Niger, 2006

Allow me to express the warmest congratulations of

the delegation of Niger to Ms. Al-Khalifa upon her

election to the presidency of the General Assembly at

its sixty-first session. She is the third woman in the

history of the United Nations called upon to take up

this office, and her election is richly symbolic on

several counts. In her we have a seasoned diplomat of

great competence and sure qualities that augur well for

the positive results that we will see under her

presidency.

We also congratulate her predecessor, Mr. Jan

Eliasson, President of the Assembly at its sixtieth

session, for the remarkable work he accomplished

during his presidency.

Finally, allow me to reiterate the congratulations

of the Republic of Niger to the Secretary-General,

Mr. Kofi Annan, who will be leaving the Organization

after ten years of intense activity, ingenious initiatives

and staunch devotion. There can be no doubt that the

vigour he brought to the Organization, the important

reforms he launched and the new bodies that have been

created during his mandate stand out in the annals of

the United Nations.

More than ever before, the international

community is confronted by challenges to peace and

security. Despite noteworthy progress in this area and

despite multiple efforts, horror and despair continue to

reach us from certain areas of conflict.

Some positive developments have certainly been

recorded in Africa in the area of conflict resolution,

notably in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi,

Liberia and Sierra Leone. Those developments remind

us that we need an operational and effective decision-

making mechanism so that we can quickly deal with

any threat to international peace and security,

irrespective of its complexity. Only substantial reform

of the Security Council, along with revitalization of the

General Assembly, can enhance legitimacy and

effectiveness, especially if it takes into account

equitable representation accompanied by an

improvement in working methods. For Niger, only

equitable enlargement of the Security Council can

improve its functioning and make it possible to

establish the bases for decisions that will be acceptable

to and accepted by everyone.

In Côte d’Ivoire, the United Nations must

redouble its efforts to reach a definition of a new

transition in consultation with all parties, ECOWAS

and the African Union so that the matter can be dealt

with calmly after 31 October 2006.

The situation in the Middle East — especially in

Lebanon, which has held the attention of the

international community over recent weeks — proves,

if proof were needed, that the United Nations is still

the prime forum for promoting negotiations on

preserving international peace and security.

The same degree of attention should be paid to

the resurgence of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. The

establishment of a comprehensive peace in the

subregion involves going back to the negotiating table

in order to make progress in implementing the road

map towards the creation of a sovereign and viable

Palestinian State, in conformity with the relevant

resolutions of the United Nations.

With regard to Western Sahara, the United

Nations must pursue and intensify its efforts with a

view to finding a definitive solution to the question. As

to Jammu and Kashmir, the Niger encourages India and

Pakistan to continue with their talks.

Another serious threat to international peace and

security is posed by nuclear weapons. In this regard,

the Niger would like to reaffirm its support for the

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commitments made within the framework of the Treaty

on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT),

while recognizing the importance and the usefulness of

research for peaceful purposes. However, the

increasingly marked division which this issue

engenders requires an appropriate response in the

ongoing quest for consensus through the current

negotiations.

The Niger welcomes the establishment of the

Peacebuilding Commission, which is one of the first

concrete achievements to emerge from the World

Summit. We should give it our full support so that it

can provide effective assistance to countries in post-

conflict situations. In my capacity as a representative

of the country currently holding the chairmanship of

the Economic Community of West African States

(ECOWAS), a region which is still ravaged by

conflicts, I am happy to report on the progress that has

been made in our subregion in the area of conflict

prevention and resolution. Sierra Leone, Liberia and

Guinea-Bissau, which I referred to just now, today are

countries in a post-conflict situation. They therefore

need to be effectively helped in order to consolidate

their return to peace and to create the conditions for an

environment that is favourable to their economic and

social development. In order to maintain the ban on the

circulation of illegal weapons, which, as every one

knows, have stoked many conflicts in our subregion,

the heads of State and Government of the member

countries of ECOWAS have decided to convert the

moratorium on small arms and light weapons into a

legally binding convention, in order to strengthen the

capacity of Member States to fight effectively against

this scourge.

The Niger also welcomes the establishment of the

new Human Rights Council. This body merits the

approval and backing of all Member States, which

should fully cooperate with it. For its part, the Niger

undertakes to do everything in its power to participate

effectively in its activities.

In another area, the United Nations Central

Emergency Response Fund (CERF) will certainly help

us to exercise greater control over such scourges as

food insecurity and cyclical droughts, which have

caused so much damage and have plunged a substantial

portion of the populations of some West African

countries into an unacceptably precarious situation

owing to the slow reaction of the international

community. For the Niger, as well as for other

countries of the subregion, the human development

index would have been higher if development

cooperation had seen qualitative and quantitative

increases in line with the commitments contained in

the Monterrey Consensus with regard to official

development assistance (ODA) and other initiatives on

the subject.

The debates at the current session are particularly

important for the Niger because they come one year

after the historic Summit of 2005. The High-level

Plenary Meeting which prepared the above Summit

already stressed the importance of partnerships,

particularly with respect to achieving the Millennium

Development Goals (MDGs). In this regard, the central

theme of the sixty-first session, namely, the

implementation of a global partnership for

development, is very appropriate because it illustrates

perfectly the need and the importance of a multilateral

and collective approach in order to find the most

appropriate solutions to the current problems in the

world.

I would like here, on behalf of the Niger, to

commend the initiatives taken to find new sources of

funding in order to provide an initial response to the

insufficiency of resources noted during the evaluation

of the 2005 Summit. I would particularly like to

welcome the International Drug Purchase Facility

(UNITAID) initiative launched by the French

Government to finance the fight against AIDS and

malaria. The Niger is one of the first 17 countries to

have endorsed the tax on airline tickets.

It is also within the framework of this kind of

partnership that the positive nature of international

migration could be stressed and could be included in

our search for appropriate responses, which would take

into account the concerns of the countries of origin,

transit and destination.

I would like to end my statement by pointing out

that, for the Niger, the effective implementation of the

actions planned to deal with global issues must be

multilateral in character and must assign a central role

to the United Nations system.

And here I would reiterate the faith that the Niger

has in the United Nations, not only because the

Organization remains the most appropriate framework

and the most relevant multilateral mechanism with

which to promote development, but also because it

pursues the noble causes which it embodies. The

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United Nations therefore must be revitalized in order to

be in a position to satisfy the deepest aspirations of the

peoples and nations of the world, particularly those

that are weakest.