Philippines, 1999

Mr. President, I would

like to congratulate you as you take on the honour and

responsibility of leading the Assembly at its fifty-fourth

session. Allow me to express our deep appreciation to His

Excellency Minister Didier Opertti, who led us last year

with admirable efficiency, insight and, on occasion, good

humour. I take this opportunity also to commend the

Secretary-General for his dedication and inspiring

leadership in the service of our Organization.

I would also like to welcome Presidents Teburoro

Tito, Rene Harris and King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, their

delegations and the people of Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga,

all fellow members of the Asia-Pacific family, to the

United Nations. Their membership in our Organization

should further bolster the global consensus on peace and

progress in the world.

Almost a decade ago the cold war ended and we are

today at the doorstep of a new century. Over those years,

we achieved much as individual nations and as Members

of this Organization. Yet, our collective search for peace

and progress for all continues. After many years of

eloquent debates, after hearing many persuasive proposals

and formulations, how well indeed have we mastered the

language of peace. But the wars and strife that afflict our

world, even as we speak, show that we have neither fully

learned nor lived the ways of peace. As at its founding,

our Organization is faced with the dire spectre of

countless multitudes living in utter dread and misery.

The much-touted new global order, where nations

live in harmony and peace, where growth and sustainable

development are rights and not privileges and where

justice rules and human rights are upheld remains a

promise. We encounter newer threats to the peace, and

old threats are re-emerging. Poverty stalks many lands.

Far too many people have their human rights ignored or

violated. Our very Earth protests decades of unbridled

abuse.

One of the clear victors at the end of the cold war

was the free market. For most of our lives, the assault

upon the very idea and practice of the free market came

from an ideology. Today, even that ideology embraces the

methods, if not the spirit, of the free market. It now

seems that the growing reach of the free market, or

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globalization, is held back only by our inability to adapt to

it fast enough.

For so many years, East Asia was admired for its

success with globalization. The so-called East Asian miracle

was little more than our region’s economic response to it.

Our fast growth doubled our incomes and moved tens of

millions of our people out of poverty. Up until July 1997,

we thought all was well.

Now we know better; we have learned our lessons.

Our difficulties could have been less severe or avoided with

better public and corporate governance, with better

management of financial systems, with greater transparency

and accountability; in other words, with greater openness,

which is the heart and spirit of the free market or any truly

free system.

Happily, the crisis did not destroy the conditions

underpinning East Asia’s growth formula of

outward-oriented industrialization. A propensity for high

savings, abundant highly educated human resources, higher

productivity and economic reform policies remain.

Today, East Asia is on the road to recovery. Consumer

confidence is rising. Exports are booming. Inflation has

been tamed. Investors are coming back. Japan, the Republic

of Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia are all growing

again. The Philippine economy will grow by more than 3

percent this year and over 5 percent next year. Yet, there is

no retreat on our core reform agenda. Economic

restructurings continue. Greater economic integration goes

on. The Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN)

countries, for instance, took extraordinary steps to

underscore their commitment to free trade and investment.

During its Hanoi summit last year, ASEAN resolved to

accelerate, not retard, the establishment of the ASEAN free

trade area to the year 2002. We are accelerating the

implementation of the ASEAN Investment Area and

ASEAN Industrial Cooperation schemes. We have also

moved towards greater financial cooperation by establishing

at the Asian Development Bank a regional economic

monitoring and surveillance mechanism. It should

encourage transparency, institute better coordination of

economic policies and help ward off future financial crises.

However, internal reforms cannot be enough. The

crisis also exposed the weaknesses lurking in the

international system. Realizing early on that the

phenomenon of globalization should be addressed

multilaterally, the United Nations has sought the

cooperation of other multilateral organizations to strengthen

normative, legal and institutional frameworks in the hope

that the global economy can be managed more effectively

and, perhaps more importantly, more equitably. For the

yawning gap between poor and rich nations continues to

widen, and the pace and level of development of countries

are, alas, more uneven.

In a fast-globalizing and interdependent world,

augmenting the ability of developing countries to

participate fully in the global economy is the win-win

solution for all. Insecure market access, high levels of

protection and support of agriculture in industrialized

countries and the continued high tariffs on industrial

products from developing countries obviate greater

progress for all.

The international trading system must adopt a new

paradigm in which sustainable development should be the

central theme. The World Trade Organization Ministerial

Conference to be held in Seattle late this year should be

not only an opportunity to launch a new round of

multilateral trade negotiations. It should also be an

occasion to imbue the process with a sense of direction

that responds to the development needs of developing

countries.

The global financial architecture must be

strengthened. There is urgent need, as the Committee for

Development Policy pointed out in its 1998 report to the

Economic and Social Council, for the coherent

development and effective monitoring of international

standards and codes of conduct for private financial

management and capital flows. There is also need to curb

destructive competition and inconsistency in national

regulatory frameworks.

More and more, countries and regions need to reach

out to one another in the spirit of cooperation and

partnership for development. The ten-year-old

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, or APEC, is

founded on this conviction. So is the much younger

Asia-Europe Meeting, or ASEM. And it heartens us that

the East Asia-Latin America Forum, having recently taken

its first steps, may soon join in the more sustained and

structured effort to link up for global progress. The

Philippines anticipates a similar region-to-region initiative

with Africa and will contribute its utmost to any such

initiative.

From a historical perspective, we are still at the very

early stage of globalization. With globalization having the

potential to grow exponentially, as do the revolutions in

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technology and information that fuel it, this early stage is

perhaps the most critical one. Only earnest international

cooperation can ensure that this process does not lead to the

marginalization of any nation.

But, as our recent experience in East Asia shows,

economic progress alone cannot and does not engender the

optimal well-being of nations or peoples. Progress in

ensuring political stability and security should accompany

growth. Any asymmetry in the pace, breadth and depth of

change in these facets of the political economy is a seed of

future instability. Moreover, just as our economic prospects

are determined by our participation in the global economy,

our future peace and security will depend not only on our

internal resilience, but also on the active cooperation of

others.

In East Asia the most urgent undertaking for ensuring

peace is the reconfiguration of the strategic security

structure in the region. The holes left gaping by the end of

the cold war must be filled; the new parameters of the

regional security equation must be defined. The situation in

the Taiwan Strait is a concern to us all. So are the issues of

missile development in the Korean peninsula and nuclear

development and uneasy peace in South Asia.

The South China Sea remains a potential flashpoint.

We are hopeful that, in addition to measures advancing

regional economic and financial cooperation, a regional

code of conduct in the South China Sea can be adopted at

the summit of leaders of ASEAN, China, Japan and the

Republic of Korea that we are hosting in Manila in

November.

East Asia has clearly not yet settled all its great issues

of war and peace. But we are trying hard and succeeding in

some important ways. At the sixth ASEAN Regional

Forum — the only forum on security that includes all the

major Powers with a stake in our region — we agreed to

draft rules of procedure by which preventive diplomacy

could bolster and complement regional confidence-building

measures. Last December we agreed to move closer to the

full activation of the ASEAN High Council and the dispute

settlement mechanisms mandated by the Treaty of Amity

and Cooperation in Southeast Asia.

The 5 May 1999 Agreement on East Timor and the

free, fair and orderly conduct of the 30 August

consultations there are truly significant developments for

lasting peace in our region. For the Philippines, it is of the

utmost importance that the chaos there be quickly resolved

and the horrendous human suffering be stanched. We

therefore welcome Indonesia’s decision to invite the

assistance of the United Nations and of a multinational

force, and its creation of a national commission of inquiry

to investigate and bring to justice persons responsible for

the atrocities and human rights violations in East Timor.

We also commend the Secretary-General and the

neighbouring and other countries for responding quickly

to restore order and facilitate humanitarian relief in East

Timor. As a fraternal neighbour of the peoples of

Indonesia and East Timor, we will contribute all we can

to ameliorate the humanitarian situation and put back on

track a peaceful transition.

Elsewhere, the Sharm el-Sheikh Agreement is a

positive development for the Middle East peace process.

We are also heartened by the agreements reached recently

in Sierra Leone and the Congo, and between Eritrea and

Ethiopia. We hope that the resolution of the immediate

crisis in Kosovo will soon create the conditions conducive

to the establishment of lasting peace there.

It is true that we have avoided major inter-State

conflicts of late, and that States are more willing to

resolve disputes peacefully. But the continuing tensions in

various regions of the world could still draw nations into

conflict and divert attention and resources away from

development. For the Philippines, regional cooperation

provides a key to managing potential and actual conflict

situations. We have seen this in the efforts of the ASEAN

troika, the United Nations and the international

community to restore political stability in Cambodia, and

in the dispatch of a multinational force to East Timor

with authorization from the Security Council and upon the

invitation of the Indonesian Government.

We agree with the Secretary-General that it is

necessary and desirable to provide support for regional

and subregional arrangements and initiatives on matters of

international peace and security. The United Nations,

lacking the capacity, resources and expertise to address all

issues unique to each region of the world, should

complement rather than supplant regional peace efforts.

This, however, will require significant investment

from all of us. In the first instance, we need to invest a

lot of goodwill and build trust in one another so that

clearer criteria and a more predictable basis can guide

Security Council authorization for all types of peace

missions. We realize that no two situations are the same,

but inaction due to stalemates in the Council, in the face

of serious threats to peace and human life, threatens the

credibility, legitimacy and future effectiveness of our

Organization.

Secondly, the Organization and its Member States

need to invest in practical steps that can be taken in the

areas of training assistance, joint peacekeeping exercises,

greater participation in standby arrangements, partnerships

between countries whose contingents require equipment

support and those able to provide it, and closer cooperation

between the United Nations and regional organizations.

And thirdly, perhaps more important, we need to

invest our work and way of thinking with greater flexibility

and innovation. The nature of conflict has changed. Crises

and humanitarian situations now involve many more actors,

from Governments and international organizations to non-

State players. And their effects, just like their causes, are

more complex and far-reaching.

Let us face it, much of what was considered before as

the internal affairs of a State is not so any more — or ever.

Humanity is indivisible. Peace is indivisible.

State sovereignty is important; it will always be. So is

individual sovereignty. That the redefinition of one should

coincide with the renewed consciousness of the other is, to

my delegation, not an accident. These developments need

not even be seen as parallel, as in they do not meet; for in

truth, they converge.

But we agree with the Secretary-General that the more

important question is how the United Nations — the only

truly universal, if imperfect, arm of the international

community — is to respond to the political, human rights

and humanitarian crises affecting so much of the world. We

have to be more innovative in our approaches to problems

relating to massive and systematic human rights violations.

We agree that empowering the United Nations enough to

match its Charter mandates in today’s and tomorrow’s

world requires that we, the Member States, update our

concept of national interest.

Last year, before this Assembly, I articulated

Philippine policy, thus:

“Like all other States, the Philippines pursues

foreign policy to promote national security and

development. But we view national security beyond

the traditional concerns of sovereignty and territorial

integrity. For in a global regime characterized by

evolving multipolarity of political and military power

and by growing economic and financial

interdependence, with all their attendant

opportunities and risks, my nation’s peace and

prosperity increasingly depend on stability and

growth abroad. As President Estrada has said: Our

way of life, our fundamental values and our

institutions can flourish and find true expression

only if we enjoy political stability, economic

solidarity, socio-cultural cohesion, moral consensus

and ecological balance, at home and with our

partners in the world. Our national security and

development” [or in short, our national interest]

“demand that we actively advance the internationally

shared goals of freedom, openness, peace, prosperity

and justice.” (A/53/PV.17, p.6)

After the events of the last year, we are more

convinced that the collective interest, our common

interest, is my country’s national interest.

The need to reform the United Nations is our

common interest. Reforms should not only seek to make

the United Nations more efficient; they should make it

truly responsive to the new demands of international

peace, security and development.

The Security Council, with its wide mandate and

leadership role, should be at the centre of change and

reform itself. It should be truly representative, democratic,

transparent and accountable. The use of the veto should

be rationalized.

The day may come when we shall have achieved

consensus on the reforms that we wish for our

Organization. The day may also come — and soon I

hope — that the financial morass our Organization is in

will have passed.

But while these are critical to the very survival of

the United Nations, the continued existence of our

Organization would be far more meaningful if we could

invest it with a new openness and greater trust. The

Philippines believes that to achieve this, we must start at

home, in our own regions. We must, in appropriate

circumstances, be more open to hearing the views of

others and offering our own, even on issues deemed too

controversial. A new openness would reflect the boldness

with which we should renew the promise of a new era.

The United Nations proved its great worth in this

century. Its continued success in the next will depend

entirely on us, on the goals we hope to achieve with it, on

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what we are willing to invest in it. After all, we are the

United Nations.