Algeria, 2006

At a

time when the United Nations continues on its path

towards universality by welcoming a new Member

State — Montenegro, with which Algeria has been

involved in multi-faceted cooperation — the very basis

of our institution is once again being tested by the

grave developments in the situation in the Middle East,

with violence directed at our brother peoples of

Palestine and Lebanon. Because of their context, their

scope and the breadth of their consequences at various

levels, those acts of aggression — which cannot merely

be seen as passing occurrences — point an accusing

finger at the limitations imposed upon the authority of

the United Nations when it is faced with conflict

situations which run counter to its very raison d’être.

In the vast areas of the developing world, in

particular throughout Muslim civilization, a silent

frustration is growing and increasing before the

powerlessness of the United Nations to support the

most elementary human values of the Palestinian and

Lebanese people.

The Middle East is without doubt the most

unstable region of the world. There we see the great

cruelty, flagrant denial of justice and recurrent waves

of violence that are reflected in the serious

deterioration of the humanitarian and security

situation. This makes the prospect of establishing a just

and lasting peace in the region a remote one. The

Palestinian people are improperly subjected to

collective punishment, and Lebanon — whose

suffering is exemplified by the relentless Israeli attack

against Qana — has been caught up in a murderous

war, in which the Lebanese people were able to hold at

bay the infernal firepower and destructive capability

directed against it.

In the same geopolitical sphere, lack of security

and instability persist in Iraq. The daily ransom paid in

heavy human losses is submerged in a pernicious effect

of habit and trivialization. The establishment of the

Government of National Unity, and that Government’s

decision to opt for inclusive national reconciliation are

first steps in the right direction. Algeria welcomes the

positive response to those developments from the main

political forces in Iraq, and we believe that the best

way to ensure the success of the ongoing political

process — with its objective of allowing Iraq to fully

recover its sovereignty in the framework of national

unity and territorial integrity — would be through

intensified efforts to avoid further fratricidal schism in

the country along ethnic and religious fault lines.

One year ago, at the World Summit, we defined a

path together towards comprehensive reform of the

United Nations. By joining the consensus on adoption

of a series of specific reform measures, the non-aligned

countries hoped to contribute to the transformation of

the United Nations into an instrument capable of

23 06-53329

addressing the new challenges and threats confronting

the international community.

First of all, we have seen the creation of the

Peacebuilding Commission, an innovative institutional

mechanism that has long been lacking in the

Organization. We saw also the establishment of the

Human Rights Council, which also marks progress for

the international community as it seeks to achieve

universal respect for all human rights. However, a great

deal remains to be done in order to attain the objectives

which have been set in the reform process.

Thus, it is important that we strengthen our

efforts in order to succeed at this session in achieving

comprehensive agreement on pending issues, in

particular reform of the Security Council. Through

such comprehensive reform, the Security Council

should become more representative in its membership,

more democratic and more transparent in its

functioning and more in harmony with the positions of

the General Assembly, in order to provide greater

legitimacy to its decisions and to enhance its

effectiveness.

The peoples of the United Nations had hoped that

the celebration of the Organization’s sixtieth

anniversary would return us to the principles and

purposes of the Charter, and enable us to re-draw the

plans it outlined. But today’s world is full of

uncertainty and too many problems still weigh upon it.

It is confronted with more threats than ever — all of

them equally dangerous — which must be addressed in

a consistent manner in order to better determine their

root causes and thus to enable the international

community to act with determination to eliminate them

for good.

That is true for terrorism, which continues to

strike communities with its well-known horror and

cruelty and without distinction as to race, sex or

religion. The fight against that scourge, from which no

country is safe, requires unified cooperation at both the

regional and international level, using clear and

complementary approaches.

Algeria, which has long suffered from terrorist

violence — to which some have reacted with

indifference and others with complacency — can only

welcome the fact that the international community has

become aware of the seriousness of the threat of

terrorism upon international peace and security. It

stresses the urgency of concluding a comprehensive

convention against international terrorism, which

should contain an unequivocal definition of that

scourge and draw a distinction between the legitimate

struggle of peoples against foreign occupation, on the

one hand, and on the other, acts perpetrated by terrorist

groups or individuals, and which would be careful not

to confuse that scourge with any particular religion,

civilization or geographic area.

I would like to reiterate our legitimate concern as

we are faced with the deadlock of the multilateral

disarmament process, and the disagreement that has

emerged, here and there, on the issue of the non-

proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The goal

has remained the same. Disarmament must be overall

and complete and under effective international control.

The policy of nuclear non-proliferation must be

pursued in both its horizontal and vertical dimensions

and those countries that have voluntarily given up the

military nuclear option have the right to expect security

guarantees and free access without discrimination to

nuclear technology for peaceful uses.

In the Western Sahara, the last territory which

must be decolonized in Africa, the Saharan people

remain deprived of their inalienable right to self-

determination, as enshrined in the Charter and relevant

United Nations resolutions. Just as in 1991 with the

adoption of the Settlement Plan, in 2003 the

international community, after the unanimous adoption

by the Security Council of the peace plan proposed by

Mr. James Baker, former Personal Envoy of the

Secretary-General for Western Sahara, the United

Nations had the hope of seeing a just and lasting

settlement to the conflict. But today we must note that

no positive evolution of that conflict has taken place,

because of the rejection of the peace plan by one of the

two parties to the conflict and its desire to prejudge to

its advantage, the final status of the territory — a status

which can only be determined through a referendum on

self-determination.

Algeria, which has no claims whatsoever on that

territory and is not in any way involved in the

conflict — which has only two parties as designated by

the international community, namely, the Kingdom of

Morocco and the Polisario Front — has taken note of

the unanimous adoption by the Security Council of

resolution 1675 (2006), which reaffirms the right to

self-determination of the Saharan people. Deeply

respectful of the “Declaration on the Granting of

Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples” as

06-53329 24

contained in General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV)

of 14 December 1960, Algeria will continue to support

all efforts designed to enable the Saharan people to

exercise their right to self-determination with full

sovereignty in conditions that are incontestably free

and transparent.

In another area, the outcome of the seventh

African Union Summit in Banjul shows a mixed record

concerning the development of various crises and other

conflicts situations on the continent, in particular in the

Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,

the Sudan and Somalia. Serious efforts are being

deployed in order to promote interaction between the

United Nations and the African Union, in order to

effectively deal with those situations, which have often

shown themselves to be complicated and difficult.

What is more important — a culture of peace is

developing throughout Africa as a result of a renewal

and recovery, the foundations of which were

established by African leaders of the region through the

creation of the African Union and the New Partnership

for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

In that light, it is extremely important to insure

that the peaceful settlement of the crisis in Darfur, with

full respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity

of the Sudan and in keeping with the Abuja accord,

move hand in hand with harmonious action based on

the good will of all, in particular of the African Union

and the United Nations.

The question of development is, rightly, one of

the highest priorities of the United Nations agenda, in

particular following the adoption in September 2000 of

the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). So, too is

the eradication of poverty, which weighs heavily upon

the conscience of mankind. However, the gap that

exists to date between the goals and the progress

achieved is such that decisive efforts are essential in

order to insure that Africa will achieve its goals by the

year 2015. Similar great efforts are required from the

developed countries to honour their commitments

undertaken at the time of the Millennium Summit,

the International Conference on Financing for

Development held in Monterrey, as well as the 2005

World Summit.

At the time of the sixtieth anniversary of the

creation of the Organization, all of us realized that the

world had profoundly changed and that it was

necessary to adjust our activities to the new realities.

Faced with the many challenges and structural threats

of our time, the 2005 World Summit gave us a clear

diagnosis and prescribed the necessary remedies. One

year later — the state of the world today further

stresses how acute the problems are and the urgency of

solving them. It makes it crystal clear that it would be

pointless to dwell on the uncertainties and imbalances,

as well as the precarious situations that have become

an inextricable part of the fabric of international

society, unless we want to doom that society to chronic

instability and insecurity.

Truthfully, the imperfect achievements and

limited gains made by the international community, at

a time when globalization has greatly shrunk both time

and space, demand of us that we view the future with

genuine resolve, concerning what has to be done, rather

than resign ourselves to what merely appears possible.

In that connection, there is no alternative to a truly

democratic reform of the United Nations that includes

the participation of all countries. There is no viable

option other than a globalization based upon peace and

prosperity that benefits all of humankind.