Argentina, 2009

I must confess that, when I arrived in this

city to participate in this session of the General

Assembly, I had intended to begin my statement with a

strong appeal on the need to rebuild multilateralism

and cooperation as the two basic instruments to

overcome what today is undoubtedly the central issue

in our global discussion, namely, overcoming the social

and economic crisis.

However, certain events on Monday and Tuesday

oblige me to begin my statement by reporting that the

Embassy of the Argentine Republic in Tegucigalpa,

Republic of Honduras, had its electricity cut off some

two days ago. That, of course, was not because we had

not paid the bill, but was for far more serious reasons.

Next to the Argentine Embassy is a television

studio which broadcast the news of President Zelaya’s

arrival in Honduras, the repression and the

demonstrations in favour of the return of democracy.

That was one of the reasons. In any event, we have had

better luck than the Embassy of the sister Republic of

Brazil, where, at an early stage they cut off not only

the electricity but the water as well — for having given

shelter to the constitutional President, Manuel Zelaya.

As a Latin American, I must recall that not even

in Chile during the dictatorship of General Pinochet, or

in Argentina during the dictatorship of General Jorge

Rafael Videla — perhaps the two cruelest dictatorships

in Latin America — was there similar behaviour

against embassies that were actively working to give

shelter to refugees.

I say this because it is crucial that we realize that

we must design and forge a multilateral strategy which

is strong and specific to return democracy to Honduras.

We need a strategy which would actually allow for true

respect for human rights and ensure free and

democratic elections — which can take place only with

full respect for the constitution. If we do not do this,

we would be setting a harsh precedent in a region

where, for decades during the national security

doctrine, suspensions of democracy claimed the lives

of thousands and thousands of Latin Americans, led to

the exile of many other and created the region’s most

serious economic and social tragedy in memory.

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I make this appeal because I played an active role

from the platform of the Organization of American

States, and also accompanied the former President of

the General Assembly, Father Miguel d’Escoto

Brockmann, to El Salvador in order to carry out a task

which would safeguard two basic values which, in my

opinion, our region has managed to develop:

democracy and respect for human rights.

Therefore, I believe that multilateralism would

also mean understanding that we have to set common

and general rules in this globalized world that must be

accepted by all countries. In this case, we are faced

with a cynical media coup which was carefully hidden

or minimized because, in fact, it was slanted against

the advent of populist progressive Governments in the

region. I believe that, for all of us, defining

multilateralism is going to require specific actions and

rules so that absolutely all of us will have the same

parameters when it comes time to judge conduct,

attitudes and institutional situations.

Yesterday I took part in the climate change event

convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in order

to bring positions closer together with a view to the

Copenhagen Conference, which will take place in a

little more than 10 weeks’ time. A decade and a half

ago we agreed on the United Nations Framework

Convention on Climate Change, dealing with

environmental protection, and we later adopted the

Kyoto Protocol in order to begin ensuring respect for

those obligations undertaken by nations. A decade and

a half later, it is clear that neither agreement is being

satisfactorily implemented.

Essentially, this is sometimes because the nations

most responsible for pollution and gas emissions,

which should bear greater responsibility for reducing

those emissions, in terms of investments both in their

own countries and in developing countries, cannot

come to an agreement either. As I was saying yesterday

in our meeting, I think we need to understand that the

only possibility of successfully approaching

globalization lies precisely in the setting of common

rules which would be respected by all nations,

developed and developing.

In this framework, we should mention the

situation of the Argentine Republic, where we still

have a colonial enclave, our Malvinas Islands, which

persists without the possibility of addressing the

question of sovereignty together with the United

Kingdom, as proclaimed in many General Assembly

resolutions. We were recently able to agree, following

a humanitarian request, that family members with

loved ones buried on the islands should be able to

travel there by air to inaugurate a cenotaph to pay

tribute to those who fought for their homeland.

All of this points to the very clear need to look at

multilateralism not only as a type of rhetorical

statement repeated every year in this or other

multilateral forums, but rather in terms of concrete

results. Otherwise, it will become increasingly

complicated, with ever more unresolved problems. For,

in the final analysis, the multilateralism we have been

persistently proclaiming since 2003 has not been put

into practice.

My country and the United States are the only

two countries to have experienced attacks of

international terrorism. For Argentina, the first was in

1992, at the Embassy of Israel, and the second was at

the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA).

Hundreds of people died in those attacks. Today, in this

Assembly, I am joined by the head of AMIA, the entity

that was bombed, as well as by family members who

have accompanied him.

In 2007, then-President Néstor Kirchner came

here to the Assembly (see A/62/PV.5) to call on the

Islamic Republic of Iran to agree to extradite officials

of its country wanted by the Argentine justice system

in order to carry out a proper investigation and assign

responsibility for that serious attack. Last year, I

myself came here (see A/63/PV.5) to call once again on

the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran to

accede to our request. I said that there were

constitutional guarantees in my country; that the

principle that no one is guilty until proven guilty

beyond a shadow of a doubt prevails from one end of

my country to the other; and that we have guarantees

for freedom and the administration of justice.

Nevertheless, that did not happen. Instead, this year,

one of the officials whose extradition was sought by

the prosecutor on the case was promoted to minister.

I know that some 4, 5 or 15 speakers from now

the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran will take

the floor. Surely, he will once again deny tragedies that

occurred in the course of western history in the

twentieth century. He will surely invoke the threat of

other imperialisms. And he will also surely invoke

God. I would like to say to him that my country, the

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Argentine Republic, is not an imperialist country —

neither by way of belief nor as a reflection of our

history. To the contrary, ours is a country that suffered

from colonial oppression at its founding. During the

world’s bipolar era, we also suffered from the doctrine

of national security. I would like to tell him that, like

him, I believe in God. We may do so in different faiths

but, in the end, I believe that neither of us believes that

God could command us to prefer threats or to avoid

justice from being done.

As President of the Argentine Republic, therefore,

I humbly reiterate once again our appeal for the

extradition of the officials whom Argentina’s justice

system believes are responsible — not to be found

guilty, but to be judged and to be allowed to take

advantage of all the rights and guarantees that every

Argentine citizen and foreigner has in our country:

guarantees under democracy, whose unconditional

defence Argentina has made part of its institutional and

historical core.

I would not wish to conclude without referring to

three events that I believe are very positive, which I

would like to share with the members of the Assembly

today. The first took place quite recently, on

9 September, when the Argentine Republic received a

visit from the Inter-American Commission on Human

Rights, including its Chair and the President of the

Inter-American Court of Human Rights. That visit

occurred 30 years after the Court’s first visit, during

the dictatorship, when it came to investigate the crimes

that were being committed and to take complaints from

Argentine citizens — including our Minister for

Foreign Affairs, who is with me today and who, like

his father, was imprisoned at that time — and to hear

testimony about the serious violations that were taking

place.

Thirty years later, the men who comprised the

Commission and the men and women who are its

members today visited an Argentina where criminals

responsible for genocide under the dictatorship are

being tried by judges in accordance with the

Constitution. We have also reached an agreement with

the Inter-American Court to send a bill to our

legislature — which I have already done — to

eliminate the crime of libel and defamation against

journalists. That is homage to the freedom of

expression and of the press. But I also firmly believe

that it should apply to all citizens. It is offensive that,

in the twenty-first century, someone could be sentenced

to prison for having said something and said it freely.

We have also reached an agreement to send up

two bills — which we have also already done — to

contribute to the recovery of children born in captivity

during the dictatorship. Those will include provisions

to ensure respect for the victims, as well as on society’s

collective right to learn their identities.

The second thing that I would like to share has to

do with the fact that I listened today to the President of

the United States speak about an issue that is crucial to

world peace and security, as well as to the rights of the

Palestinian people. It is also a key component of a

strategy against international terrorism, which, as ever,

we continue to condemn. It is genuinely satisfying, and

a salve to the soul, to hear from the mouth of the

President of the United States of America that there is a

need for the Palestinian people to be able to live on

their land free of settlements of any kind, as well as,

clearly, a right for Israel’s citizens to live in peace

within their borders. The words of the President and

the timely message he delivered at Cairo University,

which many here likely followed with interest, place us

in a position that we have not occupied for many years,

namely, the possibility of beginning negotiations —

successful ones, I hope — between the Palestinian

Authority and the Government of Israel to at last

resolve a key issue for international peace and security,

namely, the Palestinian question.

Lastly, I would like to tell the Assembly that, as a

member of the Group of 20 (G-20), which will meet

tomorrow in Pittsburgh, we would like to call for the

presence of another multilateral body to be heard from

at those meetings: the International Labour

Organization. In the two previous G-20 meetings, there

was a great deal of discussion about the financial

crisis. However, as we did then, we continue to believe

that a key issue is to once again discuss the real

economy. That is why we believed it timely that

workers and business owners, as genuine actors in the

real economy and as catalysts to re-energizing it,

should be heard from as well in those forums,

alongside officials from multilateral credit institutions

and the World Bank.

We are genuinely convinced that there is a need

to build a new multilateralism in which all of us are

genuinely on an equal footing; where rights and

obligations and the road map for the course to be taken

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are the same for rich and poor countries alike; and

where the rights and responsibilities of developing

countries are the same as those of developed States. We

therefore agreed that equal rules of the game for the

entire world was one of the basic elements of ensuring

success in building multilateralism. If we do not

achieve this, we will continue with these rhetorical

exercises year after year, but we will never achieve the

results that are not a right but an obligation for all of us

who make up this body.

In conclusion, democracy, the defence of human

rights, and equal rules for all countries in the world are

the three key elements to building a new

multilateralism. These three requirements must be

equal and the same for all countries, but above all for

those that, through their own actions and because of

their level of social and economic development, lead

the major developed countries of the world.

It is clear that those who have the greatest

responsibility and hold the greatest leadership roles —

won through military, technological, economic and

even cultural power — also have an obligation to

exercise that leadership in a responsible manner. This

is what we, the developing and emerging countries,

feel, and what we ask of the major nations of the

world. They have the responsibility to build this world.

This will no doubt be echoed in all our speeches, but

this building must be done every day through our

decisions and concrete actions.