Cambodia, 1999

It is an

honour for me to address this Assembly. I bring to all

greetings and good wishes from His Majesty Norodom

Sihanouk, King of Cambodia, and from the people and

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the Royal Government of Cambodia. I should like to inform

the Assembly about the recent strides Cambodia has made

and about how it stands ready to fulfil its role in the

community of nations. I wish also to share with the

Assembly some humble thoughts on global events of the

past and responsibilities for the future.

First of all, on behalf of the delegation of the

Kingdom of Cambodia, and on my own behalf, I would

like to extend heartfelt congratulations to Mr. Theo-Ben

Gurirab on his election as the President of the General

Assembly at its fifty-fourth session. We wish him success

in his important work and pledge him our full support and

cooperation.

Allow me also to express my sincere thanks and

admiration to Mr. Didier Opertti, President of the General

Assembly at its fifty-third session, for his benevolent

leadership and guidance.

I also wish to take this opportunity, on behalf of the

Royal Government and the people of Cambodia, to warmly

welcome the Republic of Kiribati, the Republic of Nauru

and the Kingdom of Tonga to the United Nations.

Just in the past year, Cambodia has finally turned a

corner of history, putting firmly behind it the darkness of

its recent past and emerging into the new dawn of its

future. For the first time in many decades, Cambodia is

now a fully integrated country, without rebels or separatists

and without internal strife or conflict. The black chapter of

strife, violence, turbulence and turmoil is finally closed.

Last year we held open and free general elections on our

own, assisted and witnessed closely by the international

community, which pronounced them fully free and fair.

After considerable discussions among the main elected

parties concerning a common platform to serve the cause of

the country and its people, a new coalition Government is

now in place.

The last remnants of the genocidal Khmer Rouge have

either surrendered or been captured, and are in custody

awaiting trial for their crimes of genocide. We are firmly

resolved to do whatever is needed to ensure an open trial

for those responsible for genocidal crimes perpetrated in the

country in the past. In holding this trial, we will carefully

balance the need to provide our people, who were the

victims of this genocidal regime, with justice in order

finally to put behind us that dark chapter in our national

history, and the paramount need for continued national

reconciliation and the preservation of the hard-earned peace,

national independence and sovereignty which we value

most highly.

Peace, which was so elusive for many decades past,

now finally prevails throughout the country. Cambodia

has joined that important regional group, the Association

of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and is determined

to play its responsible role in regional and international

affairs.

Cambodia and its people are committed to pluralist

democracy and to upholding and protecting human dignity

and human rights. We will be guided and governed to in

all our efforts by the pursuit of the rule of law, which

provides equality for all before the law and ensures that

legal procedures and practices are the same for all and

that the law is enforced through a competent and

impartial judiciary system with built-in procedures for

appeal and for rendering judgment.

On the economic front, we have pursued and will

continue to pursue market-oriented policies, with safety

nets for the vulnerable sectors of society until they are

able to compete on an equal footing with others. Our

principal goal is poverty alleviation. Our economic

policies and practices, with generous external

assistance — for which we are grateful — have resulted

in steady growth over the past few years. Even during the

financial melt-down in the region two years ago the

Cambodian economy maintained a fairly even keel.

Moreover, with strong political will, the Royal

Government is implementing its policy platform and

reform programmes with a view to establishing a viable

foundation for long-term economic growth and sustainable

development. The key areas of the reform programmes

include military and police demobilization; public sector

reform aimed at strengthening democracy; improving

public services and increasing their efficiency; enhancing

the rule of law and respect for human rights; and

economic reforms focused on maintaining macroeconomic

stability: strengthening banking and financial institutions,

fiscal reform, sound management of public property and

increased public investment in physical and social

infrastructure and human resource development.

So now, as the century ends, we can say with

confidence that we are firmly back on track as one

unified nation — unified in our desire not to be drawn

into the divisive factions of the past, but rather to play

our part in the comity of nations for a better future for all

mankind. We look to the future with great optimism born

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out of our own achievements in political reconciliation,

compromise and adaptation placing the people’s longer-term

interests above narrow and short-term partisan gains, and

out of our sound economic and social policies. We are both

determined and confident that Cambodia will march ahead

into the next century, and millennium, with renewed

confidence and vigour, and that it will contribute to human

progress.

This is a historic session which affords us all an

opportunity — indeed compels us — to reflect on the past

and plan our planet’s future together. Looking at a wider

perspective, we can see that humanity has witnessed

unimaginable and immeasurably great change and progress

over the last millennium. Progress in science and

technology has helped us conquer deadly diseases, extend

and enhance human life and improve the human condition.

We have vastly increased our understanding of our planet

and our universe. We have annihilated distance and

improved communications to make our Earth a global

village indeed.

Much of our technological progress and many notable

achievements have indeed occurred in the last mere

hundred years, and the more we advance, the more

possibilities for achievement arise.

Yet our achievements also mask many continued

failings and appear to give rise to potential dangers. On a

planetary level, we have vastly depleted our natural

resources, mining and using non-renewable resources at a

rapid rate; destroying our forests; depleting our oceans;

polluting resources that are essential to our very survival,

such as air and water; and driving to extinction rare species

of fauna and flora, the value of whose contributions to

balance and harmony in nature we have yet to understand.

We have acquired weapons of awesome power that

can destroy all that we have accomplished and built. The

technological revolution that we have witnessed in this

century has gone so far that human morals have yet to

catch up with it. We have deployed vast efforts and

resources — intellectual, physical and financial — to

achieve this tremendous progress in science and technology,

but we must be sure that these accomplishments can be

harnessed and will serve only to increase the well-being of

humankind instead of destroying it.

The greatest concern of the coming century is that the

revolutionary progress in science and technology achieved

over the past 100 years has resulted in, among other

things, the production of all kinds of weapons of mass

destruction. As a result, there are now countless arms

factories and a huge stock of modern weapons in many

countries worldwide. Meanwhile, the modernization of

armed forces — which is actually an arms race —

continues unabated, in parallel with the many conflicts

that are spreading throughout the world. Where will this

situation lead us? This century has witnessed two great

wars, unleashed by intolerance and bigotry, which caused

more division in their wake. More and more lives are

being lost. Social tensions and hatred abound, caused by

religious and other differences. The world has reached a

stage of complete disorder, where the rich and mighty

impose their agenda on the poor and force the weak to

follow them.

We must also stress that scientific and technological

research, which has been conducted in a morally

irresponsible manner, has turned our world into one of

drug production, where most of the discoveries have been

made by the developed countries but have had a

destructive impact on poor developing countries. The

world is facing many fundamental challenges, such as

organized crime, drug and human trafficking, and so on,

that jeopardize the future of coming generations.

In addition, the gap between the rich and the poor,

the mighty and the meek, and the haves and have-nots

have widened. We have lost the art of sharing and caring.

Our numbers have multiplied many times, but science has

yet to find ways to feed future billions and to stretch

mother earth’s capacity to sustain us. The aging of our

people will pose immense challenges for future

generations, when fewer productive people will have to

meet the needs of larger numbers of dependents, young

and old alike. Half a billion people live in abject poverty,

while a few enjoy conspicuous comfort. The poor,

vulnerable and oppressed suffer everywhere because of

exploitation and neglect.

In our rapid progress and our daily race to achieve

more and temporarily resolve problems as they arise, we

seem not to pay attention to the longer-term future. The

dawn of the next millennium is forcing us to pause and

reflect. In the past, human destiny has from time to time

been guided by far-seeing messiahs and visionaries. But

we cannot afford to wait for another messiah to appear.

Since all our religions teach us that there is a messiah

deep down in each one of us, that is where we must

search for answers. Let not the arrogance of our justified

achievements lull us into inaction for the future.

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World leaders have a rare and grave responsibility to

carry out this soul-searching. It is given to few of us to

undertake the task of charting the future as the next

millennium dawns. We have to set aside our daily chores

and power games and devote our attention to long-term

problems. A few hours or days of reflection in 2000 will

determine the destiny of the next thousand years and more

for humankind and for mother earth. Let us for a time

forget all our differences; imagine that there are no national

boundaries or religious, racial or regional differences; and

devote our attention to the most important and essential

areas we must address in the next four to five years in

order to set our planet on the correct course for the future.

We do not need long, drawn-out academic conferences of

every kind and on every subject to do this. We do not need

volumes of position papers. We need only to trust our

collective knowledge; the lessons of the past, which are

immense; and our innate basic good instincts.

In this spirit, I would like to express Cambodia’s

strong support for the 2000 millennium summit of the

leaders of all countries, where — without having to watch

our sound-bites, pose for the cameras or please domestic

audiences — we can talk of our planet and humankind and

of what needs to be done. The overarching need is to

ensure that the Cambodian Buddhist concept of “Dharma”,

or its equivalent in every religion, be respected, and that we

do what past messiahs have enjoined us to do. In essence,

we must lead a balanced and tolerant life, in harmony with

oneself, with one’s neighbours, with other beings, with

nature and with the cosmos. Perhaps we have to visualize

and devise new institutions and agendas, or significantly

reshape and redirect existing ones, to guide us through the

beginning of the next millennium.

We also have to set short- to medium-term agendas of

a more practical nature. Of topmost priority is the need to

eradicate poverty, a continuing scourge and stigma for

humanity. We should devise steps to achieve this in the

first 10 years of the next century. With sharing from the

rich to the poor, internationally and within countries, this is

not an impossible task. Already the G-8 nations have

agreed to forgo past debts of poorer nations. This trend

needs to continue, and future assistance should largely be

through well-monitored grants rather than loans.

Secondly, we must preserve and enhance our

environment and ecology. We have already seen how some

areas try to dispose of their contaminated wastes in other

places. It is necessary to stop the generation of wastes or to

contain their levels at the source. In some cases we have to

slow, or sacrifice current consumption, but this takes

vision and determination.

Last but not least, we need to re-evaluate the roles

of common institutions and focus on their positive

aspects. The United Nations has served us well for more

than half a century. It has done commendable work

beyond its original mandate and has adapted to changing

needs. It has been a platform for defining common goals.

But we need to show more dedicated determination to rid

it of functions, committees and forums which have lost

relevance or usefulness.

Within the United Nations much has been

accomplished under the bold and visionary leadership of

the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and we all pay tribute

to his wisdom and managerial abilities. Yet some

challenges remain including further efforts to curtail the

burgeoning budget levels. Cambodia supports the need to

reform the United Nations. The Organization and its

specialized organs need to become more unified at the

country level under the mechanism of the United Nations

resident coordinator. In other words, there should be a

single United Nations presence in each country, with

specialized organs serving under one leadership, much

like an ambassador providing an overall umbrella for all

the activities of his country in a host country.

With this reform, our world body will be required to

improve the criteria for recruiting staff and officials for

posting in various United Nations agencies, especially for

posting in member countries. Otherwise, they will

consider themselves almighty gods, without any virtue,

ready to violate the sovereignty of a member country,

which has paid considerable membership dues to pay their

high salaries. In this regard, Cambodia has had some

experience in the history of its cooperation with some

United Nations officials.

The Kingdom of Cambodia deems it necessary, on

the other hand, to abide strictly by the United Nations

Charter and to reinforce the role of the Security Council

in the process of maintaining peace in the world. We

appeal to the international community to make further

contributions to the United Nations Development

Programme (UNDP), so that it can continue to provide

development aid to the least developed countries.

We also think that punishing poor people of the least

developed countries, by imposing sanctions and economic

blockade to achieve one’s political agenda, goes against

the principle of humanity and respect for human rights

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and for the right to self-determination of the people living

in the affected country. Therefore, Cambodia fully supports

the demand of many countries for the immediate removal

of the economic blockade imposed on Cuba.

Cambodia fully welcomes the decision of the

Government of Indonesia to accept the multinational

peacekeeping forces of the United Nations so as to restore

and strengthen order and stability in East Timor. We

cherish the strong hope that the multinational peacekeeping

forces of the United Nations will effectively cooperate with

the Indonesian Government to quickly and successfully

create a peaceful situation for the people of East Timor.

In closing, let me once again appeal to world leaders

to use the opportunity of the dawn of the new millennium

to carefully evaluate our achievements and their costs, as

well as the future perils that confront us, and to consider

important steps to establish a new world order that will take

this planet safely through the next thousand years. The

lessons of the past should steer us towards ensuring lasting

legacies for generations yet to be born. Cambodia stands

ready to join in this global effort.