Papua New Guinea, 1993

On behalf of the

people and Government of Papua New Guinea, I should like

to congratulate Ambassador Insanally of Guyana on his

election to preside over the General Assembly at its forty-

eighth session. In so doing, I should like to recall - and to

express my delegation’s sincere appreciation for - the even-

handed and efficient manner in which his predecessor, Mr.

Stoyan Ganev, the Foreign Minister of Bulgaria, presided

over the Assembly at its forty-seventh session.

His outstanding example has maintained and thereby

helped to strengthen a high standard which we are confident

Mr. Insanally will match. His election brings us particular

pleasure because of the many important interests which

Guyana shares with Papua New Guinea and the increasingly

strong relations which have been developing between our

two countries, mainly through cooperation in the context of

multilateral organizations such as the Commonwealth, the

African, Caribbean and Pacific group of Governments parties

to the Lomé Convention, and the United Nations itself.

The Government of Papua New Guinea is also pleased

to welcome the further progress towards the universal

membership of the United Nations marked by the admission

of the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Eritrea, The

Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Monaco and

Andorra. We look forward to cooperating with their

Governments and delegations in advancing the objectives of

the United Nations.

In welcoming the new Members, I feel bound to

observe that my Government is concerned that other small

States, including a number in the South Pacific, which find

it difficult to afford to join and send missions to the United

Nations, should be provided with the means of keeping

abreast of developments and of having proper account taken

of their interests, perhaps through such arrangements as a

regional observer, as a number of Governments have

proposed to the South Pacific Forum.

I turn now to the proposed United Nations initiative on

opportunity and participation. When I addressed the General

Assembly 12 months ago, I said that I had chosen

"opportunity and participation" as the main theme and goal

of my policy as Minister for Foreign Affairs. I also forecast

that my Government would be formally proposing an

initiative for the United Nations bearing the same name.

The proposal is now listed as item 151 on the agenda

of the current session of the General Assembly. The

initiative is, of course, important for Papua New Guinea -

opportunity and participation are, in fact, among the national

goals and directive principles embodied in our national

Constitution. It is also important to other developing

countries where increasing opportunity for, and participation

by, citizens is a public issue and an official aim. It is,

moreover, directly relevant to countries where previous

economic arrangements are in transition to markets. In an

increasingly interdependent world, where issues and ideas

often have global implications, it should be of interest and

certainly deserves support worldwide.

Papua New Guinea became independent on the very

same day, 16 September 1975, as the General Assembly

adopted a consensus resolution - 3362 (S-VII), on

"Development and international economic co-operation" -

directed, in the words of its first preambular paragraph, "to

accelerate the development of developing countries". The

timing was, almost certainly, coincidental. But it is none the

less worthy of notice because of what it suggests about the

circumstances, including a continuing need to achieve the

same aim on the part of countries such as Papua New

Guinea both then and now.

In the early l990s, Papua New Guinea has been

enjoying an unprecedented rate of economic growth,

measured, in the standard terms employed by bodies such as

the World Bank, at something more than 9 per cent per year.

But few would suggest that the living standards of most of

our people have improved at anything like the same rate.

The measure is quite seriously misleading, as many of us

have known for a very long time. But so are government

policies and processes of economic development that fail to

pay adequate attention to questions of distribution, including

who benefits and who takes part. I refer here, I should add,

to distribution not only of Government services but of

openings - and even more to effective access - for people to

benefit by taking part in economic development.

In certain sectors of society in many countries,

including my own, people - particularly those living in rural

areas - are still trying to enter the cash economy for the first

time. In other sectors and even more countries, people who

have long been engaged in monetary transactions are trying

to increase openings, access and mutually beneficial

interactions. Increasing opportunity and participation is, in

many respects, a universal goal. The urgency of the need to

address the means of achieving it comprehensively,

systematically, thoroughly and critically now arises out of

concern at several features of the current international

situation.

The first is the difficult and often worsening

circumstances of and in many developing countries. A

second is the problems being encountered in the transition to

markets in countries where economic arrangements were

previously State-centred. Another feature results from a

tendency among economic policy-makers in widely scattered

parts of the world, including developed countries and the

major international financial institutions, during the 1980s to

favour reducing the economic role of the State and to leave

questions of access and distribution of benefits to markets.

Complicating the effects of so-called "aid fatigue" in

developed countries are the increasing need and demand for

aid, investment and commercial loans arising from the

changes occurring in Eastern and Central Europe, the former

Soviet Union, southern Africa and the Middle East. New

opportunities for scarce capital and other resources are also

opening up in the same and other areas. Furthermore,

expensive and urgent needs will have to be met when the

terrible conflicts currently raging in the former Yugoslavia,

the Caucasus, parts of Africa and elsewhere are resolved and

rehabilitation can get under way.

In other words, resumption or continuation of

development in many parts of the world will require that

more must be done with less. Opportunity, access and

beneficial participation in economic development must be

quite dramatically increased if living conditions are to be

maintained, let alone improved.

The proposal which the Papua New Guinea Government

is therefore making is for the United Nations to establish a

small panel of distinguished, expert and experienced persons

broadly representative of the international community to

review what has already been done and to identify options

to increase opportunity and participation, with particular,

though not exclusive, reference to the economies of

developing countries. We propose not an academic study,

but one that draws on actual experience and makes

recommendations for practical action. We do not have any

fixed ideas about what it should say. Rather, we want it to

make a close, critical examination of what has been

attempted, what has been proposed and what has been - for

whatever reason, or for none - overlooked.

We emphatically do not want the project to begin with

doctrinaire assumptions; rather, we want it to ask questions -

for example, about when and how it is best for the State to

limit its involvement in the economy or to withdraw

completely, and when and how the State should act to

maximize opportunity and participation. Above all, we want

it to investigate and to provide advice on the best way of

linking opportunity, via effective access, to participation.

Thus, the panel, the project and the report ought to be

multidisciplinary in approach and scope, examining critically

both experiences and ideas about ways in which legal,

administrative, economic, social and other arrangements help

or hinder increasing economic opportunity and participation.

While the focus should be on the particular difficulties

of developing countries, the project should, we believe, look

further afield. It will, in fact, have to do so if its research

and findings are to stimulate the world-wide information

exchange, and, above all make the practical difference which

we hope will result.

Forty-eighth session - 11 October l993 3

In my statement to the General Assembly a year ago I

described the proposed United Nations initiative on

opportunity and participation as being in some respects "the

economic counterpart" to the Secretary-General’s most

succinct and constructive report, "An Agenda for Peace." It

should also be seen, I believe, as a complement to, and a

necessary filling-out of, other important United Nations

resolutions and documents that have been concerned with

development issues more generally, such as the reports of

the Pearson and Brandt Commissions, and "The Challenge

to the South".

The panel and the report envisaged in our proposed

draft resolution should, in addition, be viewed as

complementing and helping to fill out the Brundtland Report,

particularly in so far as they manage to identify options not

only for maintaining increased opportunity and participation,

but for continuing to increase them so as to allow living

standards to go on being raised for and by future

generations.

While we await publication of the Secretary-General’s

eagerly anticipated report outlining an agenda for

development, the proposed initiative on opportunity and

participation should not be seen as a rival or a duplication.

The proposal ought to be seen instead for what it is intended

to be, namely, a constructive start and a practical

contribution to setting objectives and specifying means for

development into the twenty-first century.

Like other supporters of the proposal, the Government

of Papua New Guinea has been gratified by the strong and

positive response with which the proposed United Nations

initiative on opportunity and participation has been greeted

by Governments, non-governmental organizations and

international bodies in diverse parts of the world.

We have particularly appreciated the expressions of

support we have received from the Government of the

Assembly’s President, the Chairman of the General

Assembly’s Second Committee, and organizations

particularly concerned with advancing the common interests

of developing countries, the Group of 77 and the Movement

of Non-Aligned Countries.

In our own immediate neighbourhood, we have been

assured of strong, individual and collective support by

members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations

(ASEAN), the Melanesian Spearhead Group, and the South

Pacific Forum, which includes the Governments of

developed countries in the region.

With assistance from the United Nations Development

Programme, my Government has convened both a national

and a regional Workshop, in which highly respected,

variously experienced and diversely skilled persons gave

their time on an honorary basis to help develop and refine

the proposal. The proceedings of both Workshops are being

circulated to all United Nations members.

When the proposal is debated in the Assembly on 15

November, we look to all members of the United Nations for

contributions to its further development and refinement, and,

of course, for their votes. As it did with the resolution

(47/441) on development and international economic

cooperation, adopted on Papua New Guinea’s independence

day, my Government hopes that the General Assembly will

endorse the proposed United Nations initiative on

opportunity and participation by consensus.

Believing as we do in the importance of the proposed

initiative, but conscious of the severe strains currently

imposed on the United Nations human and financial

resources, and bearing in mind the recommendation made to

all members by the Second Ministerial Meeting of the

Standing Committee on Economic Cooperation of the

Non-Aligned Movement, my Government has decided to

make a special pledge to contribute K100,000 - the

equivalent of a little more than $102,000 - to assist in

realizing the proposal. While we believe that

implementation of the proposal must not depend on special

donations, we call upon others to do the same in accordance

with their means.

With regard to conferences on development and related

issues, consistent with Papua New Guinea’s obvious interest

in development issues generally, and in those that pertain to

small island countries in particular, my Government looks

forward to the first Global Conference on Sustainable

Development of Small Island Developing States, which is to

be held in Barbados in April 1994.

We shall remain actively involved in preparations for,

and the proceedings of, what we regard as a most important

occasion for sharing experiences and ideas, including both

problems and hopes, with island States in our own and other

regions.

For closely related reasons, we also look forward to the

International Conference on Population and Development, to

be held in Cairo in 1994.

Having taken a close interest in the deliberations and

outcome of the World Conference on Human Rights in

Vienna in June, we shall contribute as best we can to the

4 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

preparations for the World Summit for Social Development,

to be held in Copenhagen, and the Fourth World Conference

on Women, scheduled for Beijing, both in 1995.

I turn to the subject of apartheid and sanctions against

South Africa. Successive Governments of Papua New

Guinea have always been strongly opposed to apartheid, both

in principle and in practice. We have consistently applied

sanctions, backed by the force of Papua New Guinea law,

against those who have upheld it. Even as apartheid has

been dismantled, and progress towards a democratic,

multi-racial South Africa has been observed, my Government

has been conscious of the special perspectives and interests

of African States. We have accordingly taken the view that

we would remove our sanctions against South Africa only in

consultation, conducted through bodies such as the

Commonwealth and the United Nations, with such States.

Despite the economic interests which might have been

served by allowing links between Papua New Guinea and

South Africa, we have willingly paid the price our policy has

required.

I have been personally moved in recent days by the

addresses made by the President of the African National

Congress, Mr. Nelson Mandela, before the United Nations

Special Committee against Apartheid as well as the Joint

Assembly of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP)

Group of countries and the European Community.

Following the recommendations made by Mr. Mandela, the

Organization of African Unity and the Commonwealth

Secretariat, as well as the resolution adopted by consensus

in the General Assembly on Friday 8 October, my

Government will now take steps to remove legally enforced

sanctions. But in doing so we remain conscious of the

continuing - and unfortunate - relevance of Mr. Mandela’s

pointed reminder to the Joint Assembly of the ACP Group

and the European Community that:

"the white minority Government and its institutions ...

should not be ... treated as though they were the

representative of all the people of South Africa."

The struggle for real equality for the African citizens of

South Africa is certainly not over. In some respects, it has

scarcely begun. My Government believes very strongly that

the achievement of a genuinely stable, democratic and

multi-racial South Africa requires increasing opportunities

for access to and participation in all areas of society,

including the economy, by the country’s African population.

My next subject is the progress towards peace in the

Middle East. Successive Governments of Papua New

Guinea have consistently followed a policy of supporting

the right of Israel to exist within secure borders, while

recognizing the Palestinian people’s right to a homeland.

We are accordingly both impressed and encouraged by the

dramatic, bold and hopeful agreements reached by the Israeli

Government and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

We commend the steps that have since been taken,

including the diplomatic and material support provided by

other Governments to facilitate implementation of those

agreements. As our Prime Minister, the Right Honourable

Paias Wingti, has already announced, the Government of

Papua New Guinea will do what little it can to further the

process, by acknowledging the constructive role being played

by the Palestine Liberation Organization and examining ways

in which we might seek to strengthen relations with the

legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people.

I come now to the reform and revitalization of the

United Nations and the recharging of its resources.

The welcome developments in southern Africa and the

Middle East, particularly those related to Israel, the occupied

territories and the Palestine Liberation Organization, reveal

both strengths and weaknesses in the United Nations, and

suggest that while there are situations in which the United

Nations can play an important, even vital, role, there are also

situations in which it cannot.

We must recognize that when the United Nations itself

cannot, for whatever reason, be effective, then individual

Governments, such as Norway’s, regional organizations, such

as the Organization of African Unity, or some other body

may be able to initiate or facilitate a positive outcome.

The Government of Papua New Guinea welcomes the

reforms which are gradually being made to the United

Nations system: in the Secretariat and other organs, and in

the manner in which our deliberations are organized. We

also welcome the generally revitalized role that our

Organization aspires to play in international relations. But

we must remember that internal reform and reorganization

are only as important as their eventual outcome.

A revitalized United Nations must not be allowed to

become an instrument of sectional interests or ill-planned

adventurism. In the context of the contrast between the

evidently satisfactory outcome of United Nations efforts in

Cambodia and the uncertainties of the situation in Somalia,

my Government feels a need to sound a cautionary warning.

The terrible events unfolding in the former Yugoslavia,

particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the mounting

toll of human death, injury and suffering resulting from

conflicts in parts of the former Soviet Union reinforce my

Forty-eighth session - 11 October l993 5

Government’s reservations about aspects of the current

debate over the part that the United Nations can and should

play in the post-cold-war international order.

The Government of Papua New Guinea is also

conscious of the selectivity and costs of United Nations

peace-keeping, peace-observing and peacemaking operations,

and of the need to ensure that the Organization is reformed,

revitalized and re-endowed with sufficient resources to make

a difference to the very basis of peace in developing

countries: development itself.

My next topic is decolonization, indigenous people and

natural resources. In this, the United Nations International

Year of the World’s Indigenous People, my Government had

the rare privilege of hosting a Regional Seminar of the

Special Committee of 24 on decolonization, chaired by

Papua New Guinea’s Permanent Representative at the United

Nations. The occasion gave us an opportunity to reaffirm

our commitment to the decolonization of New Caledonia,

with special safeguards for its indigenous people, the

Kanaks. The Government of Papua New Guinea is strongly

opposed to any suggestion that the Matignon Accords might

not be fully honoured. The same position has been adopted

by our partners in the Melanesian Spearhead Group and the

South Pacific Forum.

In addition to the question of New Caledonia, the

Regional Seminar also focused attention on other relics of

European colonialism, including French Polynesia, where

Polynesian demands for independence seem to be gaining

strength.

Elsewhere in the South Pacific, the negotiated

settlement between the Governments of Nauru and Australia

has been widely welcomed for the redress it provides for a

long period of colonial exploitation of Nauru’s principal

land-based natural resource and the destruction of much of

its natural environment.

The settlement is also arousing considerable interest as

to its possible implications in other former Trust Territories

and colonial dependencies. The Government of Papua New

Guinea is only one of a number of interested parties which

have the matter under close examination. My Government

is also only one among many in welcoming, and wishing to

encourage, efforts to recognize the rights and to improve the

situation of other indigenous people in the South Pacific and

elsewhere.

Together with our partners in the Melanesian Spearhead

Group - the Governments of Solomon Islands and Vanuatu

- we have signed a Declaration on Cooperation in

Development of Natural Resources. One of the explicit

objectives of the Declaration is to facilitate implementation

of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.

Another objective, which has yet to be realized, is to

supplement existing efforts in relation to regional fisheries

by broadening and deepening cooperation between the

Governments of countries in the South Pacific where other

natural resources are being developed, often by outsiders.

The crisis in Papua New Guinea’s North Solomons

Province is an unfortunate and costly internal affair of Papua

New Guinea. It continues, still unresolved, even as

Government and other services are being restored. I am

therefore pleased to report that my Government has recently

been engaged in productive exchanges with the Government

of the Solomon Islands, particularly concerning the spill-over

effects of the crisis on and near the common border.

Following these exchanges, I have issued an invitation

on the Government’s behalf to the Joint Assembly of the

African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States party to the

Lomé Convention and the European Community to send a

visiting mission to Papua New Guinea, including the North

Solomons Province, to assess the situation and to

recommend how it might assist in rehabilitation.

The Government has also announced its intention to

work towards an All-Bougainville Leaders’ Conference to

try to resolve the crisis by political means. The Government

of Solomon Islands has offered its cooperation in what has

been, at times, a rather difficult situation. We hope to

continue our dialogue over long-term measures to strengthen

bilateral relations.

With respect to regional and global economic

cooperation, the Government of Papua New Guinea, like

most other Members of the United Nations, is concerned at

the possibility that reform of the international trading system

might fail as a result of the apparent intransigence of vested

interests in certain developed countries during the final

stages of the Uruguay Round of negotiations of the General

Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). We also do not

believe that regional trading blocs can be an adequate

substitute for an equitable and orderly international trading

system.

The Government of Papua New Guinea does not see

the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (APEC) as

a replacement or a rival for an updated version of GATT.

But we do regard APEC as being important to our interests.

More than 80 per cent in value of exports from Papua New

Guinea go to the existing APEC member countries. Nearly

90 per cent of our imports come from exactly the same

6 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

countries. Other aspects of Papua New Guinea’s

international economic relations are just as deeply enmeshed

with APEC members. With encouragement from existing

members, my Government has therefore applied to join

APEC. We believe that it would not be right for such a

body to continue without a single member from the centre

of a region whose name it bears: the Pacific. We look

forward to an early - and positive - response to our

application.

In conclusion, I should like to say the following:

No human being can have failed to be deeply moved

by, or to feel the utmost sympathy for, people affected by

the disastrous earthquake which occurred in India in late

September.

No one who has been following the developments

consequent on the changes in the former Soviet Union can

have failed to be both excited and concerned by the dramatic

political and military confrontations which have been

occurring in the Russian Federation. All of us must surely

be concerned at reports that nuclear testing has been

resumed, at the possibility that more tests might follow, and

that weapons of mass destruction might grow in number,

power and circulation.

In short, notwithstanding the progress made towards

finding lasting solutions to some long-standing issues since

the cold war ended, we continue to live in a rapidly

changing, often fragile and uncertain world. Able by virtue

of our membership of the United Nations at least to let our

views be known on what are some of the most important

and pressing issues of our time, the Government of Papua

New Guinea has, therefore, chosen to give close attention to

an issue of particular concern to developing countries, to

explore avenues of cooperation with other States, and to

propose a United Nations initiative on "Opportunity and

Participation". Let me end by repeating my previous call for

members’ support for a proposal intended to assist in

identifying what the people and Government of Papua New

Guinea believe to be common interests, global problems and

practical solutions.