Mongolia, 1994

May I offer you,

Sir, our sincere congratulations on your election to the

high post of President of the General Assembly at its

forty-ninth session. We are confident that under your

able guidance the General Assembly will make significant

progress on the important issues before it.

We express our deep gratitude to Ambassador

Samuel Insanally of Guyana for his admirable work

during his presidency.

At the outset, I wish to extend our heartfelt

felicitations to the Republic of South Africa, which has

begun its advancement along the road of democracy by

dismantling the apartheid regime of racial discrimination

and has assumed its rightful place in the community of

nations. This historic event testifies to the fact that the

purposes and principles that guide the United Nations,

including that of respect for human rights, can be

translated into reality.

A number of other meaningful positive developments

have taken place on the international scene over the last

year, events that are inextricably linked to the tortuous

emergence of a new atmosphere in the wake of the cold

war. None the less, instability continues to plague

various corners of the globe, bearing witness to the

extreme difficulty of finding solutions to problems; hence

the urgent need to harmonize our efforts and enhance the

role of the United Nations.

The international community is on the threshold of

the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations. As part of

the world-wide preparations for this event, a committee

has been established in Mongolia to coordinate national

activities. The fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations

coincides with the demise of the cold war, the advent of

a new era of mutual trust and partnership among nations

and the emergence of unprecedented opportunities to

implement the purposes and principles of the United

Nations Charter. This anniversary will serve as an

important moment of reflection on the Organization’s

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past, the lessons from both its successes and its failures and

the tasks ahead of us. The world community expects the

anniversary session next year to be crowned by the

adoption at the summit level of a visionary document

embodying its hopes and aspirations and outlining

meaningful objectives for the new millennium. It is against

this background that we see the special significance of this

session of the General Assembly, which is to lay a sound

foundation for the anniversary.

The Secretary-General’s report entitled “An Agenda

for Development” is a highlight of this session of the

General Assembly. My delegation expresses its

appreciation to the Secretary-General for producing a

thought-provoking report which offers a comprehensive

approach to development and innovative ideas for

consideration. We hope that the upcoming discussion of

that report will help in the search for an adequate response

to persistent inequalities and imbalances, as well as ways to

combat the abject poverty, external debt burden and

environmental degradation that negatively affect the

developing countries.

“An Agenda for Development” is expected to promote

people-centred sustainable development through, inter alia,

a meaningful North-South partnership. In this connection,

it would be advisable that the targets of earmarking 0.7 per

cent of the industrialized countries’ gross national product

(GNP) for official development assistance and allocating 20

per cent of that assistance for human priority concerns be

reflected in that “Agenda”. We also wish to see included

in the “Agenda” the idea of allocating 20 per cent of the

budget of the developing countries for the aforementioned

purpose. An active South-South cooperation is of vital

importance for the sustainable development and self-

reliance of the developing countries. In this regard the

establishment of the South Centre will have a significant

bearing on the strengthening of the foundations of such

cooperation.

The problems facing the countries in transition and the

need for international cooperation to overcome them have

found, in our view, a proper reflection in the “Agenda”. In

order to ensure the success of transition, which has a direct

bearing on the future of world developments, it is only fair

that greater attention be given to enhancing the

effectiveness of international cooperation towards that end.

Furthermore, this cooperation should be tailored to the

yspecific conditions of countries in transition. In the case

of Mongolia, aside from such handicaps as a low level of

development and a disadvantageous geographical location,

our economy, in fact, finds itself dependent on another

crisis-stricken country in transition.

We believe that the time has come to make every

effort to resolve the external debt problem of developing

countries, taking into account the vital interests of their

socio-economic development and the urgent need to lay

the foundation for equitable economic cooperation. On

the other hand, it is incumbent upon the creditor nations

to display the political will to deal resolutely with that

intractable problem. One might add that the realistic

assessment of the underlying political and economic

causes of the multiplying debt burden should be borne in

mind in addressing this issue.

The successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round

and the ensuing decision to create the World Trade

Organization represent an important step towards a fairer

trading system.

We hope that the entry into force of the Convention

on the Law of the Sea will facilitate the solution of

problems confronting, above all, the least developed, land-

locked and geographically disadvantaged States.

The post-Rio period has registered a welcome shift

towards the broadening of international cooperation in

addressing environmental issues. Nevertheless, we have

to admit that there is a significant disparity between the

importance that the international community attaches to

this problem and the actual results of the work done in

protecting the environment and halting the ecological

crisis and remedying its consequences. In this regard, I

wish to emphasize that commitments, especially those

related to the flow of financial resources and the transfer

of technology, have to be faithfully honoured.

As a country exposed to drought and desertification,

Mongolia welcomes the conclusion of the negotiations on,

and the signing of, the international Convention to combat

desertification.

The convening of the World Summit for Social

Development in Copenhagen next year is a clear

manifestation of the fact that social issues are being

brought to the centre of the international agenda. We

trust that the Summit will serve as a powerful engine for

marshalling political will at the highest level and will

bring about a viable action programme to effectively

address social challenges. This Summit, taken together

with the recent International Conference on Population

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and Development and the future conferences on women and

on human settlements constitute an intertwined continuous

process of international consensus building.

Mongolia is advancing along the road of reforms,

relying on the active support of the donor community and

of international organizations. The International Monetary

Fund-supported enhanced structural adjustment facility

programme is in its second year of implementation. There

is a positive trend towards checking economic decline and

inflation and stabilizing the national currency. The role of

the private sector in the national economy is growing

considerably. Relying on the experience of the years of

transition, we are on our way to finding effective ways and

means for the State-governed economy. A great deal has

been accomplished in laying down the legal foundations for

societal life.

Yet underlying problems continue to persist. At times,

we face a situation in which one problem succeeds another.

The fuel and energy sector is in a critical state. The living

standards of the population continue to decline; poverty and

unemployment are on the rise. There is a severe shortage

of internal financial resources.

In order to make substantive progress in overcoming

these and other difficulties, foreign aid will continue to play

a decisive role for some time to come. In this respect, we

are looking forward to the fourth donor meeting to be held

in Tokyo this November. As hardships seem to persist, the

practice of holding regular donor meetings under the

auspices of Japan and the World Bank remains essential.

We trust that we will receive support and understanding

from the parties concerned.

However, this is not to say that we are pursuing a

lopsided approach to overcoming the crisis and

implementing structural economic adjustments, relying

solely on outside assistance and ideas. It goes without

saying that the only way, eventually, is in the development

of equitable and mutually advantageous cooperation.

Proceeding from this premise, we endeavour to attract

foreign investment, including private investment, and to

create the necessary legal, economic and other conditions.

For any State, and for small States in particular, peace

and stability in their respective regions are of vital

importance. By and large, positive trends are prevailing in

our region, despite the continued existence of hotbeds of

conflict and tension. An important factor contributing to

these trends is the development of Russian-Chinese

relations and cooperation within the framework of friendly

partnership. Mongolia welcomes the recent agreement

between Russia and China not to target each other with

strategic nuclear missiles; we see this as a development

that augurs well for stability and confidence-building in

the region and beyond. The maintenance of good-

neighbourly relations with these two countries is of

paramount importance to Mongolia, and today these

relations are based on new Treaties on friendly relations

and cooperation.

As opposed to the headway made in resolving and

preventing crisis situations in Asia, there seems to be no

discernible shift for the better on the Korean Peninsula.

We hope that the new leadership of the Democratic

People’s Republic of Korea and the other parties

concerned, bearing in mind the international dimensions

of the problem, will display great responsibility in

addressing the problems at hand.

The agreement between the Government of

Tajikistan and the opposition group on a temporary cease-

fire constitutes a first, important step towards national

reconciliation in Tajikistan, and should be built upon.

Last year’s truly historic developments in the Middle

East paved the way for the positive steps that we are

witnessing today in the efforts to bring peace to the

region, inching towards a comprehensive settlement of the

Middle East conflict.

We hope that the United States-Cuba bilateral

agreement on the immigration question will prove to have

a far-reaching impact on resolving the outstanding issues

between these two countries.

We commend the peaceful manner in which the goal

of restoring democracy in Haiti was achieved.

The wars that continue to rage in Bosnia and

Herzegovina and in Afghanistan and the tragedies in

Rwanda and Somalia testify to the highly complex nature

of these problems and remind us again that the efforts of

the international community to resolve them should by no

means decrease in intensity.

Bold steps are needed, particularly by the nuclear-

weapon States, to solve the mutually interlinked problems

of the indefinite extension of the non-proliferation Treaty

and the conclusion of a comprehensive test-ban treaty in

1995, as well as credible security assurances for the non-

nuclear-weapon States.

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It is gratifying to note that the five nuclear-weapon

States supported Mongolia’s declaration of its territory as

a nuclear-weapon-free zone and expressed their intention to

respect that status. The Non-Aligned Movement has also

welcomed that initiative as a commendable contribution to

regional stability and confidence-building. In an effort to

contribute to the establishment of an effective verification

system for the future comprehensive test-ban treaty,

Mongolia has expressed its interest in being part of the

global seismic monitoring network. We stand ready to

cooperate on this question with the interested parties.

The unchecked arms trade and its increase to global

proportions, and especially its extension into volatile and

unstable regions of the world, is fraught with dangerous

consequences. We believe that it is high time for the

United Nations to take a close and comprehensive look at

the issue with a view to formulating the legal parameters of

the conduct of States in this respect.

In recent years the role and influence of the Non-

Aligned Movement in world politics have grown.

Considerable progress has been achieved in implementing

the Jakarta Final Document, which epitomized the new

strategy of the Movement in the post-cold-war era. The

Cairo Ministerial Conference, held last June, contributed to

the enhancement of the Movement’s activities. Here, I

should also like to mention that this Conference emphasized

the need to augment the Movement’s efforts with a view to

adequately responding to common problems facing the

developing countries.

I wish to make a few more comments on the United

Nations.

In the wake of the cold-war policy that limited the

capacity of the United Nations to implement fully the

purposes and principles of its Charter, new opportunities

have opened up before the world Organization. All at once,

the eyes of the world, full of hope and expectation, have

turned to the United Nations. The United Nations has

exerted a great deal of effort, and it can be credited with

impressive accomplishments, especially in the areas of

peace-keeping and humanitarian assistance. Nevertheless,

many Member States have voiced their concern over and

criticism of the restructuring of the United Nations and

have stressed the need to ensure a proper balance in its

activities.

We can well understand the justified criticism that our

Organization is disproportionately preoccupied with peace-

keeping and security issues at the expense of its urgent

development agenda. We expect that with deliberations

on and the subsequent adoption of the Agenda for

Development there will be less grounds for such criticism.

The composition of the Security Council and its

methods of work do not reflect the realities of the time.

My delegation hopes that the ongoing deliberations in the

Working Group on this issue will be intensified and

successfully concluded by the fiftieth session of the

General Assembly.

We commend and support the Secretary-General,

Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in his efforts to enhance the

effectiveness and efficiency of the Secretariat. We are

confident that the Secretary-General will persevere in his

reform process, and wish him every success in his future

endeavours.

The Mongolian people is approaching an auspicious

event, which will be observed this coming November —

namely, the seventieth anniversary of the proclamation of

the Republic, which represents an important juncture in

restoring our independence. My people has accomplished

since then an arduous journey marked by ups and downs.

Today we are continuing our reforms in line with our

democratic Constitution of 1992.

In keeping with its foreign policy concept, Mongolia

will continue to endeavour to make its own contribution

to the common cause of developing friendly relations and

cooperation between nations and ensuring peace, security

and progress.