São Tomé and Príncipe, 2002

It is a great honour for

me, as the new President of the Democratic Republic of

Sao Tome and Principe, to appear before the Assembly

for the first time and to join in the deliberations of this

fifty-seventh session.

On behalf of the citizens of Sao Tome and

Principe, I should like to congratulate you, Sir, on your

election as President of this fifty-seven session and

request you to accept my warmest greetings and those

of my people. May I also extend our congratulations to

Timor-Leste, soon to be a Member of the Organization,

and to Switzerland, which has just become a Member.

We hope that East Timor's becoming a full member of

the international community will guarantee that its

brotherly people will have the right to live free of the

hegemonic appetite of some of their neighbours.

Few people in the world have ever heard of my

country Sao Tome and Principe.

Few people, even in this Hall, could find Sao Tome and

Principe on a map. We are a small island-nation in the

Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of West Africa. We are

poor. We are remote. Despite our isolation, my people

face the same issues that confront every country in the

world today: first, how to protect innocent people from

acts of terror, violence and mass destruction; secondly,

how to eliminate the grinding poverty that still afflicts

and cripples half the world's population and affects

people in every country on Earth; and, thirdly, how to

save our environment and protect the world's natural

resources from degradation and ultimate destruction.

As much as any people on the face of this planet,

we deplore terrorism. We condemn those who kill

civilians and target women and children, and we say to

them, `You are wrong to take the lives of the innocent,

whatever the reason, whatever the cause.' That is what

my people in Sao Tome and Principe believe.

And so it is that last 11 September my tiny nation,

with its population of only 140,000 people, only a very

small fraction of the population of the City of New

York, was horrified by the attacks on the World Trade

Center and the Pentagon. We send our condolences to

those in all the many countries who lost friends and

family there. We join in condemning those who carried

out these terrible acts. We call for their capture and

incapacitation. That is what we feel.

We turn to the United Nations for leadership. We

look to the people in this great Assembly Hall to speak

and to act for civilization, for freedom and for justice.

An American politician, Hubert Humphrey, said it best:

`The heroes of the world community are not

those who withdraw when difficulties ensue, not

those who can envision neither the prospect of

success nor the consequence of failure, but those

who stand the heat of battle, the fight for world

peace through the United Nations'.

I commend the President of the United States for

coming to New York to consult and confer with those

who represent the community of nations. This act is

consistent with the finest and most admirable American

tradition. If I can use Thomas Jefferson's words in the

Declaration of Independence of the United States, I

will say that President Bush's decision to address the

United Nations on the subject of Iraq shows a `decent

respect for the opinions of mankind'.

On behalf of the people of Sao Tome and

Principe, I declare our unconditional support for the

effort to protect innocent people from acts of terrorism

and to defend our populations from weapons of mass

destruction. The United Nations must lead the way. The

nations of the world must act together as one. It is a

moral duty. Sao Tome and Principe offers what

resources we have to assist in this noble effort.

But war and terrorism and violence are not the

only threats to the lives of our people. More insidious,

more pervasive and more deadly than even war itself is

the poverty that kills many millions of men, women

and children needlessly every year. Poverty is silent,

but it is insatiable. It is unrelenting. I come from one of

the poorest countries in the world. We are grateful to

all those who have come to us and have helped us since

our independence on 12 July 1975. I take this

opportunity to thank all of you.

But we cannot, and will not, continue as we are

today, without clean water, without health care, without

electricity, without jobs, without schools and without

even a primitive infrastructure or the capacity to build

one. Sao Tome and Principe cannot be left behind. We

do not want our neighbourhood in the global village to

be a ghetto slum. We want to be part of the information

age. We want to receive, to learn how to use and to

master the technology that brings enlightenment,

affluence and opportunity. Many years ago, another

brilliant son of this country, the United States of

America, Abraham Lincoln, said

`A house divided against itself cannot stand. This

Government cannot endure permanently half

slave and half free'.

The same can be said today about the rich nations and

the poor nations of our world. A house divided against

itself our house, this planet Earth cannot endure

half rich and half poor. We must do better.

Sao Tome and Principe now stands at a

crossroads of development. We are strategically

situated in the most important petroleum area in the

world today: the deep water off the western coast of

Africa in the Gulf of Guinea. With exploration success

would come enormous wealth and potential power to

my country. Sao Tome and Principe is therefore facing

a moment of opportunity that African nations rarely

encounter, or have historically squandered.

20

Just 100 years ago, my people lived in slavery.

We picked cocoa off trees for the enrichment of distant

European landowners, while we lived in chains,

without decent housing, education or even basic human

dignity. But we have come far in a very short time. My

people are brave. We are strong and we are united. Sao

Tome and Principe led the way in Africa in September

1990 in transiting from one-party rule to a multi-party

system. My country is now a robust democracy, which

enjoys some of the strongest stability in Africa. I am a

product of my country's free and fair elections, having

been elected just over one year ago, the second freely

elected President since our independence in 1975. I

promised my people that Sao Tome and Principe would

be a model for oil transparency and sustainable

economic development based on democracy, human

rights, the rule of law and a diversified free-market

economy. We invite you to share with us in achieving

our goals.

I would now like to draw the attention of the

General Assembly to the following situation. We are

today congratulating two countries on their entry as full

members of the United Nations. But the task of

achieving universalism in the United Nations has,

unfortunately, still not been completed. I take this

opportunity to pay special tribute to another country,

with a population of more than 20 million inhabitants,

which has achieved admirable economic and social

progress through democracy, but which the

international community continues to fail to recognize

as an independent and sovereign nation. I am referring

to the Republic of China on Taiwan. Sao Tome and

Principe hopes, and urges, the Organization of United

Nations to resolve this case soon as a matter of justice

and to declare and accept Taiwan as an independent

and sovereign nation.

Having said that, I turn again to the United

Nations to say that the final challenge is perhaps the

most difficult challenge facing the Organization,

namely, to save the Earth itself. I appeal to those who

fuel the factories of globalization and who drive the

engines of progress and economic development. You

are the ones who endanger the planet with your

pollution. You are the ones who cut down forests, who

burn the fossil fuel, who poison the oceans, who

destroy the atmosphere and who warm the planet. You

are the ones who can lead the world to develop cleaner

technologies, more efficient uses of natural resources

and effective ways to restore our land, air and sea.

There is no time left.

The people of Sao Tome and Principe live on two

small islands in the Atlantic Ocean. If sea levels rise

from global warming, my beautiful island home will

disappear beneath the waves. We know better than

most people that if we spoil our homeland we have

nowhere else to go. We must live with the waste that

we make, and we cannot quickly grow back the trees

that we cut. If we cut down the trees that shade and

protect our food the banana trees, the cocoa trees

we will starve. If we put poison in the water and

chemicals in the earth, we will die. Whatever we do to

bring prosperity to our land, we must do it in a way

that respects the water and air and flora and fauna that

make up our islands' environment. We must find a way

to make progress that supports and sustains life rather

than destroying it. The planet Earth is like Sao Tome

and Principe in that respect: it is nothing more than an

island in the universe. We must take care. We must do

better.