Lithuania, 2000

I would like to say,

Mr. President, that I take special pleasure in seeing you

preside over this Millennium Assembly session. I wish

to assure you of my delegation's full support in all your

endeavours. As one of the Vice-Presidents of the past

session, I want to convey my special appreciation to

my colleague and your predecessor, the Foreign

Minister of Namibia, Theo-Ben Gurirab. I would also

like to extend my gratitude to the Secretary-General for

presenting his report “We the Peoples” to the world

community.

Allow me also to convey my delegation's warm

welcome to Tuvalu as a new member of the United

Nations.

It is both remarkable and profoundly logical that

in the beginning of the new millennium high

representatives of almost 200 nations have gathered for

one sole purpose — to comprehend challenges of the

contemporary world. The fact that we all have gathered

here, representing all regions of the world, cultures and

religions, means that we all share the belief in the

value, viability and potential of the United Nations.

Heads of State and Government, during the course of

the Millennium Summit, have guided us towards

strengthening the United Nations, including its central

role in peacekeeping and poverty eradication. Our task

now is to act upon their guidance.

Globalization, the digital revolution and the

triumph of free trade have transformed the world into a

vibrant world economy. Interdependence within the

world economy emphasizes collective problems and

solutions. Thus, the United Nations, the Bretton Woods

institutions, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and

many other international organizations are

indispensable mechanisms in achieving stable peace, in

assisting in shaping the course of development, and in

ensuring that the world economy provides benefits for

all.

Never has the world been so well off. Yet, never

has it been confronted with so many problems on the

global scale. The nature of threats has entirely changed.

The phenomena are so complex that they defy easy

generalization. These phenomena comprise extreme

poverty and marginalization of entire communities;

gross violations of human rights; ethnic conflicts and

genocide; arms proliferation; terrorism; and

environmental degradation.

No effort should be spared to free people from

dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty. The goals

adopted at the Millennium Summit are challenging.

Assistance, new trade arrangements, and debt relief

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will hardly constitute a panacea, unless necessary and

strong commitments to poverty reduction, economic

equality, combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic and

supporting education are reflected, first and foremost,

in national policies of individual States, and

concurrently on the agendas of international

organizations. Good health, literacy, and education are

critical assets for economic development. Human

capital, combined with a high level of economic

equality, good governance, and abiding by the rule of

law can really make a difference. This is the course we

strongly uphold if we aim at reducing by half the level

of extreme poverty by 2015 and achieving sustainable

development.

The realities are that most of the economic

thinking and ruling is being done within the Bretton

Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization or

the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OSCE), and a fully coordinated

approach to the problems of peace and development

should be sought between these organizations and

institutions and the United Nations.

We have yet to learn how to manage the spin-offs

of globalization and how best to make use of

international mechanisms to address new forms of

threats. Better yet, prevention is preferable to cure. For

really effective prevention, a broader definition of

security is vital and must encompass pressing

economic and social problems. The root causes of

conflicts should be addressed as a fundamental part of

efforts to establish secure peace and stability.

Should preventative strategies yield no results,

the United Nations must have a truly effective

peacekeeping capacity at its disposal. Lithuania will

support every effort to fix structural deficiencies within

the United Nations and adequately to staff and finance

relevant departments. Provided the determination,

resources, capacity and willingness are available, I

believe, humanitarian catastrophes and crises can be

averted. Proposals to improve the United Nations

peacekeeping capacity and performance, especially

those contained in the Brahimi report, have been

widely endorsed by our leaders. Now we have to work

on it with a view to shifting the historically prevailing

conception of peacekeeping as an ad hoc job to one of

the core functions of the United Nations.

Great challenges to the new international way of

containing and resolving ethnic conflicts await in

Africa. A prospective strategy could be to encourage

and assist regional organizations, especially the

Organization of African Unity and the Economic

Community of West African States; involve civil

society and the business community; and, most notably,

enhance the United Nations, especially the Security

Council's capacity to act well in advance, before a

crisis gets out of hand. Pledges to contribute to a safer

world add up to nothing if mounting demands for

adequately trained and equipped peacekeepers and

civilian policemen, judges and administrators fall on

deaf ears. East Timorese, Kosovars and Sierra

Leoneans are pinning their hopes on us. Failure to

respond to them would mean in the end that we do no

more than celebrate our own individual security.

Lithuania has always been and remains

committed to building collective security. On the

international level, Lithuania emphasizes active

participation in international organizations and its

substantial contribution to peacekeeping efforts, such

as its participation in the United Nations standby

arrangements system or, from the very beginning of the

international engagement in the Balkans, making our

civilian policemen and military available to the

missions in Bosnia and Kosovo. Moreover, additional

commitments will promptly follow as more highly

trained policemen and troops become available. In this

regard, I wish to voice our strong desire to place a

Lithuanian part of the joint Lithuanian-Polish

peacekeeping battalion under the United Nations

standby arrangements with a view to joining the Stand-

by Forces High-Readiness Brigade.

On the regional level, we have made membership

in alliances of democratic nations — the European

Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization —

our top priority. We regard the OSCE principles,

including a country's right to choose its own security

arrangements, to be of fundamental value to ensuring

peace and security. We believe that, by taking this way,

we will meet our economic, cultural, social and other

concerns and enhance European security as a whole.

On the subregional level, we stress practical

cooperative efforts to uphold democratic and economic

transformation throughout the region. Over the past

decade, our engagement with Poland has turned into a

close partnership that has already produced remarkable

results. Good bilateral relations with the neighbouring

states of Latvia and Estonia have grown into a dynamic

trilateral Baltic cooperation, which has expanded into a

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broader Baltic-Nordic cooperation. We also seek to

further develop mutually beneficial good-neighbourly

relations with Russia. Joint Lithuanian-Russian

projects on cooperation with the Kaliningrad region are

a good example of our pursuit of a foreign policy of

friendly relations, which also fully coincides with the

European Union's Northern Dimension policies

endorsed at the Feira European Union summit this

June.

Cooperation requires wisdom and patience. Yet,

all too often, guns have been a choice of cure for ethnic

strife and social or economic collapse. Vigorous and

urgent efforts are needed to curtail the proliferation of

small arms. We deem it vital for the 2001 United

Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms

and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects to address critical

issues in the field of transparency, legitimate transfers,

accountability, enforcement of sanctions and

observance of moratoriums. A commitment to the

elimination of landmines should now be coupled with

an effort towards putting small arms off limits to

belligerent causes.

Against the background of gains in disarmament,

a number of setbacks have made the picture less

encouraging. We share the profound concerns aroused

by the abundance of weapons of mass destruction and

the proliferation of missiles. I fail to see any way to

create a safer world other than reducing, eliminating

and outlawing weapons of mass destruction. In the

wake of the successful outcome of the 2000 Review

Conference of the States Parties to the Treaty on the

Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT),

Lithuania will work with other committed nations to

achieve unequivocal commitment to nuclear

disarmament.

Certain fundamental values are essential to

international relations. Such are human responsibility

and human rights. At the Millennium Summit,

President of Lithuania Valdas Adamkus spoke about

his belief that

“in the face of a globalized tomorrow, the United

Nations will increase the scope of its human-

dimension activities. Human rights should

become a cornerstone of the emerging world

structure”. (A/55/PV.5)

The concept of the human dimension must be at the

centre of all United Nations activities.

If we are to address the root causes of conflict,

we have to admit that respect for human rights, the

protection of minority rights and the institution of

political arrangements in which all groups are

represented are vital. For my region, of particular

interest is determining how the international

community can promote the rights of people coping

with the post-communist transition.

The limits of human rights applicability are being

constantly questioned. The United Nations should

move ahead in the search for new and more effective

instruments to fend off the challengers of human rights.

Persons responsible for genocide, crimes against

humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression should

be brought to justice. If that is the goal which the

international community is after, an effective

International Criminal Court should start working as

soon as possible. For its part, Lithuania will make good

on its commitment to ratify the Rome Statute by the

end of this year.

Based on the experience of my own country, I

wish to stress that increasing the equality of social,

economic, educational and political benefits across

gender has a positive impact on economic

development. These issues have been at the forefront of

the agendas of all Lithuanian Governments since

regaining independence, which have worked actively to

help solve the question of equal rights and other

problems which women face. One of our achievements

is the adoption of the Law on Equal Opportunities,

which is the first law of this kind in Central and

Eastern Europe. Being a signatory State to the Second

Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination

of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, I call

for its early entry into force.

The attainment of freedom, security and welfare

for people is feasible only by embracing the effects of

globalization and not defying them. We have a global

instrument readily available for that purpose, yet we

keep arriving at the same conclusion: we need a United

Nations with greater capacity and better performance.

A number of measures have been carried out. The

outstanding efforts of the Secretary-General cannot be

overestimated. Lithuania supports the Secretary-

General's greater emphasis on the United Nations as a

results-based Organization. We also endorse the stress

on better management, mobilization of new resources

and new forms of partnership. The Security Council

should play its part in this regard. The lessons drawn

from the Secretary-General's reports on Srebrenica and

Rwanda have to be paid more than lip service.

Within the complex of measured designs for

revitalizing the United Nations, our efforts to reform

the Security Council occupy a prominent place. The

Security Council would only win if it acquired a new

power and authority base. I would like to reiterate

Lithuania's position that the Security Council should

be increased, both in permanent and non-permanent

membership categories, and that the Eastern European

Group should be given one additional non-permanent

membership seat. In turn, even with a revitalized

Council, cooperation with regional organizations

should be strengthened.

The reforms, no matter how far-flung, may only

remain a partial success as long as the United Nations

is not given necessary resources. The Organization

needs a sound and predictable financial footing.

Therefore, Lithuania strongly supports a

comprehensive review of both the regular-budget scale

and the scale of assessment for peacekeeping

operations. In the latter case, an ad hoc arrangement of

1973 has lost its touch with present day economic

realities. We need to adjust the United Nations

peacekeeping scale of assessment methodology to

better reflect the current economic conditions of all

Member States. I hope that the revision will enjoy

support by all countries of the United Nations and will

be carried out in an expeditious manner.

The United Nations symbolizes and guards the

humankind hope for a better future. Let's make it

happen!