Qatar, 2008

I should like

at the outset to congratulate you, Su, on your election

as President of the General Assembly at its sixty-third

session. I wish you every success in your mission.

I should like also to thank your predecessor,

Mr. Srgjan Kerim, for all of his efforts in the previous

session. I should further like to thank the Secretary-

General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, for his efforts to promote

and revitalize the role of the United Nations.

I need not remind anyone in this Hall, which

holds such a high-level assembly, that the primary goal

of this Organization and the fundamental purpose of its

Charter is to achieve and maintain world peace.

The human experience replete with hopes and

horrors reminds us all that world peace can only be

achieved by a conscious, positive act and not through

mere wishful thinking. We have sought to achieve

peace through war in which the powerful tried to

impose their will, as in the two notorious world wars of

the twentieth century.

We have sought to find peace through entente

between empires, as between Britain and France in

1904. We sought peace through coexistence between

the United States and the Soviet Union in 1971. In all

those attempts, either by war or by entente between

Powers, by agreement between empires or by

coexistence between blocs and doctrines, peace has

remained elusive.

We have all come to realize through those long

and exhausting experiences that achieving peace is a

positive act that means more than just eliminating the

threat of weapons. While it is true that humanity has

not suffered a global war in the past 60 years, it is also

true that peace in those last six decades has remained

elusive. It has been a peace beset by conflicts on all

continents and in all territories. We have also come to

the conclusion that in a world where barriers of

distance and time have come to evaporate, achieving

peace means establishing and promoting economic and

social justice among peoples. That is what constitutes

positive peace.

If the purposes and principles of the Charter have

established the political rights of nations on the basis

of international law, the right of peoples to social

17 08-51570

justice must be based on the idea of development. In

the past, the first generation of advocates and

supporters of national liberation movements demanded

what they called “positive neutrality”, believing that

they could thus distance themselves from the wars of

the major powers. However, the realities of today’s

world require a different approach, for peace cannot be

achieved through conflict between powers, agreement

between empires, or coexistence among blocs, and not

even through positive neutrality.

The alternative to those three options is our new

choice, namely positive peace, an era of international

law that ensures political rights and an era of

development offering parallel and equal opportunities

in one world, which cannot go into the future burdened

by the injustices of politics or blinded by the darkness

of underdevelopment.

Qatar is getting ready to host the follow-up

International Conference on Financing for

Development. My country looks forward to an

international cooperation that offers the broadest base

possible for political as well as social peace. We hope

that participation the conference will be at the highest

possible level. The goal is ambitious and the purpose is

vital for the safety and peace of the one human global

village.