Australia, 1998

On behalf of the Foreign

Minister of Australia, Mr. Alexander Downer, who is

unable to be here because of our national election next

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week, I would like to extend warm congratulations to you,

Sir, on your election as President of the General Assembly

at its fifty-third session. Your country, Uruguay, has given

consistent and strong support to the United Nations, and

your own expertise and contribution to the development of

international law in particular is widely recognized. We

know that we are in good hands, just as we were last year

with your predecessor, Hennadiy Udovenko. Like him, you

may count on Australiaâs support as you carry out your

responsibilities and work to guide us towards constructive

and worthwhile outcomes.

As was very clear from the range of issues addressed

on the first day and again this morning in the general

debate, you take up the presidency, Sir, at a time when the

agenda before the United Nations is more challenging than

it has ever been. Australia is very concerned about many of

those challenges and issues. But today I want to focus

particularly on the subject of non-proliferation and

disarmament, where recent events have brought us to a

crossroads in our attempts to steer the world away from the

threat of weapons of mass destruction.

Although we heard some pessimistic perspectives

yesterday, in Australiaâs view the progress that the

international community has made in the field of arms

control and disarmament over recent decades has, in fact,

been remarkable — a trend to which the end of the cold

war lent added impetus. Many bilateral, regional and

international agreements have been concluded, all making

a contribution to making our world more secure. Those

achievements were driven by the realization that we must

work with determination towards a situation where the right

to self-defence of all nations, which is, after all, enshrined

in the United Nations Charter, must be ensured at the

lowest possible level of conventional armament and without

recourse at all to weapons of mass destruction. Events

which have moved against the tide of this progress have

been relatively rare, but when they have occurred they have

stood in stark contrast to the preferred direction of the

international community.

A survey of the progress made to date in the field of

arms control and disarmament points to two key

conclusions. The first is self-evident: there is more work to

be done. The second is perhaps easier to overlook. In the

face of periodic setbacks and challenges, it is vitally

important, and in the security interests of all countries, that

we stay the course on arms control and disarmament, that

we not underestimate or take for granted the value of what

has been achieved to date, and that we maintain the broad-

based political commitment to the norms and institutions

that we have put in place or have yet to build.

A stock-take of progress in arms control and

disarmament over recent decades leaves no doubt about

the positive direction in which the community is moving

in building a global security architecture. In addition to

agreements on conventional arms limitation and

transparency measures, the balance sheet for weapons of

mass destruction is particularly impressive.

A Treaty banning an entire category of weapons of

mass destruction — the Chemical Weapons

Convention — was successfully negotiated and has

attracted widespread support, and efforts are under way to

strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention.

A milestone Treaty now exists — the

Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) —

which bans all nuclear-weapon test explosions and all

other nuclear explosions.

Long called-for by political leaders from across all

regions, hard-negotiated in the Conference on

Disarmament and finally adopted by the Assembly by an

overwhelming majority two years ago, the CTBT has now

attracted the adherence of over 150 States, and its

institutional fabric is being steadily established.

The cornerstone of the nuclear non-proliferation

regime — the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear

Weapons (NPT) — has been extended indefinitely and

has achieved near-universal membership, and agreement

has been reached to commence negotiations to ban the

production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons.

In another area, under the strategic arms reductions

process, or START, and consistent with article VI of the

NPT, deep cuts have been made in the cold-war arsenals

of the two largest possessors of nuclear weapons, bringing

closer the day when plurilateral and multilateral phases of

nuclear disarmament can realistically be envisaged.

With START I almost fully implemented, the United

States and the Russian Federation, from which we have

just heard, have more than halved their holdings of

strategic nuclear warheads over the past decade. START

III will bring those same arsenals down to some 80 per

cent below cold-war peaks. It is clearly very important for

START II to enter into force quickly so that planning for

implementation can begin, ensuring there is no

interruption to the nuclear disarmament process.

The international nuclear safeguards systems have

also been strengthened, enhancing international confidence

in the integrity of this regime and its ability to detect and

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deter non-compliance with non-proliferation obligations.

And finally, a treaty banning landmines — what some have

called weapons of mass destruction in slow motion — has

been concluded.

On the other side of the ledger, the non-proliferation

and disarmament regimes have had to withstand serious

challenges from the Democratic Peopleâs Republic of Korea

and from Iraq, and the progress towards a universal no-

nuclear-testing norm has been seriously jolted by sporadic

outbreaks of testing, most recently by India and Pakistan.

Unresolved regional tensions in South Asia and the Middle

East continue to bedevil and to thwart the attainment of the

goal of universal membership of the NPT. While being

justifiably dismayed at the disdain of the few for the clearly

expressed will of the international community, we can also

draw encouragement from the strength of our national and

collective responses to these challenges and the resilience

of the regimes when so challenged.

It is vitally important that we stay the course, that we

ensure that such events amount to no more than temporary

deviations from the near-universally accepted norm against

the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We

believe that this is in Australiaâs national interest and in the

interest of international and regional security to uphold the

nuclear and other non-proliferation regimes and to continue

to do our utmost to pursue effective measures to reduce and

eliminate the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.

In a strange way, the periodic setbacks to these efforts

serve to underscore the value of the progress made to date.

The very existence of the NPT, and its near-universal

membership, highlights the unacceptability of embarking

upon a nuclear-weapon programme in todayâs world.

Similarly, it is the very existence of the CTBT, and the

near-universal point of view it represents — namely, that

nuclear testing should be a thing of the past — that

rendered more powerful the widespread disapproval of the

spate of nuclear tests earlier this year. The new ratifications

which the CTBT attracted following the South Asian

nuclear tests were eloquent testimony to the confidence of

the international community in and its commitment to the

no-testing norm.

Australia would like to take this public opportunity to

congratulate Brazil and to welcome it as the most recent

member of the family of NPT nations. We call on that

handful of States remaining outside the NPT to reflect on

the possibility that the 187 countries which have decided

that the NPT provides greater security than the nuclear-

weapons option might be right, and that they — the

outsiders — might be wrong. Australia also calls on them

to consider how much more seriously their national

security interests would be degraded in a world where the

overwhelming majority of States had not embraced the

nuclear non-proliferation norm.

My country, as I think is well known, has long been

a very firm supporter of universal adherence to treaties on

international weapons of mass destruction. We have

signed all 13 multilateral arms control and disarmament

treaties and ratified all of these bar one; ratification of the

Ottawa Convention on landmines, I am happy to say, is

in progress. Only four other countries can match this

record. We remain committed to making a difference

where and when we can in building consensus on the way

forward, and we will continue to be as diligent and as

creative as possible across the full range of arms-control

and disarmament issues.

Our focus, for those who know us well, is always on

results rather than rhetoric and on making pragmatic

contributions where we can, illustrated by the sort of

contributions that we have made to helping to negotiate

the key Conventions to which I have referred and by our

support for building and strengthening the institutions

which work in various ways to support international arms-

control and disarmament goals — institutions such as the

United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the

Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization

(KEDO), the Association of South-East Asian Nations

(ASEAN) Regional Forum and the nuclear safeguards

system.

Experience has shown that these regimes cannot be

taken for granted. The existing regimes need continual

care, maintenance and vigilance to ensure that they

remain effective and that political and financial

commitment to them remains strong.

In the NPT area, for example, further work is needed

to maintain the strength of the Treaty and to go on to

achieve its full implementation and universality. The sixth

Review Conference, in the year 2000, following on the

recent serious challenges to the non-proliferation norm, to

which I have referred, will be one of the most significant

in the history of the Treaty. But even if we have a

distance to go in terms of the Treatyâs value, surely no

one would argue that the world would be a safer place

without it. Nor could it be argued that the negotiation of

the Treaty back in the late 1960s, and the maintenance

and strengthening of the Treaty ever since, has not been

worth the effort.

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And to those few who persist with the tired refrain

that the NPT is a discriminatory Treaty, we say “Yes, it is”,

and for one excellent reason: the NPT allows a temporary

state of discrimination between the nuclear-weapon States

and the rest of us because, quite simply, the alternative was,

and still is, too horrible to contemplate. We might lament

that because of the cold war the state of discrimination

lasted far too long, but we surely cannot argue that the

alternative scenario would have made the world a safer

place than it is today. For it was a commonplace of

political forecasts in the 1960s, when nuclear weapons were

a legitimate security option for any State, that over 20

States, including my own, Australia, would likely choose to

exercise that option.

And it is surely perverse, when the titanic arsenals of

nuclear weapons accumulated during the cold war are at

last being drastically cut, to act against the tide of

disarmament by pursuing the nuclear option.

Similarly, no one could argue that we would be better

off without a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Its

conclusion, its signature by the five nuclear-weapon States

and its ratification to date by two are major

achievements — all the more reason to press ahead with

the establishment of the Treatyâs implementation and

verification structures.

A strong start has been made in implementing the

Chemical Weapons Convention. Its effectiveness is already

amply demonstrated, but we need continued political will

and financial commitment, as well as the additional

ratifications and accessions, for the full security benefits of

the Convention to be realized.

Similarly, the Biological Weapons Convention is

weakened by its lack of verification and compliance

provisions. Work is now under way in the Ad Hoc Group

negotiations to rectify this deficiency. We strongly support

this Ad Hoc Group and are working together with others to

produce an effective and workable protocol to strengthen

the Biological Weapons Convention.

One of the things that we have been doing — and

people may have seen the reference to a meeting about this

in todayâs Journal — has been to work collaboratively with

many other countries to convene an informal meeting of

Foreign Ministers. This informal meeting is going to be

held tomorrow, here in New York, and it represents the

determination of many countries, at high political levels, to

work together to bring us closer to the goal of an early

conclusion of an effective protocol to strengthen the

Biological Weapons Convention.

In conjunction with the international communityâs

efforts to achieve full implementation and universality of

existing regimes, we also need new, reinforcing and

complementary steps to achieve our overall arms control

and disarmament goals.

Commencement of negotiations for a fissile material

cut-off treaty is an excellent example of how we should

be moving forward in this respect. We see it as the next

logical step after the CTBT, and it is one to which we

hope the Assembly will lend unequivocal support and

encouragement. The recent agreement in the Conference

on Disarmament in Geneva to commence negotiations on

a cut-off treaty demonstrates, we believe, the resilience of

the non-proliferation regime under pressure. It gives the

lie to those who recently pronounced it dead. It is a sign

of the international community reaffirming its faith in the

non-proliferation principle to which it has been committed

for the past 30 years.

I want to refer very briefly to three more subjects:

United Nations reform, human rights and peacekeeping.

Like most other Member States, we want this

Organization to work better. Some progress has been

made. We welcomed the agreement reached on key

elements of the Secretary-Generalâs reform package.

Indeed, we worked hard and quietly to help bring this

about. But it is now very important to ensure that what

has been agreed is effectively implemented — that the

task force and the reviews of specific aspects of United

Nations organizations all actually produce concrete

outcomes and that real change does in fact occur.

Critical to the achievement of real reform will be the

resolution of the ongoing problem of non-payment of

arrears in financial contributions. The failure of many

Member States, including the major contributor, to

address this situation hinders all our efforts to strengthen

this Organization.

Also, much of the reform process to us appears to

have been focused on rationalizing and refining structures

and mechanisms and on administrative measures. We

think that the next phase of the reform process has to give

much more structured thought — and I believe that this

is what the Secretary-General has in mind in his

presentations to date on the Millennium Assembly — to

the kind of United Nations we expect and want in the

decades to come. A thorough review of priorities is

overdue. Although the lofty ideals enshrined in the United

Nations Charter remain as valid as ever, we need to give

serious thought to modernizing the ways in which we

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give effect to those objectives in terms of operational

activities.

Australia is concerned, like so many others who have

spoken in the general debate to date, that the debate on

Security Council reform has stalled. We have had an

exhaustive — but, regrettably, inconclusive — discussion

over the last year. It is time now to move beyond general

discussion to serious negotiation of a reform package, one

which will usher in a remodelled Council that is more

representative, transparent and suited to the new

millennium. This will require serious engagement and

flexibility from all involved. My Government remains

committed to finding ways to move the debate forward.

Those of you who were here at last yearâs session of

the General Assembly may recall that Foreign Minister

Downer raised the issue of electoral groups. We continue

to assert that this is an important element in the reform

debate. It is over 30 years since the last significant change

was made to the regional groups. The drawbacks of the

present configuration are becoming more and more obvious:

substantial disparities in the size of the various groups and

an inadequate level of representation available to many

subregions, including Australiaâs own geographical area of

East Asia and the Pacific. We have noted that there is

gathering interest among Member States in this subject, and

we think it is time that we recognized it as an element of

reform which needs to be addressed. Changing the groups

to reflect better contemporary realities and the interests of

the current membership will, we recognize, require careful

thought and patient discussion, and it is simply far too early

to put forward any particular formula. But we suggest we

could begin by discussing the principles on which a new

system could be built and by exchanging views in a

thoughtful and non-acrimonious way on how we might take

the process forward.

The year 1998 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights and also 50 years

of United Nations peacekeeping. Australiaâs commitment to

upholding the fundamental human rights enshrined in the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains as strong

now as it was in 1948, when the Declaration was

proclaimed. Members may not know that Australia was one

of the eight countries tasked with the drafting of the

Declaration and that we also played an important role in

ensuring that human rights provisions were included in the

United Nations Charter. Fifty years ago, the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights represented a common

statement of goals and aspirations, a vision of the world as

the international community would want it to become.

We still believe in that vision and we see the fiftieth

anniversary as a time for the international community to

reaffirm its commitment to this powerful document.

Similarly, the 50 years of United Nations peacekeeping

gives us an opportunity to recognize how far the

institution of peacekeeping has come, to take stock of the

lessons we have learnt from the past and, perhaps most

importantly, to pay tribute to over 1,500 peacekeepers

who have made the ultimate sacrifice for a safer and

more peaceful world.

Whether we are talking of old problems or new

ones, whether we are analysing setbacks or successes, or

marking anniversaries, the annual stocktake which this

general debate represents offers the opportunity not for a

series of set speeches unrelated to each other and ticking

off a lot of subjects, but rather a chance to remind

ourselves of what the United Nations stands for, to

recognize what has been achieved to date, and to

recommit ourselves for the future to protecting and

advancing those achievements.

I have focused today on disarmament not only as an

area of the utmost priority for Australia and Australians,

but also as one where we believe we can add value. But

the parallels and lessons of disarmament and non-

proliferation hold good for other areas of the United

Nations activities.

I said at the very outset that the international

community was at a crossroads in our attempts to build

an international dispensation in which the threat of mass

destruction had no place. The achievements of the last 30

years in setting in place treaties, institutions and norms to

ensure that we move in that direction are impressive. But

they are not invulnerable. Inadequate verification, non-

compliance, aberrant behaviour, budget fatigue, reform

fatigue failure of political will — all of these things have

the potential to unravel and to undermine what we have

built together. Effective arms control, disarmament and

non-proliferation — like all the other subjects that are

being addressed from this rostrum — require large

investments of political and economic capital. It might be

natural at times, particularly challenging and worrying

times such as we are currently experiencing, to wonder if

it is worth the cost. Brief consideration of the alternatives

is surely enough to convince us that the answer is

undoubtedly “yes”.

To do otherwise would be to betray not only the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights which we are

commemorating, but also the very principles of the

United Nations Charter.