Sudan, 2006

On behalf of

the General Assembly, I have the honour to welcome to

the United Nations His Excellency Mr. Omer Hassan

Al-Bashir, President of the Republic of the Sudan, and

to invite him to address the Assembly.

President Al-Bashir (spoke in Arabic): It gives

me great pleasure, Madam, to extend my warmest

congratulations to you on your election as President of

the General Assembly at its sixty-first session. There is

no doubt that your election is an honour for us, because

of the excellent relations between our two sisterly

countries. I am fully confident that you will lead our

deliberations to a successful conclusion. I would like

also to commend your predecessor, Mr. Jan Eliasson,

for the efficient way in which he guided the work of

the previous session. I seize this opportunity,

furthermore, to express our appreciation for the

endeavours of the United Nations Secretariat in the

past period.

The Members of the United Nations are about to

select a new Secretary-General. We hope that they will

choose a new Secretary-General who will undertake his

duties in a neutral, objective and transparent manner,

so that our Organization can achieve the purposes to

which we all aspire, serving the international

community in achieving peace, stability and global

prosperity.

I take this opportunity to welcome the Republic

of Montenegro to membership of this Organization.

This session has special importance for my

country. It occurs on the fiftieth anniversary of the

Sudan joining the United Nations after it gained its

independence in the mid-twentieth century. The five

decades that have passed since then have strengthened

the aspirations of our country and our people for an

effective and fair United Nations, as well as our

conviction that the independence and political freedom

achieved by our country, as well as our hopes for a

bright, prosperous and developed future, could be

destroyed by the challenges of the present phase,

including the double standards, the dangers of

hegemony and the use of international forums to

achieve political, economic or strategic objectives.

The Government and the people of the Sudan

eagerly seek peace, which has become our strategic

objective. Because of our sincere will and strong

desire, peace has become a living reality. In January

2005 we witnessed the signing of the Comprehensive

Peace Agreement. That Agreement did merely address

the causes of the dispute between the south and the

north, but offered fair solutions to all the problems

faced by our country. It established political rules for a

system that recognizes citizenship as a basis for rights

and duties, and that recognizes diversity and considers

it to be a source of strength and unity. The system is

06-52737 44

based on power-sharing, democratic principles, the rule

of law, good governance and respect for human rights

and freedoms.

In the economic area, that Agreement establishes

rules for wealth-sharing in accordance with criteria of

fairness, brotherhood and equality between the central

Government and the provinces of the south and the

north. The Agreement is based on sound principles and

standards of justice and thus establishes the correct

rules for a comprehensive peace, which should prevail

throughout the country.

The implementation of the Agreement has

progressed at the national level. A Government of

National Unity has been formed, as was a Government

of South Sudan. Legislative bodies have also been

established, as well as the National Constitutional

Review Commission, the National Judicial Services

Commission and the National Petroleum Commission.

All options were presented to the President, who

selected the best among them. At the moment, serious

efforts continue to complete work on the other

commissions realistically, objectively and with good

intentions. We have also begun, in cooperation with the

United Nations, to prepare for the return of refugees

and displaced persons, some of whom have already

returned.

We were convinced that peace would not fully

succeed unless it also prevailed among our people in

Darfur. I am pleased to convey to the Assembly that in

May we were able to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement,

in Abuja. That had been a principal objective since the

conflict in that region began. We express our deep

gratitude and appreciation to all those who contributed

to bringing about that great achievement, prominent

among them the African Union, which has contributed

troops since the beginning of the crisis and has

sponsored the negotiations on the issue. We also thank

sisterly Nigeria, which has hosted the negotiations, and

the other partners who have worked to bring the

divergent views closer together and have spared no

effort in pushing the parties towards an agreement. The

great role undertaken by the African Union in Darfur is

proof of what regional organizations can do to settle

disputes in their regions.

That pioneering experiment should impel the

Security Council to encourage all such organizations

and genuinely and objectively support them in the

maintenance of regional peace and security, in

accordance with the United Nations Charter and

without their efforts being aborted or their roles

pre-empted by certain hegemonic parties that have

their own illegal agendas.

We have begun steps to implement the

Agreement, through ongoing consultations with the

African Union and the Sudanese parties that are

signatories to the Agreement, in particular concerning

security arrangements, the sharing of power and wealth

and the return of displaced persons, in addition to

preparing for the Darfur-Darfur dialogue.

We have buttressed the implementation effort —

which is being carried out according to a timetable —

by appointing Mr. Minni Arko Minawi, leader of the

Sudan Liberation Movement, as senior assistant to the

President and Chairman of the Transitional Darfur

Regional Authority. the Authority will be responsible

for enforcing the provisions of the Agreement. Those

steps will take us to the final phase: completion of all

the mechanisms necessary to implement the

Agreement.

Here we reaffirm the Government of National

Unity’s commitment to the Agreement in letter and in

spirit. I take the opportunity to sincerely invite all the

parties that have not yet signed the Agreement or

joined the peace process to do so, in order to

consolidate national efforts towards attaining stability.

If the armed factions continue to refuse to join

the peace efforts, and persist in violence against and

intimidation of citizens, they must be isolated and

prevented from acting, in accordance with the Abuja

Peace Agreement, which also stipulates that efforts by

all signatories to the Agreement should be encouraged,

in order to accelerate full implementation in letter and

in spirit. The international community would thus be

enabled to assist us in strengthening our capacity to

bring about rehabilitation and reconstruction.

We hope and expect that the international

community will fulfil its commitments concerning the

cancellation of all of our foreign debt to States or to

financial institutions, and will lift all restrictions and

economic and trade sanctions that had been imposed by

some international parties. These are impeding our

reconstruction and development efforts. We will thus

be able to shoulder the burden of reconstruction,

increase the rate of growth and provide a life of dignity

for our people.

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It is regrettable that some influential international

parties, rather than fulfilling their pledges and

commitments and respecting the provisions of the

Abuja Peace Agreement, continue instead to undermine

those efforts through unfair and unjustifiable pressures

and partiality, and through the negative signals that

they send to non-signatories of the Abuja Agreement.

This has culminated in the exploitation of the Security

council, which has adopted resolutions that serve those

parties’ interests and strategies, such as Council

resolution 1706 (2006) which seeks to undermine

national and regional endeavours to implement the

Abuja Agreement, as that resolution contradicts the

Agreement in letter and in spirit. Indeed, it would place

our country under the trusteeship of those influential

parties. That makes it imperative to continue our

efforts to implement the Abuja Agreement and to

mobilize the resources and funding necessary to

achieve a sustainable peace in Darfur, so that our

country and our region can enjoy the fruits of that

peace.

Mr. Jenie (Indonesia), Vice-President, took the

Chair.

Our country refuses all forms of dictates and all

attempts to humiliate it and usurp its national will. It

wholly rejects any attempts to re-colonize us in a new,

sly manner. Thus we reject all attempts to impose new

international forces in Darfur without taking into

account Darfur’s special circumstances and without

consultations with the Government of Sudan. The

subject has become, in itself, a goal in the service of

some internal political objectives of some parties.

World leaders who met here last September to

follow up the results of the Millennium Summit

adopted a document that calls for reform of the United

Nations, the promotion of international peace and

security, respect for human rights, adoption of

collective measures to combat poverty and bringing

about development and, in particular as regards issues

pertaining to funding development based on the

Monterrey Consensus.

What has been agreed to with regard to

promoting the role of the United Nations calls upon us

to work collectively with the necessary political will,

particularly on the part of the permanent members of

the Security Council. That should enable the

Organization to carry out its work in a truly democratic

manner.

In this context, we call for agreement on reform

of the Security Council and updating its working

methods. The Council’s present composition does not

achieve this; it is an impediment to what we are

seeking — real democracy in the management of

international relations. What makes the call for reform

more imperative is the eruption of conflicts that

threaten peace and security without the Council

making any effective move to contain them. A good

case in point are the tragic developments in the Middle

East. The Council watched helplessly while those

developments occurred. This emphasizes the point that

structural and institutional reform of the Security

Council has become more imperative today than ever

before.

In this context, my delegation reaffirms its

commitment to the African position as stipulated in the

Ezulwini document, a position that was reiterated at the

African summits held in Serte, Khartoum and Banjul.

The follow-up to the outcome of the Millennium

Summit has shown clearly that what has been achieved

has not met our expectations, particularly in regard to

the African continent, which is bleeding to death under

its debt burden and is facing an incompatible, non-

conducive economic and trade environment. The

problems of hunger, poverty and disease in Africa have

reached very serious dimensions and constitute a great

threat to the international community. They will

continue to haunt us unless efforts by the international

community are consolidated in order to accelerate

fairer development in developing countries,

particularly in the least developed ones. It will be

impossible to reach the Millennium Development Goal

of reducing poverty by half by the year 2015. The

correct path towards achieving the MDGs requires that

we emphasize the importance of total debt

cancellation, as debts are a great impediment to

bringing about those goals, particularly in Africa and in

the least developed countries.

We attach great importance to the fact that

developed countries should fulfil their commitments

concerning financing for development and

implementing the Brussels Programme of Action for

the Least Developed Countries. They should work to

reform financing institutions, which will promote

transparency and lead to larger representation for

developing countries in such institutions. They should

increase technical and financial assistance so that an

investment environment for the private sector can be

06-52737 46

created, suitable infrastructures can be brought about,

the environment can be protected and corruption can be

combated.

The imposition of unilateral coercive economic

measures on developing countries constitutes an

impediment to freedom of commerce and investment.

Funding issues and the transfer of technology are still

main components of sustainable development. Here we

would like to emphasize the provision of assistance to

the least developed countries in social services,

education, health care, and for combating diseases such

as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which kill millions

of people every year.

We seize this opportunity to reaffirm once again

our commitment to what we agreed on in the

Millennium Declaration and to reaching the Goals

contained therein for a better life for humanity as a

whole, with full emphasis on the right of developing

countries to determine their own development

priorities without restrictions or prior conditions that

would hinder their development efforts. We would like

to highlight also the importance of guaranteeing that

the proposed new financing mechanisms will not

negatively impact investment flows.

The Sudan has made great efforts towards

achieving those Goals and has achieved noticeable

progress, particularly in reducing the poverty rate and

expanding public education, despite the unjust embargo

and the longstanding conflict in the south of the

country.

My country has expressed its condemnation of

terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and has

called for the adoption of an international strategy to

combat it. In this context, we believe that the definition

of terrorism distinguishes it clearly from the just

struggle by people to preserve their legitimate right to

defend their freedom and the right to self-

determination. That must be the main pillar on which

the international community should fully agree. The

Sudan believes in the international campaign to combat

the phenomenon of terrorism, in accordance with the

United Nations Charter, principles of international law

and the inviolability of the sovereignty of States.

The question of Palestine is a story that embodies

the suffering of a people that has been deprived of its

political and economic rights. The Israeli occupation

continues to be a heavy burden on the legitimate

Palestinian dreams to bring about freedom and

development. The international community must force

Israel to fulfil the obligations it has undertaken,

including the road map, halting construction of the

separation wall, and heeding the Advisory Opinion of

the International Court of Justice issued in July 2004.

This was adopted by the General Assembly at its tenth

emergency session, enabling the Palestinian people to

exercise its right to self-determination and to establish

an independent State, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its

capital.

We renew our full support to the Palestinian

people and its elected institutions. We call on the

international community to respect the choices made

by the Palestinian people and to shoulder its

responsibilities vis-à-vis the Palestinian

Government — which has come about through free and

fair elections — to lift the embargo imposed against it

and to support it. We call upon the international

community to pressure Israel to halt its ongoing

aggression against the Gaza Strip and release the

abducted Palestinian ministers and parliamentarians.

The Israeli aggression against Lebanon last

August, which targeted innocent civilians — women

and children — has shaken the world’s conscience.

This is a flagrant violation of international

humanitarian law and agreements. We would like to

express our full solidarity with the people and the

Government of Lebanon and with the resistance. We

commend their steadfastness in the face of this flagrant

aggression, and we hold Israel responsible for the

destruction and the sabotage of brotherly Lebanon. We

call for the establishment of an international

commission to investigate the war crimes perpetrated

by Israel, and we call also on international, regional

and volunteer organizations to intensify their

emergency efforts to provide assistance to the victims.

We have always been convinced that the volatility

of the situation in the Middle East and the ongoing

tensions are due to the Israeli occupation, and that a

comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict

and the advent of peace in the region cannot be

achieved unless Israel withdraws completely from all

the territories occupied since 1967, including the

occupied Syrian Golan and the Shab’a farms.

We wish to emphasize in that context the

importance of making the Middle East a zone free of

weapons of mass destruction, with no exceptions, in

47 06-52737

order to bring about security and stability, which would

benefit all the peoples of the region.

We reiterate our support for Iraq and its territorial

integrity. We believe that its sovereignty should extend

to all its territory, and we call on all segments of Iraqi

society to engage in dialogue with a view to resolving

their problems. We welcome the initiative of the

League of Arab States to hold a national reconciliation

conference, and we support all sincere efforts aimed at

bringing stability to brotherly Iraq, so that it can

resume its rightful place in the regional context.

In Somalia, there have been recent positive

developments in the reconciliation process led by the

Sudan, in coordination with the Arab League, which

have led to the Somali Transitional Federal

Government signing an agreement with the Islamic

Courts Union and a reconciliation statement in

Khartoum in June 2006. There is no doubt that this will

promote the reconciliation efforts currently led at the

regional level by the Intergovernmental Authority on

Development (IGAD). We hope that our brothers in

Somalia will continue the dialogue and promote

reconciliation efforts in order to bring about stability

and security, so that sisterly Somalia can transcend this

very difficult phase.

We are fully convinced that Africa is rich in

human resources and cultural heritage and that it has

the material and human means to ensure a bright future

for itself. However, Africa faces many complex

challenges, such as the achievement of stability and

development.

Unless all of Africa works in a united and

concerted manner, it will not be possible to realize our

aspirations. We in Africa, more than anyone else, are

responsible for translating those aspirations into reality.

We are prepared to work, in an effective partnership

with others, to do so. That will benefit our African

peoples and contribute to stability at the international

level, as envisaged by the New Partnership for Africa’s

Development initiative.

The Great Lakes region is emerging from a

lengthy and deadly conflict, which has given way to a

phase in which democracy is taking root. The

International Conference for the Great Lakes Region,

which is still in the preparatory stages and is aimed at

defining conditions and criteria conducive to ongoing

regional cooperation among the States of the region,

will hold its second summit next December in Nairobi

to adopt a treaty on security and stability in the region.

The process is facilitated by the United Nations, the

African Union and some of our partners and is tangible

proof of the genuine political will of the countries of

the region. It is a unique initiative to build peace in the

region.

I should like from this rostrum to call on the

international community to step up the pace in the

provision of the financial and political support

necessary to push this treaty forward and ensure its

adoption for the Great Lakes region. We call for

support for the implementation of that treaty, so that

the peoples of the region will cease being victimized

by disputes, humanitarian disasters or insecurity and be

able to realize their aspirations to peace, stability and

development.