Uruguay, 2000

Allow

me to begin by thanking the Minister for Foreign

Affairs of Namibia, Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab, for his

work as President of the fifty-fourth session of the

General Assembly, during which he continued and

concluded the preparation process of the recent

Millennium Summit, initiated during the preceding

session.

Likewise, I extend to the President of the

Assembly at the fifty-fifth session, Mr. Harri Holkeri,

former Prime Minister of Finland, our congratulations

and best wishes for the success of his tenure.

We also extend a fraternal welcome to Tuvalu as

a new Member of the United Nations.

30

A little over a week ago the United Nations held

its Millennium Summit. To be more precise, we held

our Millennium Summit. The work of the Secretary-

General and of the Member States deserves our praise,

for the result of their efforts was wholly positive. We

should all congratulate ourselves on that very

successful work, but the task assigned to us by the

Summit is now in our hands. It should begin with an

assessment and careful evaluation of agreements,

disagreements and priorities.

Above all, we should pay special attention to the

statements made by our heads of State and

Government, as well as to the oral summary reports by

each of the Presidents of the four round tables. Taken

as a whole, this constitutes rich background material on

which we could, and should, work. One could say that

the General Assembly, as a universal and independent

body, has been entrusted with a mandate by the highest

political leaders of the Member States. Interpreting and

carrying out that mandate is now the main objective of

our work in the General Assembly.

Of course, the Secretary-General's report

(A/54/2000), known by the opening words of its title,

“We the peoples”, is an essential contribution, widely

appreciated at this time of putting the Organization in

perspective. For that reason, the Secretary-General

deserves our sincere acknowledgement.

We can therefore say that never before have we

had more authoritative or exact guidelines. As the

Secretary-General said in his opening statement, the

responsibility for putting those directives into practice

is in our hands; in other words, in the non-exclusive

framework of the General Assembly.

From the very start of our renewed task we must

try to identify some central ideas that reflect a general

consensus on our point of departure, while

acknowledging that neither the Summit nor any similar

United Nations meetings will be able to make any

arbitrary changes to the items on the world's agenda or

alone bring about the alterations that practically all of

us view as necessary and inevitable.

It is therefore a matter of using the Millennium

Summit as a launching platform for the achievement of

the common objectives of the international community,

whose main quality should be to reflect the basic rights

and interests of all its members. We should, then, be as

careful in identifying those goals as we are in selecting

the procedures and determining the time required to

achieve them. In any case, there are some realities that

we cannot, and should not, evade.

The first is the acknowledgement that the so-

called globalization or universalization phenomenon

constitutes the inescapable environment to which the

human family should adapt, not from a stance of

confrontation or resigned acceptance, but in order to be

an active part of it. By living within the framework of

globalization we will be in a position to direct and

channel it, accepting its intrinsic values in its scientific

and technological dimension, while conferring upon it

the necessary inspiration and political will to control its

negative effects on societies that lack the necessary

resources to be part of globalization and to benefit

from it.

It has been said here at the Assembly that we

should attempt to make it possible for all States to

climb aboard the globalization train. That goal should

motivate our individual actions and our cooperation

efforts in the immediate future.

As was repeatedly emphasized during the

Summit, United Nations action of the kind I have

described would have an encouraging and positive

effect, especially since no other international institution

has undertaken that task. Given the universal and all-

inclusive nature of globalization, it is appropriate to

consider what action the United Nations could take

from the perspective of evolution and change of the

international system in its three principal areas: first,

the institutional political system — the Organization

itself and its powers; secondly, the global financial

system established by the Bretton Woods Agreements;

and, finally, the organization of international trade

within the framework of the World Trade Organization

(WTO).

With regard to the first, it must be admitted that

in the process of reform of the Security Council, to

which we have devoted so much effort, no significant

progress has been registered recently. It would appear

that the international community has not yet

sufficiently assimilated its will to change at the

institutional level. That admission does not take away

from the fact that the reform of the Council is a

pending matter and one which, as the round table

reports indicated, received particular attention from the

heads of State and Government at the Millennium

Summit.

31

It seems to us that on this matter we have reached

a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, there is

practically a consensus on the need to reform the

Council so that it can — on the basis of certain

principles held very dear by the international

community — more adequately reflect current reality,

being made more democratic in its spirit, more

representative in its structure and more transparent in

its functioning. On the other hand, however, some

believe that the formula proposed to achieve the goal

of expanding the Council — an increase in both

permanent and non-permanent members — disregards

the very principles that we seek to implement. We have

thus responded to the need felt by all for reform of the

Council, in order to make it more representative and

democratic, with formulas that do not yet appear to

reflect the requisite universal spirit of reform.

That is why we believe that, while we continue

our efforts to reorganize the Security Council, we must

also explore alternative solutions avoiding the

approaches — perhaps too simplistic — adopted so far,

which have not made progress possible, even after

eight years of intensive negotiations. New approaches

and ideas are needed in the reform of the Council more

than in any other problem.

Peacekeeping and international security continues

to be a core issue giving the United Nations its specific

character and, to a certain degree, its reason for being.

The Organization's peacekeeping and international

security mechanisms, the limits within which they can

operate and their modalities have been on our agenda

since the founding of the United Nations. They

continue to require our attention, because problems of

peace and international security manifest themselves in

varying and sometimes unexpected ways as the world

political situation evolves.

The United Nations is now confronted with the

worrisome problem of how to achieve its peacekeeping

goals with limited resources and inadequate

mechanisms. The report on peace operations prepared

by a group of experts, known as the Brahimi report and

drafted at the request of the Secretary-General, will

undoubtedly help us find a way to overcome the

difficulties now facing the Organization in this area.

Uruguay, since 1952 a traditional contributor to

peacekeeping operations, is carefully considering the

recommendations contained in the Brahimi report,

many of which we deem worthy of our support.

In any event, we warmly welcome the initiatives

aimed at a more in-depth consideration of what has

been termed “humanitarian intervention”. We hope that

a detailed and objective examination of this concept by

the Organization will enable us to grasp its true scope

and implications and to find ways of integrating it

harmoniously into the international legal order, without

any kind of distortion.

The financing of peacekeeping operations

requires the prudent management of existing resources

and, as with the regular budget, that all Member States

fulfil their financial obligations to the Organization,

without conditions. Likewise, the institutionalization of

the current scale of assessments is vital, perhaps with a

few small changes that would not create problems for

developing or least developed countries and that would

ensure that States shoulder their responsibility

according to their real capacity to pay.

This is also our position on the regular budget.

We cannot accept that, in determining the scale of

assessments, simplistic formulas should be used that

are based only on isolated economic indicators such as

per capita income, which do not reflect the real

economic situation of the country and of its population.

We cannot overemphasize the link between the

question of disarmament and that of development

financing. The fact that the majority of violent conflicts

occur in the developing sector of the world, in which

there are often too many weapons and too few schools,

remains a shameful paradox. We must continue to work

towards disarmament. That is why my country,

Uruguay, supports the convening of the United Nations

Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and

Light Weapons in All Its Aspects, set to take place next

year.

Uruguay also supports the efforts of the “New

Agenda” countries towards the elimination of nuclear

weapons and encourages the ratification of the

Comprehensive Nuclear- Test-Ban Treaty.

As concerns the international financial system —

the International Monetary Fund and the World

Bank — and its handling of the recent, recurrent crisis

situations in the world, shortcomings were noted in its

methods of operation. In particular, its failure to

anticipate those crises has made clear the need to

update and reform the system directly responsible for

ensuring global economic governance. In this effort to

reorganize the financial institutions and to coordinate

32

their activities with those of the United Nations and its

agencies, we should also consider the common

aspiration of the majority of the members of the

international community to democratize the decision-

making processes in those organizations. The close

connection between the decisions by the World Bank

and the International Monetary Fund, and the social

and economic realities of countries, more than justifies

this aspiration.

Inequality, poverty and debt in the developing

world are problems that have been, and continue to be,

emphasized in the debates of the Millennium

Assembly. These problems require not only ongoing

programmes and actions but, above all, a basic sense of

solidarity, which does not always characterize our

cooperation efforts.

In the same vein, two noteworthy ideas were put

forward during the Summit that we believe should be

considered, because they could offer some guidance in

efficiently addressing economic issues. The first is the

idea of creating a development council that is neither

dependent nor subordinate and that has the authority to

take the decisions necessary to adjust and direct

complex international financial flows, since the trends

and developments in that respect affect the economies

of all States.

The second is related to international trade. In

this regard, the international community is firmly

convinced that international trade must be made

increasingly open and free. The President of Uruguay,

Mr. Jorge Batlle Ibáñez, in his address to the Summit

and in the relevant round table, emphasized the

indivisible nature of freedom, as a whole that cannot be

separated from free trade.

As trade is a natural and traditional method of

communication among peoples, Member States must

not impose protectionist barriers to its free flow, which

would delay development and therefore affect the well-

being of peoples. This could also lead to serious social

problems, which in many cases could spiral out of

control. In this way, obstacles to trade, discriminatory

trade policies and protectionism could become factors

of political instability at the domestic and international

levels. This is the position of Uruguay within the

Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), in the

relationship between MERCOSUR and the Andean

Community, in the Free Trade Area of the Americas

and in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The strong argument to that effect put forward at

the Summit must not be disregarded by those Member

States that singly or together selectively raise

protectionist barriers in order selfishly to defend their

own production and participation in the market,

denying others what President Batlle has called

“our right to create and produce and our right to

offer and sell what is produced”.

In this regard, I cannot but welcome the initiative

of the Government of Italy, announced by its Prime

Minister during the Summit, to insist, within

international organisms — including within the Group

of 8 — on the need for the developed countries to open

their markets to the least developed countries by

abolishing quotas and tariffs.

Nor can the WTO cannot turn a deaf ear to this

call. Although it does not play a major role in global

financial governance, its regulations affect trade in its

broadest sense, and it still counts among its

responsibilities, set out at the Uruguay Round and in

the Marrakesh agreements, the regulation of trade in

agricultural products, which affects many of our

countries, particularly those of Latin America and

Africa.

Today no one could doubt the role of the United

Nations in the gradual process of achieving equality in

the world. But the United Nations does not bear sole

responsibility in this respect; the Member States and

Governments do as well.

A solid and hopeful future for the international

community will depend on our good judgement and

integrity. Also at stake is the trust of our peoples and of

public opinion. Fortunately, for those of us who

practise the democratic creed, that trust is always time-

bound and subject to public opinion.

Our ability to work within the Organization will

determine whether the Millennium Summit that just

took place will breathe new life into the United

Nations. The world needs to see itself reflected in the

institutions it established, with hope and participation,

with responsibility and a will to build a fairer, more

predictable, more peaceful and more humane society.

I therefore believe — and this is merely a

suggestion — that it is essential for all of us to ensure

that the Assembly is accorded the important role

assigned to it in the Charter, even though reality

sometimes does not allow for this. We must ensure that

33

the Assembly and the Secretariat establish as soon as

possible a working group or a similar mechanism that

would follow up on the Millennium Summit and would

examine the wealth of ideas put forward by our heads

of State to ensure that they can be implemented and put

into practice. Only in that way will the Millennium

Summit be remembered.