Nauru, 2000

Mr. President, allow me

to join previous speakers in congratulating you on your

assumption of the presidency of the fifty-fifth session

of the General Assembly. Nauru, like your

Government, has full confidence in your ability to

conduct the affairs the Assembly effectively and

efficiently. Through you, Sir, Nauru congratulates the

outgoing President, His Excellency Mr. Theo-Ben

Gurirab, Foreign Minister of Namibia, for a job well

done which climaxed with the successful and

unprecedented Millennium Summit.

The Republic of Nauru has just passed its first

anniversary as a Member of this esteemed Organization

with a Permanent Mission in New York that is just nine

months old. The admission of our brother island from

the Pacific, Tuvalu, as the 189th Member of the

Organization, is a most welcome development. On

behalf of my Government, I extend to Tuvalu our warm

welcome into the brotherhood of nations.

My delegation commends the Secretary-General,

Mr. Kofi Annan, and his team at the Secretariat for

their well-crafted report entitled “We the peoples: the

role of the United Nations in the twenty-first century”.

The report has captured, in one document, the agony

and ecstasy of the United Nations as it journeyed

through its triumphs and failures over the past 55 years

of its existence.

The purpose of our presence in this parliament of

the peoples of the United Nations is not to bask in the

ecstasy of past achievements but to pledge anew our

commitment and determination to face the problems

that continue to confront humanity, and to support the

launching of the United Nations on a new crusade to

engage the tempestuous challenges encapsulated in

chapter VII of the Secretary-General's report. In

conjunction with this, the heads of State or

Government of Member States have mandated the

Assembly, by their solemn act of adopting the outcome

document, to implement the call for action.

It is further encouraging to hear Foreign

Ministers expound upon and reinforce the

commitments that their respective heads of State or

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Government made at the Millennium Summit. It is now

for the doers to deliver the goods, so to speak. It is here

that the greatest challenges lie. It is indisputable that

the issues before us are not new but are unfinished

business, and the most difficult on which to make

progress. The problem is in the interaction between

Member States for the purpose of delivering agreed

instruments that will act as platforms by which

Member States will be obligated to adopt and

implement at the national level.

It is therefore my delegation's strong view that

our first priority is to revitalize and further strengthen

the foundation for collaboration and cooperation

among Member States on the one hand, and between

the United Nations and the appropriate

intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental

organizations on the other. That is, not only must we

resolve to provide the United Nations with the

allocated resources and processes to perform its tasks

effectively, but we must also repair the negative

undercurrents and detrimental practices that inhibit the

achievement of desired outcomes.

In this regard, Nauru considers the following

actions to be necessary steps towards this goal.

First, we must revitalize the work and restore the

authority of the General Assembly as the only

universally representative body of the United Nations.

Second, there is a need to address the ongoing

marginalization of the smaller and less affluent

Member States.

Third, we must expedite the reform of the

Security Council. Nauru believes that an expansion in

Security Council membership is the politically correct

action to take, and we urge participants and facilitators

alike to expedite the work of the Working Group.

Fourth, the preference for unanimity as the means

of deciding on issues under consideration is, in our

view, a major factor behind the delay in reaching

agreed solutions and has on more than one occasion

resulted in the dilution of outcomes. Setting such a

high standard, when the principal organs of the United

Nations come to decisions on a two-thirds majority

basis, is self-defeating. Nauru takes the view that a

unanimous outcome should be a target only, and not a

rule.

Fifth, financial resources need to be shored up.

The timely and unconditional payment of assessed

contributions will enable the United Nations to

discharge its responsibilities in a timely manner.

Voluntary contributions are also a very essential source

of funds to support the work of the subsidiary bodies

and agencies through trust funds established under the

United Nations. Nauru commends those Member States

that contribute to such trust funds over and above their

assessed contributions, and we also recognize and

praise the important contribution that private trust

funds such as the Ted Turner Foundation make to the

work of the United Nations and its main agencies.

Sixth, a number of covenants remain dormant due

either to the lack of signatories to bring them into force

or to the lack of ratification by States that have signed.

We thus call for all States to make a commitment to

bringing outstanding international agreements into

force.

Seventh, the Secretary-General's reform

initiatives of 1997 must be brought to bear in the

shortest time possible so that the limited resources of

the United Nations are put to work more on the

programmes of action and less on running the

administrative machineries. We urge that the

Secretariat continue to review its operations on a

timely basis as it strives to do more with less.

The President of the Republic of Nauru, in his

intervention in the round-table discussion, expressed

his disappointment that the core responsibilities of the

United Nations regarding the rights of peoples to self-

determination and freedom from alien domination did

not rank as importantly as the other issues currently

before us. The fact that there are still 17 countries

listed in the Special Political and Decolonization

Committee, coupled with the non-settlement of long-

standing disputes between States over their borders,

and the continuing existence of stateless people, may

be indicative of the priority that these issues receive

within the United Nations.

For Nauru, the continued refusal of the United

Nations to deal with the plight of the millions of

Chinese on the island of Taiwan is tantamount to

avoiding its core responsibilities. By no stretch of the

imagination could we be convinced that the Republic

of China on Taiwan is a province of China. Nauru has

no doubt that the condition that unification should take

place through “peaceful” means, adopted by the United

States and its allies as part of their “one China” policy,

has helped maintain relative calm in the region. It is

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incumbent upon the United Nations, under the

appropriate Articles of the Charter, and the

international community to find a lasting solution to

the problem. The United Nations cannot claim to be a

truly universally representative world body as long as

the people of Taiwan continue to be excluded from this

Organization.

East Timor is a classic case of the United Nations

not paying attention to the concerns of the Pacific

region. Undoubtedly, had the United Nations, through

the Security Council, acted at the time it was prompted

to do so by the Governments of the region, the human

carnage and immeasurable damage to property would

have been far less, and perhaps even avoided

altogether.

It is in this vein that Nauru is raising the matter of

West Papua. Our head of State stated Nauru's position

on the issue in his intervention at the Millennium

Summit, and I will therefore not repeat it here.

However, the Nauru Mission to the United Nations has

been instructed to take the necessary steps towards

putting together a resolution on West Papua's call for a

new and democratically run referendum on the

question of independence from Indonesia, in the spirit

of the 1962 New York Agreement between the

Netherlands and Indonesia. We ask for the Assembly's

support of this just cause.

Flowing from these issues of security and peace

is the issue of the safety and survival of humankind

from weapons of mass destruction, illicit trade in small

arms and light weapons and the pandemic of the

HIV/AIDS virus. Despite the establishment of several

initiatives by the United Nations in its effort to make

progress on and expedite the question of disarmament,

it is sad to note that progress is at a snail's pace, due

mainly to resistance by most nuclear-weapon States to

disarm. In the Pacific region, which has been declared

a nuclear-weapon-free zone by the Rarotonga Treaty,

the transboundary shipment of nuclear fuel and other

radioactive material in the waters of States parties to

the Waigani Convention are banned. Our efforts

through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

process, as well as bilateral and multilateral initiatives

to protect our ecosystem and seas against accidents

from these shipments in the high seas of our region,

have been met with strong opposition by shipping

States that, unlike us, are not dependent on the sea and

its ecosystem for their livelihoods.

In this regard, Nauru supports the call by the

Secretary-General to convene a special session of the

General Assembly to address the nuclear disarmament

issue, as we are not satisfied with the pace of progress

in the other forums.

At the other end of the scale, small arms and light

weapons obtained through illicit trade account for

much of the political, ethnic and criminal killings and

human suffering that occur in the less affluent

countries of the world. The tranquil South Pacific has

not been spared from this deadly trade. The United

Nations will be convening the first Conference on the

Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All

its Aspects next year, and it is our hope that Member

States will not put national political interests ahead of

the desires of the international community to eradicate

this illegal and offensive activity.

International efforts to contain the HIV/AIDS

epidemic from spreading have not been successful in

the least developed and developing countries,

particularly in Africa. The prohibitive cost of treatment

and social attitudes are the major constraints that these

countries face in combating the pandemic. We are

satisfied with the efforts of the United Nations to

combat the epidemic, efforts that are largely being

carried out through the World Health Organization and

the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.

However, it is obvious that the United Nations needs

the help of affluent countries to provide medicine and

medical experts in support of its efforts. In this regard,

Nauru has joined in the sponsorship of a draft

resolution calling on the General Assembly to take up

the issue and deal with it under its authority.

Poverty continues to be the major concern for the

developing world. The fact that the number of least

developed countries is stagnant at 48, with the

possibility of another 3 countries being added to the

list, is testimony to the fact that current programmes

are not working. The Secretary General's report

entitled “We the peoples” lists some ambitious

initiatives to accomplish freedom from want for

humanity. We strongly endorse the call for setting time-

bound goals in making resolute commitments to the

world's poorest and most vulnerable. Next year's

conference on least developed countries and financing

for development will be our first test since the

Millennium Summit of our sincerity to move from

rhetoric to action on the important issue of poverty

alleviation.

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The Pacific is a region that demands special

attention. Projections by the Economic and Social

Commission for Asia and the Pacific estimate growth

in the Pacific region to be only about 2 per cent during

the next three years, as compared to around 6 per cent

for the rest of Asia. My own country is expected to

experience several more years of negative growth, as

our single resource and industry — phosphate —

comes to the end of its natural life.

Small island developing States, and the Pacific

islands in particular, face special difficulties is making

the transition to globalization. They will need time to

adjust to changes in the external trade regime and to

the consequent changes in their economies. Our

particular vulnerabilities should be recognized as

justifying special consideration to deal with such issues

as the global process of trade liberalization. The

removal of special protective regimes continues to

occur.

The South Pacific Applied Geoscience

Commission has been developing an environmental

vulnerability index with input from both the United

Nations and the Commonwealth Secretariat. Nauru,

along with the other small island developing States in

the Pacific, is gratified at the support it has received

from several developed countries to finance the project

to fruition. We urge that this work be incorporated into

the work of the United Nations, especially into the

work of the Committee for Development Policy and

that of the Bretton Woods institutions.

For all of us in the Pacific, the ocean is our major

resource. It provides us with food, income from the

sale of fish stocks caught in our respective zones and,

through the natural cycle of evaporation and

condensation, it is also a vital source of our fresh

water. It may also prove to be the source of the demise

of many low-lying Pacific islands from global warming

and the resultant rise in sea levels. The Rio Conference

in 1992 provided the foundations for international

action. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that

Deplete the Ozone Layer is an important step forward.

But those responses may prove to be too few, too

little and too late for many small islands. We urge the

community of nations to implement the 1997 Kyoto

Protocol. Nations and the private sector must

incorporate “green accounting” into their practices in

order to integrate the environment into economic

policy. Suitable regulations and incentives need to be

designed into the web of governance.

Agenda 21 and the Barbados Programme of

Action continue to be the guiding principles for the

sustainable development of our region and the

protection of our environments. My delegation is

pleased to note that the World Bank has adopted much

of the relevant language in its programmes but it, and

the rest of the developed countries, need to commit to

maintain and, where possible, to expand overall levels

of support for small States' development, in terms of

both advocacy and the provision of technical

assistance.

Fishing offers the best hope for the future

sustenance of the smaller island countries that have no

mineral resources and/or tourism to contribute to the

national treasury. Nauru therefore reaffirms the

importance of the sustainable integrated management

and conservation of living marine resources in the

world's oceans, and the obligations of States to

cooperate to that end. We again call for an end to

unsustainable and damaging practices, such as drift-net

fishing, offshore dumping and high-seas pollution.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is a threat to

the economic development of coastal States in the

Pacific, Caribbean and Latin American regions, whose

national incomes are heavily dependent on the export

of fish. The efforts by the United Nations to convene

the first open-ended informal consultative process on

the oceans and the Law of the Sea has enabled States to

address those issues with a view to reporting the

deliberations of the consultation to the General

Assembly for its consideration and further action.

Another area where small States, including our

own, have been successful in generating income for the

national treasury is in the provision of onshore and

offshore financial services. However, pressure has been

applied by the Financial Action Task Force on Money

Laundering and the Organisation for Economic

Cooperation and Development (OECD) to blacklist

countries that do not meet the anti-money-laundering

standards of those international bodies. We understand

and accept the need to have an anti-money-laundering

regime, and many small island States have gone a long

way to implement those requirements.

For its part, the Government of Nauru recently

issued a letter of commitment to the United Nations

Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention to

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undertake the United Nations minimum performance

standards on anti-money-laundering initiatives.

Regrettably, the compliance level has been raised

unilaterally by the OECD to include harmful tax

competition — which has nothing to do with money-

laundering and other financial crimes. This is wrong in

international law and violates both the letter and spirit

of many United Nations resolutions regarding the

intervention of international organizations in the

domestic jurisdiction of States. Such unilateral action

is not acceptable to Nauru.

For the Pacific region, the question of the

equitable representation of the 11 Pacific island

countries in the bodies and commissions of the United

Nations is of vital importance. Until 20 years ago, it

may have been reasonable to have Australia and New

Zealand in the Group of Western European and other

States and a handful of Pacific islands in the Asian

Group. However, with the increase in membership

since that time, and the addition of a number of Pacific

island nations in recent times, it is incumbent upon the

United Nations to review the groupings.

Oceania is a distinct and internationally

recognized region of the world. The Asian Group

presently constitutes member countries from the

Middle East, Central Asia, China, Japan, the two

Koreas, the member countries of the Association of

South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Pacific

island countries. The 11 Pacific island countries are

drowning in the Asian Group, while Australia and New

Zealand, the godfathers of the Pacific island countries,

are marooned in the Group of Western European and

other States.

The parliaments of the ASEAN member

countries, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the Pacific

island countries are members of a regional body called

the Asian-Pacific Parliamentarians Union. It is a well-

recognized body in the various regional and

international parliamentary forums. This model could

be used as the basis for a new regional group within the

United Nations, with the inclusion of Australia and

New Zealand. In our view, this new grouping would

provide the best opportunity for those Member States

to be equitably represented in the work of the United

Nations.

In conclusion, Nauru would like to reiterate the

importance of Member States making concerted efforts

to strengthen the fundamentals of multilateralism. At

the same time, the United Nations must assert its

leadership role through the coordination of all key

players in keeping the peace and fighting poverty and

transboundary crimes, as well as with regard to

humanitarian initiatives, the protection of human rights

and the rights of the child, and in the fight against

inequity and inequality. Only through such

collaborative efforts can we move the United Nations

in the direction that our leaders have agreed it must go.