Lesotho, 1998

I should like, Mr. President,

to extend to you our very warm congratulations on your

election to lead the business of the General Assembly at its

fifty-third session. Your election bears testimony to the

very high esteem in which we hold you and your country.

You can count on our unstinting support and cooperation

during the year that lies ahead. Through you, Sir, permit

me also to salute your very worthy predecessor, Mr.

Hennadiy Udovenko, the former Foreign Minister of

Ukraine, for the illustrious manner in which he led the

General Assembly at its fifty-second session.

In your address at the opening of this session,

Mr. President, you challenged us to focus our attention on

the major issues of our time. The list of issues that you

provided was comprehensive, but I wish here to highlight

only some of them — without passing judgment on their

relative worth.

The Secretary-General has submitted a report on

causes of conflict in Africa at the request, last year, of the

Security Council. It is an excellent report, for which the

Secretary-General should be commended. The recent

events in Lesotho, to a large measure, fit in with the

Secretary-General?s diagnosis. Nothing could be closer to

the truth than the Secretary-General?s observation that

“Where there is insufficient accountability of

leaders, lack of transparency in regimes, inadequate

checks and balances, non-adherence to the rule of

law, absence of peaceful means to change or replace

leadership, or lack of respect for human rights,

political control becomes excessively important, and

the stakes become dangerously high”. (A/52/871,

para. 12)

Our recent experience in Lesotho is that instability is

likely to arise even when Governments are deeply

conscious of the need to abide by those prescriptions, if

other political players are not similarly committed to

them.

On 23 May 1998, a general election was held in

Lesotho under the management of an Independent

Electoral Commission established with the full

cooperation of all political parties. The Commission, a

new institution in the history of Lesotho, was without

previous experience. The elections were observed by 400

local and 150 international observers, including observers

from the United Nations, all of whom declared them free

and fair. Soon afterwards, however, three of the 12

opposition parties alleged that the Lesotho Congress for

Democracy had won through fraud. Vice-President Thabo

Mbeki of South Africa attempted to mediate in this

dispute, and all the parties agreed to an audit of the

9

election results, conducted by the Southern African

Development Community (SADC), in order to determine

the existence or otherwise of fraud. The Commission of

Investigation, which came to be known as the Langa

Commission after its Chairman, Justice Pius Langa of South

Africa, found that, while there had been administrative

irregularities, there had been no fraud and the elections

could not be said not to represent the will of the electorate.

But even in the absence of fraud, the opposition

parties still insisted on the resignation of the Government,

the dissolution of Parliament and the establishment by the

King of a government of national unity in which all the

major parties would be equally represented. In an attempt

to achieve this, the opposition parties perpetrated

lawlessness, which resulted in an army mutiny, the forced

and illegal dismissal of the command structure by junior

officers, and open support by those junior officers for the

opposition-led civil unrest in preparation for an illegal

takeover of the Government.

It was in this state of virtual coup d?état that the

Lesotho Prime Minister appealed to the Presidents of

Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe for

military assistance to restore law and order and to enforce

discipline in the Lesotho army. The responsibility was

shouldered by the SADC member States Botswana and

South Africa on behalf of the entire SADC. While these

SADC troops were busy neutralizing the army mutiny and

the virtual coup, the supporters of opposition parties

embarked on a campaign of arson and looting in the central

business district of the capital, Maseru, which later spread

to other towns of the country.

Although the full extent of the damage to business

infrastructure is not yet known with certainty, preliminary

estimates put it at above $200 million. For a small least

developed country like Lesotho, such an amount is a heavy

burden on an already fragile economy. The Government of

Lesotho therefore appeals to the international community

for assistance in rebuilding the infrastructure that has been

so wantonly destroyed.

We have already made contacts with the World Bank

for a more precise assessment of our needs in this regard,

and once these are known we shall be making a more

focused appeal. Above and beyond the assistance with

physical reconstruction, it is quite clear that the type of

assistance which the United Nations Development

Programme (UNDP) and some bilateral donors were giving

to reorient the minds of our army has not yet had a lasting

impact. Lesotho has had a sad history of an army that was

deliberately filled with supporters of one political party

when that party was in power for over 20 years. As a

consequence, our army has had great difficulty in

submitting to the authority of a new master. Recent

events have underscored the urgent need to overhaul the

Lesotho army, as was done under international

supervision in Haiti.

Furthermore, all political parties need to submit

themselves to the discipline and responsibilities that are

demanded of them as actors in the democratic system.

This includes the acceptance of defeat in general

elections. Otherwise, those politicians who deliberately

undermine the democratic culture should be exposed and

officially branded by the international community as

criminals, as the Southern African Development

Community (SADC) has done with Savimbi in Angola.

Since 1993, Lesotho has been embarked on a

programme of entrenching democracy, the rule of law and

respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. The

current crisis has amply demonstrated how difficult it is

to make people whose only preoccupation is the

achievement of personal political power participate in this

process.

The Government of Lesotho is grateful for the

support of the countries of SADC in once again reversing

a coup in Lesotho. SADC has given practical expression

to what has become an all-Africa commitment to the

abhorrence of military overthrow of legitimate

Governments, such as occurred recently in Sierra Leone

and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The extent of recent lawlessness in Lesotho has

underscored the need to control the illicit possession of

small arms and light weapons. In Lesotho recently, young

people, many of them in their teens, were able to

intimidate law-abiding citizens with guns and to force

them to surrender Government property and to evacuate

Government offices and private industrial enterprises.

Small arms and light weapons have become so

commonplace that they have encouraged habitual recourse

to violence, thus threatening the cohesion and well-being

of many societies. These low-tech, inexpensive and easy

to use weapons — numbering hundreds of millions —

cause as much as 90 per cent of the deaths in

contemporary conflicts. Their proliferation contributes to

violence, loss of life and property, social instability, the

disruption of economic development and the threat to

democratic governance.

10

During the cold war, arms control and disarmament

efforts focused exclusively on major weapons systems, such

as tanks, jet fighters and nuclear weapons. Although this

has begun to change in recent years, there are still no

international standards regarding small arms. Their

production, trade and possession remain essentially

unmonitored and unregulated. Lesotho therefore strongly

supports current efforts to find an international solution to

these problems posed by the unregulated proliferation of

illicit small arms and light weapons.

The Government of Lesotho is understandably

disappointed that its efforts to build and consolidate a

culture of democratic governance seem to have suffered a

setback, especially this year, when we are celebrating the

fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights. However, Lesotho will not be deflected from the

path it has chosen of moving forward to truly democratic

governance in which all citizens enjoy their right to

political freedom and personal happiness.

Fifty years ago, the peoples of the world set down

standards for their security, happiness and well-being in the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the intervening

period, the international community and the United Nations

have made great strides in the area of human rights. Of

great significance are the major human rights treaties which

have been adopted and which include the Convention on

the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against

Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The

battle to make human rights truly universal has regrettably

not been won decisively, although there is no doubt that we

are on the way to achieving that goal. We therefore need to

redouble our efforts to pursue it.

In the post-cold-war era, attention has unfortunately

been focused almost exclusively on civil and political

rights, with less attention being paid to economic, social

and cultural rights. That development is a human right is

often forgotten. Such a narrow approach misses the

important link that exists between the enjoyment of civil

and political rights and development. The Declaration on

the Right to Development was intended to emphasize such

a link but, regrettably, this latest of recognized rights has

yet to be factored into our human rights programmes.

As we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, no topic is of

greater significance than the establishment of a permanent

International Criminal Court. Over 50 years ago, this idea

was conceived out of the realization that domestic courts

are often inadequate to deter crimes under international law,

resulting in impunity for perpetrators of human rights

abuses. The adoption of the Rome Statute of the

International Criminal Court less than three months ago

was the culmination of a long battle fought by courageous

men and women for justice. The Statute is therefore our

proud bequest to future generations.

Over the years of negotiation on the Rome Statute,

Lesotho always affirmed the need for a court in which we

could have faith: an effective, independent and impartial

Court that enjoyed universal acceptance. In order to

achieve this, a number of thorny and sensitive issues had

to be resolved over the five-week period of the Rome

Conference. While not everything that we had hoped for

has been included in the Statute, we believe that the

positive aspects of the Statute far outweigh its negative

elements.

If, in the years ahead, there is to be greater respect

for international law and international humanitarian law,

all States will have to take the International Criminal

Court seriously and adopt measures to ensure the coming

into operation of the court without delay. We thus urge

the Secretary-General to convene the Preparatory

Commission in early 1999 to begin work on the rules of

procedure and evidence, guidelines for the court on the

elements of crimes, the headquarters agreement and other

instruments. We also call upon the Assembly to endorse

the Rome Statute and urge States to ratify it in sufficient

numbers so that the court can start its work. Lesotho

remains ready to work towards the accomplishment of

these tasks.

During the current session of the General Assembly

and the twelfth summit of the Non-Aligned Movement,

recently held in Durban, South Africa, the concern of the

international community has focused on the phenomenon

of globalization, an issue of particular importance for the

least developed countries. The liberalization of trade

regimes and the promotion of an open and secure

multilateral trading system are central requirements for

the promotion of economic development.

While the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade

negotiations has resulted in significant improvements in

market access conditions for the majority of countries of

the world, the expected gains for the least developed

countries from the stimulus to world trade arising from

the Uruguay Round are less clear. These countries

continue to face significant obstacles to market access for

their exports. There are still tariff peaks and tariff

escalations against their major export items. Furthermore,

11

some standards are too difficult to meet due to the

differences in technological advancement.

The problems enumerated above attest to the

importance of the United Nations in shaping a world of

peace, prosperity and development. A question that has

plagued the United Nations since its founding has been that

of disarmament, and in particular nuclear disarmament.

Nuclear weapons pose a serious threat to all humanity and

its habitat, yet they remain in the arsenals built up during

the height of the cold war. Their time has passed, yet

assertions of their utility continue. Nuclear weapons are

held by a handful of States which insist that these weapons

provide security benefits, and yet reserve uniquely to

themselves the right to own them. This situation is highly

discriminatory, unstable and untenable. The possession of

nuclear weapons by any State is a constant stimulus to

other States to acquire them. For these reasons, it is a

central reality that nuclear weapons diminish the security of

all States.

The recent testing of nuclear weapons by India and

Pakistan was a self-fulfilling prophecy. As much as we

deplore the measures taken by these two countries, we must

not lose sight of the fact that they have been led down that

path by the resistance of nuclear-weapons States to fulfil

their obligations towards negotiating in good faith for a

total ban of all nuclear weapons. We call upon all nuclear-

weapons States to respond to the wishes of all humanity to

ban nuclear weapons from human experience by negotiating

a binding treaty for such a ban.

Lesotho supports the efforts of the Secretary-General

towards reforming the United Nations Organization. There

is general agreement that the Security Council must be

made more democratic and its working methods more

transparent. For the great majority of States, the United

Nations is an indispensable tool for the realization of our

dream for collective security and development. We are

therefore troubled that the efforts to reform the

Organization are bogged down in the most crucial area,

namely, the reform of the Security Council. The Charter

has conferred on that organ the most important

responsibility for international peace and security. The

Working Group on Security Council reform has been

working for almost five years without reaching a

conclusion. The time has now come for a negotiating text

to be prepared and for negotiations to commence.

Otherwise, the whole exercise will turn into a charade in

which all will lose interest.

The scourge of conflicts in Africa continues to

undermine efforts towards economic and social

development in that continent. Lesotho is deeply

concerned by the failure of UNITA to comply with the

agreed timetable for the resolution of the conflict in

Angola, in accordance with the provisions of the Lusaka

Protocol and the relevant Security Council resolutions.

We thus call on the international community, and the

Security Council in particular, to assume its responsibility

to apply firmly and resolutely the measures decreed by

the Council, especially within the context of resolutions

1135 (1997) and 1173 (1998). Lesotho, as a member of

SADC, supports the resolution of the recent SADC

summit in Mauritius, which held Mr. Savimbi accountable

for the resumption of hostilities in that country and thus

declared him a political criminal.

The situation in the Democratic Republic of the

Congo is another source of concern to the Government of

Lesotho. This situation has seriously jeopardized efforts

at consolidating peace, security and stability in the Great

Lakes region. Lesotho supports all efforts aimed at

promoting a climate of peace and security in that region,

including the SADC initiative as carried out by

Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola.

Finally, we remain disappointed by the slow pace of

efforts at finding a lasting solution to the long-running

problem of Western Sahara. We therefore appeal to all

parties concerned to respect and commit themselves to the

letter and spirit of the United Nations settlement plan,

within the context of the Houston accord, so that the

people of Western Sahara can at last join the rest of the

international community as a peaceful, democratic and

stable society as we move across the threshold of the next

millennium.