Panama, 2003

On

behalf of the President of the Republic of Panama,

Mireya Elisa Moscoso Rodr'guez, and on my own

behalf, I extend my warmest congratulations to Mr.

Hunte on his election as President of the General

Assembly at this session. The delegation of Panama is

deeply gratified that he has been appointed to guide our

debates, because he represents here the commitment of

developing countries, and in particular those of the

Group of Latin American and Caribbean States, to

multilateral efforts to achieve peace, respect for human

rights, and sustainable development.

Stability and security, in their broadest sense, are

things to which all humanity aspires. We will never

achieve these objectives, however, if, in attempting to

shape this new world, we counter the aspirations of our

peoples or attempt to base it on the systematic

development of grand military alliances. Human

security, which is sought by all States, large and small,

depends exclusively on our dedication to the collective

security architecture that we have concentrated in the

United Nations. Our duty, then, is to defend and

strengthen at all costs our Organization’s objectives

and purposes, in particular the integrity and authority

of our international legal system.

The world has been through an extraordinary

experience this year, one that was hotly debated and the

fallout from which is still far from clear. It is not too

much to say that the trepidations over the events in Iraq

that were felt here in the United Nations and beyond

have had a number of repercussions both on the

internal work of this Organization and on the conduct

of international relations.

Nevertheless, Panama is convinced that the

differences that were aired in the Security Council are

a clear demonstration that it has functioned as it

should; that the diversity of opinions and approaches

that exist in the world were aired there without

reservations; and that, although differences remained at

the end of the process, it had the marginal benefit of

highlighting the measurement and control requirements

that must be taken into account in the Security Council.

Apart from these differences, the Security

Council acted appropriately in establishing a pragmatic

relationship with the occupying Powers in Iraq by

means of resolution 1483 (2003) of May 22. In

addition, our Organization is demonstrating that it has

an irreplaceable role to play in the humanitarian field,

just as it has in the political, diplomatic, economic and

financial spheres.

The shocking slaughter that took place in

Baghdad on 19 August and the killings of 22

September — painful acts of terrorism that took the

lives of many national and international civil servants

of the United Nations, including Special Representative

Sergio Vieira de Mello — must move us to consider

and adopt urgent measures to ensure that the

international community takes concerted action as soon

as possible towards the reconstruction of Iraq. To all

their colleagues and to the great United Nations family,

we express the most sincere condolences of Mireya

Moscoso, President of Panama, her Government and

the people of Panama.

During the Millennium Summit, Panama asked

Member States, among other things, to return to the

original spirit of the United Nations Charter. Consistent

with that request, we hope that all of us will accept the

obligation to reconcile ourselves with the general

interests of the international community and to avoid

acting solely in light of our particular strategic,

military or political interests.

We repeat that request today, and call attention to

the urgent need for strengthening the multilateral

system as the guarantee of stability and security, which

are fundamental for peaceful coexistence. Today,

perhaps more than ever before, we must tackle the task

of reforming our Organization so that the General

Assembly can fulfil its proper function as the principal

political body, and the Security Council can have a

greater capacity to deal with the new challenges that

the end of the cold war has brought with it.

To achieve this objective, Panama stresses the

contents of the Declaration on the Strengthening of the

United Nations and Security Council Reform, adopted

at the Eleventh Summit of Heads of State and

Government of the Rio Group, which met at Asunci n,

Paraguay, in August 1997, calling upon Member States

of the United Nations to correct the present imbalances

in the composition of the Security Council, improve its

decision-making mechanisms, and bring greater

transparency to the conduct of its work.

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We firmly believe that an extremely important

element in this and other tasks facing us is the

announcement by the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan,

that he will establish a high-level panel comprising

eminent personalities from all regions of the world.

Panama and the world congratulate him on having

proposed this initiative.

We also wish to have the General Assembly

become the forum in which to seek a solution to the

problem between the People’s Republic of China and

Taiwan. As Panama has noted on previous occasions,

Taiwan has, in a sense, been left hanging in time and

space, protected and yet unprotected. Recently, in

response to the need to combat the severe acute

respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, the World

Health Organization was able to provide direct and

effective assistance to Taiwan without violating or

weakening the fundamental elements of the positions

of the parties to that controversy. We believe that the

United Nations system could act in several ways to

help the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan

resolve their dispute in a peaceful way, while we fulfil

our most cherished objective of responding, without

exception, to the social needs of humanity.

Last July we held here the first Biennial Meeting

of States to Consider the Implementation of the 2001

Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light

Weapons in All Its Aspects. We are still quite far from

achieving our objectives, both nationally and

internationally, but we believe that that biennial

meeting injected new vigour into the efforts that we

must all make to keep our commitments.

We repeat our position, put forward at that

meeting, that the purposes and code of conduct put

before Member States in the first two articles of the

Charter must be crucial for securing peace and

understanding among the nations of the world.

We would also stress that the massive clandestine

trafficking in small arms and light weapons, which

fuels internal conflicts, dictatorships, guerrilla

movements and international terrorism, can only be

blocked through close international cooperation. With

equal determination, we must pursue the networks of

traffickers in narcotics and diamonds, which use bogus

firms and banks, thrive by corrupting public officials

and are constantly working to destroy our societies.

In a follow-up to the Monterrey Summit, we in

the countries of the South renew our call for creating a

more just and efficient financial system, for eliminating

the inequities of globalization and financing for

development, and for raising the depressed prices of

our raw materials and other export products. As we

have stated on previous occasions, there is also an

urgent need to agree on the proper mechanisms for

forestalling financial crises and finding a solution to

unsustainable external debt burdens, in accordance

with resolution 57/240.

We now approach the High-level Dialogue on

Financing for Development, which will be held in this

city on 29 and 30 October 2003. We must seize this

opportunity to reinvigorate this part of our activity, and

to review the progress achieved in ensuring effective

Secretariat support, pursuant to resolution 57/273.

At the second meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee

to consider proposals for a comprehensive and integral

international convention to promote and protect the

rights and dignity of persons with disabilities, it was

decided to create a working group to prepare and

submit a draft text for negotiation among Member

States and accredited observers.

Panama’s position is represented in the

Declaration of Quito of 11 April 2003, which, in brief,

called for promoting and protecting the rights and

dignity of the 600 million persons living with

disabilities around the world, the great majority of

whom suffer constantly from poverty and lack of

understanding. The international convention that we

seek, as noted in the Declaration, must reflect “the

universality, indivisibility and interdependence of all

human rights and the principle of non-discrimination.”

These concepts are thoroughly established in the

United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights, international human rights agreements

and other related instruments.

It is timely to refer here to the persistent and

growing worldwide HIV/AIDS pandemic. Latin

American and Caribbean countries, too, are confronted

with a serious situation in this area. The Pan American

Health Organization met in Washington on 11 June to

address this issue, and noted that the demographic and

social impact of HIV/AIDS in our region threatens to

undermine the ability to carry out development

projects.

We therefore call on the United Nations system to

make available to Latin America and the Caribbean

adequate resources to prevent this scourge. As is well

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known, our region today has some 2.5 million people

suffering from this terrible disease.

It is clear that the moral and technical presence of

the United Nations is essential in efforts to eradicate

political, racial and religious intolerance, and in

support of negotiations for pacification, reunification,

self-determination and reconstruction, in order to

ensure that the peoples concerned can enjoy the

benefits of development.

Having said this, I urge our Organization to find

expeditious ways of helping those who are committed

to the so-called road map for resolving the conflict

between Palestine and Israel to secure the active

cooperation of the countries of the region and of the

Governments of Israel and the Palestine National

Authority, so as to overcome the current scepticism

over any imminent possibility of seeing the two

peoples living in peace, within secure boundaries, as

two sovereign States.

Ensuring that that urgent task is carried out

successfully will require the ongoing participation of

all of the neighbouring States. They must demonstrate

a joint willingness to become guarantors of the stability

and security of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples and

guardians of strict adherence to the Charter of the

United Nations and to Security Council resolutions.

I would like to conclude by referring briefly to

the International Criminal Court. With the election of

its Judges and Prosecutor, the Court has become a

reality. We recognize the concern that has been

aroused, particularly among the States parties to the

Rome Statute, by the fact that the Security Council, in

its resolution 1487 (2003), renewed for one year the

provisions of resolution 1422 (2002) with regard to

immunity in cases relating to peacekeeping operations,

as well as by the fact that bilateral immunity

agreements have been negotiated separately by several

countries on the basis of article 98 of the Statute.

Panama, a firm supporter of the International

Criminal Court, believes that these pragmatic

agreements are a response to a temporary situation, and

that they cannot and must not detract from the purposes

and objectives of the Rome Statute. As States parties,

we cannot shrink from the obligations imposed by our

domestic jurisdictions in matters relating to war

crimes, and we are therefore convinced that the

political concerns and suspicions of today will

disappear as it becomes apparent that persons who

commit monstrous crimes against humanity can never

be shielded by any State or protected by dreams of

impunity. Any State that holds to a different

interpretation on this point will be swimming against

the tide of human progress and international law.