Rwanda, 2001

It is a

great honour for me, on behalf of the Rwandan

delegation, to join previous speakers in extending from

this rostrum of the United Nations our sincere and

warm congratulations to Mr. Han Seung-soo on his

election as President of the General Assembly at the

fifty-sixth session. I should also like to take this

opportunity to pay a well-deserved tribute to his

predecessor for the farsightedness with which he led

the work of the fifty-fifth session of the General

Assembly.

I also wish, on behalf of my Government, to

extend my warm congratulations to Mr. Kofi Annan on

his re-election as Secretary-General of our

Organization. His remarkable efforts in strengthening

the role of the United Nations and his numerous

initiatives to resolve conflicts have been eloquently

attested to by his election to a second term of office,

and even more by the Nobel Peace Prize that has just

been awarded to him.

This session began in a very tragic climate in the

wake of the cowardly and ignoble acts orchestrated by

enemies of international peace and security. Those

terrorist acts led to the deaths of thousands of innocent

victims in the cities of New York and Washington. This

was a very heavy blow to the Government and the

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people of the United States and also a challenge to the

United Nations and to the entire international

community.

The Government of Rwanda learned of these

ignoble acts with indignation and consternation, and

has presented its condolences to the American

Government and the families directly affected. The

Rwandan Government reiterates its condemnation of

terrorism and remains open to all initiatives designed

to combat all forms of terrorism. It is in this spirit that

my country unreservedly supports all the resolutions

adopted against terrorism, in particular resolution 1373

(2001) of 28 September, and we reaffirm our

determination to implement them.

The acts of 11 September 2001 are a challenge to

the United Nations and to each of its Member States.

Since the United Nations is the crucible of international

peace and security, and since terrorist groups take

innocent human lives, it is up to every Member State,

every truly human organization and every person who

cherishes peace and justice to fight as vigorously as

possible against such a terrorist group, no matter what

its pretext, no matter how powerful it may be. When

we say no matter how powerful, we know what we are

saying, having been victims ourselves.

We were victims of the terror not of just any

organization, but of a State that in reality became a

non-State, but with all the State machinery available to

it to fight the very people whose protection was its

most fundamental duty. Rwanda and its people lived

under the terror of a murderous, terrorist and genocidal

State for three months. This reign of terror by a State,

as the Assembly well knows, took more than 1 million

human lives in 1994. The instruments of this blind,

merciless terror, whose overwhelming result was

genocide, are well known: the organization of

paramilitary militias commonly known as the

Interahamwe, and the former Rwandese Armed Forces,

known as the ex-FAR. From this rostrum we call for

these two organizations, which for a decade have been

veritable killing machines, to be duly listed as terrorist

groups to be fought and pursued throughout the world.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, which

since 1994 has been harbouring these forces of evil,

has fed them, has provided them with arms and

munitions and has allied itself with them, must respond

to the Security Council’s repeated appeals to stop all

support for the negative forces on its territories,

including the Interahamwe and ex-Far, which planned

and carried out genocide in Rwanda.

With regard to peace in the Democratic Republic

of the Congo and throughout the Great Lakes region in

Africa, my country is determined to implement the

Lusaka Agreement, which, with respect to the

Democratic Republic of the Congo, has two important

components: the inter-Congolese dialogue, which

should lead to a political solution to the Congolese

crisis, and the disarmament and withdrawal of negative

forces, which should lead to peace on the Rwandan,

Ugandan and Burundi borders of the Democratic

Republic of the Congo.

We wish to note with great satisfaction, the

actions of the sisterly Republic of South Africa, which,

given the failure of inter-Congolese dialogue in Addis

Ababa — because of, among other things, lack of

financial resources — generously offered food and

lodging to over 300 Congolese delegates going to that

greatly anticipated inter-Congolese forum. We wish

also to congratulate the Rassemblement congolais pour

la démocratie (RCD)-Goma and the Mouvement pour

la libération du Congo (MLC)-Gbadolite on their fine

initiative to create a special force to carry out the

disarmament and disengagement of negative forces

under their control on the territory of the Democratic

Republic of the Congo, and on having invited the

Kinshasa Government to join this initiative.

Regarding human rights, we would like to

reaffirm our attachment to the rule of law in

international relations. We are determined to strengthen

the rule of law, as well as respect for human rights and

fundamental freedoms. The Government of Rwanda

welcomed with great interest the report on human

rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is

regrettable, however, that the Special Rapporteur,

Mr. Roberto Garretn, was not present when the report

was submitted on 8 November 2001. Because of his

absence, no real debate between the parties concerned

and the Rapporteur was possible. Once again, my

delegation finds this highly regrettable.

The report on human rights in the Democratic

Republic of the Congo contains numerous gratuitous

allegations, including one on the alleged annexation of

that country. We would like to recall here that the

regular Rwandan army did not cross borders into the

Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to annex

the country, as the report claims, but, as we have

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explained and demonstrated a number of times, to

ensure the security of our territory and our population.

We acted in the context “of the inherent right of

individual ... self-defence” of a country, as we are

authorized to do under Chapter VII, Article 51 of the

Charter.

Indeed, security in the north of Rwanda has been

and continues to be constantly disrupted by the ex-FAR

and the Interahamwe militia that committed the

genocide in 1994 and that are using Congolese territory

as their rear base in order to repeat their gruesome

deeds. These armed groups are infiltrating Rwanda and

killing thousands of innocent people. We hope that

phase III of the United Nations Organization Mission

in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC),

in close cooperation with the initiative of the RCD

Goma-MLC Gbadolite, will lead to the complete

disarmament of these groups and to stability and peace

in the Great Lakes region.

We are pleased to note the establishment of a

Transitional Government in Burundi. We believe that

this is a major step towards the reconciliation to which

our brothers, the people of Burundi, aspire. Today the

Great Lakes region is seeking solutions to the conflicts

that undermine it. May the example of Burundi, under

the inspiration of President Nelson Mandela, bear fruit

in the general interest and for the benefit of the people

of Burundi and Africa as a whole.

Also regarding Africa, we feel that a definitive

solution to the problem of Western Sahara should also

be found.

We would like to see peace in the Middle East.

The question of Palestinian refugees, which is several

decades old, needs to be re-examined. Indeed, the

existence of an independent Palestinian State,

alongside an independent Israeli State assured of its

existence as such is necessary for peace in the Middle

East. The friends of the Israelis and the Palestinians

within the United Nations, including us, ought rather at

this stage to work on cultivating and strengthening

relations of friendship and cooperation between these

two fraternal States — the Israeli State and the

Palestinian State. We are anxious to start work on this

noble task.

Aside from Africa and the Middle East, we are

pleased to note the significant progress made on the

Korean peninsula, where both Koreas have shown

encouraging signs of reaching a final settlement of a

conflict arose in the context of the cold war.

This fifty-sixth session of the General Assembly

is the first after the Millennium Summit, and thus

should follow it up and lay the new foundation for the

future of mankind. The Summit stressed, among the

values that underpin international relations and respect

for the fundamental principles of the Charter, the role

that the United Nations ought to play and

recommended the creation of a propitious climate for

the development of the least developed countries that

were not yet on the path towards globalization.

Throughout this general debate poverty and the

problem of debt have been stressed as major obstacles

to development and thus to entry into the era of

globalization. Globalization, with its advantages for

some and problems for others, does not seem to be able

to resolve the problem of the gap between the rich and

poor countries. To the contrary, the gap between them

continues to grow. The marginalization of poor

countries in international trade and the debt burden

have severely hampered their efforts for development

and have exacerbated their poverty. This is why the

United Nations needs to define policies for the

development of all and adopt international measures to

support poor countries in the field of investment. Such

measures should also be aimed at cancelling debt and

ensuring adequate integration of these countries into

the world economy.

In this context, we call on the United Nations to

reconsider the report submitted to the Security Council

by the Independent Inquiry led by Mr. Carlsson, former

Prime Minister of Sweden, on which there has been no

follow-up to date. As a Member of the United Nations,

we believe that the Organization to which we belong

should undertake a follow-up to this report that defines

well the need for economic and social reconstruction in

post-genocide Rwanda.