorities. We are going to support it, as we

supported the corresponding resolutions of the CSCE. However, I wish to say

once again that any instrument of this kind must also contain an article on

minorities' share of the responsibility for maintaining stability and peace in

the territory where they live.

It is also time to develop more precise criteria for which legal subjects

are entitled to self-determination, and to introduce a practice of

independent, expert examination of the facts involved in the arbitrary

interpretation and exercise of this right.

My fifth suggestion concerns the fact that none of the above will work

properly unless more effective machinery for supporting the new democracies

economically is set up. My saying so does not detract from our gratitude to

the European and world financial institutions; it is thanks to them that we

are still alive. However, facts are facts: the economies of the republics of

the former Union, are on the brink of catastrophe. The drop in production by

almost a third, in Georgia's case, the lack of fuel and raw materials and the

catastrophic increases in prices for them, the loss of traditional suppliers

and markets and imminent mass unemployment set a limit to democratic

transformations.

I say to you most emphatically: the appalling economic crisis in the

republics of the former Union will send shock waves throughout the world. If

this goes on, a social explosion of enormous force is inevitable. A change in

values away from democracy to those of the power of the firm hand is

inevitable. And for this the world will have a higher price to pay than it

would have to pay now. Let us think how we can prevent this, let us think

what sort of system of reliable international economic insurance we can try to

set up.

It is quite clear that this point must be taken into account in the

international organizations, particularly the United Nations: it is difficult

to talk about world economic stability and a single world zone of security if

the world's leading Powers do not take part. The Security Council absolutely

must exert real influence on the state of affairs. I used to come out against

increasing the number of permanent members. Now that the Soviet Union has

fallen apart and the balance of power has shifted, we need to concern

ourselves with finding the best composition of permanent members to increase

the degree of effect that the Security Council can have on the world economic

process, and not just on the economic process. The role of economic giants

such as Germany and Japan will have to be rethought.

I would mention in passing that the forecasts concerning certain

pretensions on the part of the United States of America to some kind of

special role in the new circumstances that would allow it to impose its will

on the world have not proved to be accurate what I have in mind here is the

principal, fundamental trend. The balanced foreign policy of this great

country has not run counter to the interests of other States and, in the final

analysis, has helped maintain the balance in the interests of peace and

stability. We would like to hope that the United States will go on being a

guarantee of peace, order and equilibrium in the new, extremely complex

conditions and in the process of building the new world order.

The United Nations cannot stand idly by when it comes to material support

for the new democracies. Here too we need rapid deployment forces, economic

ones this time. The United Nations is quite within its powers to coordinate

the activities of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other

regional and international institutions more effectively and on a new basis in

order to give fuller support for the success of the economic reforms in the

new States that have begun that most important process, the building of

democratic societies.

My sixth suggestion is that we are quite simply obliged to introduce into

the body of international law an instrument concerning the personal

responsibility of individuals who incite mass disorders, political brutality,

hostage-taking, terrorist acts or any kind of blockade, whether economic or

political. Our troubled times have brought these people forth. The pygmies

are in revolt against humankind. This has all happened before, but the world

has never before had to face a wave of "Messiahs" wanting to consolidate their

power on the back of the sufferings of their own people on the scale it is

facing them now. Lilliputians tying down Gullivers that is the reality in

many countries, including my own.

I now come to my seventh and last suggestion. Everything I have said so

far attests to the fact that our common responsibility for peace and security

requires us to harmonize and coordinate our common efforts in the political,

economic, military, financial and ecological fields. These fields should be

managed on four interdependent and interrelated levels: the intra-State,

the regional, the supraregional and the worldwide. The first level will not

become established unless our Organization manages to find ways to support the

making of the new democratic States. The second will be possible if there is

agreement on an identity or a proximity of interests on the part of the States

involved in regional cooperation. Organizations such as the CSCE, the

Organization of African Unity, the Organization of American States and an

alliance of the countries of the Black Sea basin could form the basis for the

third level. The fourth level involves establishing a coordinating system for

interactions on a world scale, in which the principal coordinator would be the

United Nations and its institutions.

This rostrum has always seemed very high to me. I used to feel how high

it was even when the the world was ready to hang on the every word of the

representative of a huge and mighty Power, whatever that word might be. That

is the privilege of the powerful, but I did use to try to make our words sound

like a message of good will rather than of malign force. Now that I am

speaking on behalf of a small and weak country, I feel how much higher this

rostrum has grown and what a lifeline it is for my homeland.

There was a considerable element of risk involved in my present ascent of

this rostrum: things are very bad indeed back home. The bombshells of hatred

are exploding all too often there. Those shells are aimed to destroy our

policy of democratically establishing and constructing an honest, just State

open to the world. Such explosions are all the more likely today, in the

run-up to parliamentary elections in which the people of the Republic of

Georgia must either endorse or reject our policy of democracy and freedom.

Nevertheless, I have come so that Georgia does not lose what is now its

only chance to tell the world about its hopes and aspirations, to confirm the

truth and refute the lie. I have come so that I can once again reaffirm my

commitment to the word we gave the world community. What of it that the scale

has diminished and the horizons have closed in? I am thinking, speaking and

acting in accordance with the same principles and norms I have stood up for

here for all these years past.

Finally and this will be my last personal confession I have missed

your company very, very much.

I have gone over the time-limit, but the way things are is that the

smaller the size and scale of a State, the more time it needs.

I thank you for hearing me out.