Syria, 1993

It gives me great pleasure on behalf of the

delegation of the Syrian Arab Republic to congratulate

Ambassador Insanally on his election to the presidency of

the General Assembly at its forty-eighth session. I take this

opportunity also to commend the role of his friendly country

in the Non-Aligned Movement and the positive contribution

to the United Nations made by the friendly countries of

Latin America.

I should also like on this occasion to voice our esteem

to the President of the Assembly at its forty-seventh session,

Mr. Stoyan Ganev, for the success he achieved during that

session. We extend to him and to the friendly country of

Bulgaria all best wishes for progress and prosperity.

I wish also to welcome the new Member States that

have joined our international Organization. It is our hope

that they will make a contribution to the work of the United

Nations with their active input.

The end of the cold war has faced the international

community with immense challenges and substantive

questions most of which have remained without satisfactory

answers while others have been left to the judgement of

history and to the vagaries of time. It has become clear to

many people in various parts of the world that facing up to

these new challenges has not been an easy task for any

individual country, regardless of its power or wisdom.

The international climate has been rendered yet more

complex and difficult by the reactions of those who have

considered themselves to be the victors of the cold war.

Their reactions have reflected their narrow short-term

interests rather than the elements of the new reality which

would have served better both their long-term interests and

those of other countries - or which, in the very least, would

not have done harm to those interests.

This is one of the basic reasons which, to date, have

prevented the emergence of a new world order. It was not

reasonable to expect the countries and peoples of the world

to support a system in which they have no say and from

which they have no tangible expectations. This might

explain why from one day to the next and year after year

there has been less talk and lower expectations of the

emergence of a new world order on the ruins of the old

order.

On today’s international scene we see little construction

and few new breakthroughs; we see many ruins, much chaos

and numerous unanswered questions. Has the world of

today become more secure and stable? Have the causes of

social tension and the many forms of regional conflict

receded? Has the number of refugees and displaced persons

decreased? And has the life of ordinary people in the South,

and even in the North, grown more prosperous or

comfortable?

These are legitimate questions, but detailing the answers

before this Assembly will not be a source of joy or comfort

to many of us, especially in view of conflagrations in

various parts of the world which warn of increased human

suffering, ranging from killing and deportation to "ethnic

cleansing", and real hunger. Of such things, world public

opinion knows but very little. Suffice it to say that the

number of conflicts which figure on the agenda of the

United Nations is far smaller than those which are queuing

up in the wings.

When we say this, however, we do not wish to give the

impression, by such a graphic objective description of the

new international situation, that the past was better than the

present. Far from it. For such is not the logic of my

country, Syria. Nor is it the logic of life, itself which, we

believe, tends to move towards the better, inevitably and as

a matter of necessity, even if it sometimes stumbles here and

there or appears to be static at certain times.

Our real aim in describing the post-cold-war

international situation is to attempt a serious assessment that,

we truly believe, we share with many other countries which

aspire to correct the course of international relations in both

the political and the economic spheres, in order to make

them more democratic and equitable.

In this context, we find no better framework than the

United Nations to promote international dialogue and

cooperation. In order for such dialogue to have positive and

fruitful results in the interest of all concerned, it is necessary

to introduce democratic reforms that would restructure the

decision-making process in the Organization so that it may

reflect the views of the majority. It is not reasonable, for

instance, to allow the United Nations machinery to be

manipulated, sometimes, in order to intervene in the internal

18 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

affairs of countries under one pretext or another, before the

Member States themselves are given the chance to introduce

the necessary reforms that would restructure the United

Nations in such a way as to guarantee equitable

representation in its main organs and prevent the use of

selectivity and double standards in addressing the issues that

are of vital importance to Member States.

But how can the majority of Member States expect that

such needed reforms of the structure of the United Nations

would be introduced at a time when some countries that

pride in ending the cold war resort to launching covert and

overt cold wars against countries which would preserve their

independence and stand up for their national sovereignty?

We feel it is our duty to draw attention to the fact that

failure to introduce the required reforms will render the

United Nations incapable of addressing the regional conflicts

that multiply daily. It is to be feared is that the important

role of this international Organization might change in the

course of time to one of dealing with the problems of tens

of thousands of United Nations soldiers entrusted with the

mission of preserving a lost peace. This would drain the

Organization’s resources and distract it from the many tasks

with which it is entrusted.

The multifarious feelings of concern prevailing among

most peoples in the world, particularly in developing

countries, are deeper than might at first be apparent. We, as

Arabs and Muslims, might well have become more sensitive

than others recently regarding what seems to be designed to

undermine our interests and distort our history, which,

during its most glorious phase, was never racial or

aggressive towards other peoples and religions. Rather, it

was humane and civilized, as all objective Western historians

attest.

We have the right to wonder about the reasons behind

the ongoing unjust campaign against the Arabs and Muslims,

who are slandered merely because some individuals have

allegedly committed a terrorist act against Western targets,

while not a word is uttered against those who are truly

responsible for terroristic acts against thousands of Arab

victims both in the occupied territories and southern

Lebanon. The time has indeed come for an awakening of

the Western conscience and for addressing objectively the

sensitive issues which affect the dignity of peoples and the

sovereignty of States. The objectivity of the strong cannot

possibly be interpreted or understood, by any ethical

standard, as a concession offered to the other party. Rather

it often promotes the strong’s status and prestige.

It is well known to everyone in the world that the

Arab-Israeli conflict is one of the oldest, most complex and

most dangerous conflicts in the world. That is why the

United Nations has been seized of it since it first started. It

is also no secret to anyone who follows developments in the

region that Syria, under the leadership of President Hafez al

Assad, maintained for 20 years its deeply rooted belief in the

necessity of establishing a just and comprehensive peace in

the region on the basis of United Nations resolutions and

international legality.

Although many peace initiatives were put forward

during the 1970s and 1980s in an attempt to address the

Arab-Israeli conflict, Syria objected to those initiatives only

because the solutions they proposed lacked

comprehensiveness and because they ignored participation by

the Palestinians and lacked the guarantees that would

safeguard their national rights. Once it received American

guarantees for the participation of the Palestinians and a

comprehensive solution on all fronts in accordance with

Security Council resolutions 242 (1967), 338 (1973) and 425

(1978) and the land-for-peace formula, Syria has played a

positive and fundamental role in the long and arduous

negotiations with the United States over the convening of a

peace Conference in Madrid.

By responding positively to the American initiative,

Syria, as the whole world has acknowledged, made the

convening of a peace Conference possible. In so doing,

Syria acted on the basic of its deep conviction that, or order

for peace to be acceptable to our peoples, it has to be a just,

comprehensive peace that would result in returning return all

the Arab occupied territories and ensuring stability and

security for the whole region. Without such elements, peace

can neither survive nor become a true and stable peace in

which and with which the people of the region can coexist.

For any peace to receive broad and continued popular

support, it must be honourable for us as well as for the

others. The sons and mothers of our martyrs must feel that

their dear ones who fell in the battlefields also contributed

to establishing this peace on the basis of right and justice,

and that with their sacrifices and blood they saved the nation

from being forced to capitulate.

Syria, which consistently believed in a just and

comprehensive peace and demonstrated its earnestness and

determination to reach such peace through the Washington

talks and the constant coordination with the Arab parties and

co-sponsors, is, in fact, more serious and keen in its efforts

to achieve peace than those who deviated from the path of

Arab coordination and through their unilateral signing

opened the doors of the region to all kinds of options.

Forty-eighth session - 4 October 1993 19

Unless serious and urgent efforts are made to achieve

substantive and tangible progress on the Syrian and

Lebanese tracks, peace might be the weakest of those

options.

We in Syria do not exaggerate the value of this

Palestinian-Israeli agreement because each and every one of

its provisions needs new negotiations. At the same time, we

do not underestimate its probable repercussions, especially

on the Palestinian arena, where it has created sharp

divisions. Regardless of all this, however, we think that the

most serious threat the peace process faces lies in Israel’s

attempts to give the impression that the signing of this

agreement has achieved peace in the region, and that the

international community, and particularly Arab countries,

must behave accordingly.

The judgement of history on the Palestinian-Israeli

agreement since the secret Oslo talks has become the

responsibility of the Palestinian people and their institutions.

No one should think that Syria is going to obstruct this

agreement, nor does Syria need to do so. But at the same

time, no one should expect that Syria is going to prevent the

Palestinians from criticizing the agreement, while the Israeli

Prime Minister has not been able to prevent Israeli

opposition from doing so despite his repeated assurances that

he has made no concession to the Palestinians.

Yet in spite of all this, Israel still claims that it needs

enough time to digest the Israeli-Palestinian agreement in a

blatant attempt to evade the serious follow-up of the peace

process launched in Madrid two years ago. In the meantime,

the international community, the United States at the fore,

has seen the necessity of capitalizing on the momentum

generated by this agreement to continue the peace process on

other tracks, particularly on the Syrian and Lebanese tracks.

The Arab States have also stressed, in the communiqué

issued at the meeting of their Foreign Ministers in Cairo on

20 September 1993, that this first step:

"must be completed by urgent steps on all tracks and

must guarantee the withdrawal of Israel from all the

occupied Syrian Golan and from the Lebanese lands ...

for the Arab League Council believes that, for peace in

the Middle East to be lasting, it has to be just and

comprehensive and must be based on Security Council

resolutions 242 (1967), 338 (1973) and 425 (1978) and

on international legality."

Peace cannot be built on lands under occupation, nor

can it be achieved through the usurpation of the rights of

others. Those who are trying to make people believe that

the Middle East has suddenly been transformed into an oasis

of peace and prosperity know better than anyone that peace,

stability and prosperity cannot possibly coexist with

occupation, arrogance and the denial of the rights of others.

It is about time Israel stopped misleading world opinion

and portraying itself as a victim. Is it reasonable that a

country should continue to claim that it is the victim while

it continues to produce and stockpile the most sophisticated

of weapons, including all kinds of weapons of

mass-destruction, and continues to occupy the lands of others

by force, in defiance of United Nations resolutions?

My country, Syria, which declares its positions candidly

and clearly to the whole world without fear of blame, will

not give up an inch of its occupied territories. It is

committed to continuing the peace process in earnest and is

also committed to doing all that is required of it in

compliance with Security Council resolutions 242 (167) and

338 (1973), as well as the "land for peace" formula. Syria

will also continue to work with the co-sponsors of the peace

process with a view to achieving a genuine, just and

comprehensive peace so that the Middle East may indeed

become an oasis of peace, stability and prosperity.