Botswana, 2000

I congratulate the

President on behalf of the Botswana delegation on his

election to lead the fifty-fifth session of the General

Assembly. He can count on our support as he

discharges his onerous responsibilities during this

historic session and in the year that lies ahead.

I also take great pleasure in saluting my brother

and colleague, the outgoing President, Mr. Theo-Ben

Gurirab, for his outstanding leadership of the fifty-

fourth session of the General Assembly — the last

session of the twentieth century — and for steering it

to a successful conclusion.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has continued to

give a good accounting of himself as the chief

executive of this, our United Nations. We owe him a

debt of gratitude for the manner in which he has,

without fear or favour, led the United Nations during

the past four years.

Five years ago, in this very Hall, we celebrated

the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the United

Nations. On that historic occasion, the former President

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of the Republic of Botswana, Sir Ketumile Masire, had

this to say about the United Nations:

“The United Nations has served us well.

Small States such as my own have found in the

United Nations a vital forum for collective

bargaining. It has contributed to the advancement

of international cooperation in solving economic,

social, cultural and humanitarian problems. It is a

centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in

the attainment of these common ends.”

(A/50/PV.37, p. 3)

Botswana's faith in and commitment to the

United Nations remains undiminished, and we are here

on the eve of the new millennium to renew that faith

and to reaffirm that commitment.

The United Nations begins the new millennium

heavily laden with the residual problems of the

outgoing century. Even as we meet here, bloody

conflicts of varying degrees of intensity and savagery

are ravaging societies in many places around the globe.

Endemic poverty holds sway in the developing world,

in contrast with the lavish opulence of the West.

Diseases, the most virulent of which is the devastating

HIV/AIDS pandemic, have continued to cause untold

misery all over the world, particularly in sub-Saharan

Africa. All these problems pose a serious challenge to

the United Nations and to the international community

as a whole. The character of the twenty-first century

will no doubt be determined by our ability and

commitment to face this challenge.

On the African continent, the struggle for peace

and against war remains an all-consuming

preoccupation. The agendas of the United Nations

Security Council and the Organization of African Unity

(OAU) attest to this vexing state of affairs. All the

efforts of the leaders of Central and southern Africa,

which a little more than a year ago produced the

Lusaka Agreement aimed at bringing peace to the war-

torn region of Central Africa, have thus far come to

naught. There is no peace in the region because the

Agreement remains unimplemented even as the parties

have continued to profess their fidelity to it.

The United Nations now has the authorization of

the Security Council to deploy more than 5,000

observers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to

monitor the ceasefire and pave the way for the

deployment of a full-fledged peacekeeping force in the

near future.

A crucial element of the Lusaka Agreement,

among others, is that there must be dialogue in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo, among the people

of that country, if the international efforts spearheaded

by the United Nations and the OAU aimed at creating

conditions for national reconciliation in that country

are to bear fruit. Regrettably, there is no dialogue in

process in that country, although a facilitator has been

in place for nine months.

We hope the Congolese leaders will soon realize

that without the implementation in full of the Lusaka

Agreement, their country will be bereft of any hope for

peace. There may be no second chance. The Lusaka

Agreement is their only salvation.

The leaders of Burundi, next door to the

Democratic Republic of the Congo, recently gathered

in Arusha, United Republic of Tanzania, to make peace

under the facilitation of the former President of the

Republic of South Africa, Mr. Nelson Mandela. Their

gathering in Arusha attracted the presence of leaders

from near and far, including the President of the United

States of America, Mr. Bill Clinton.

Regrettably, the peace agreement reached was

embraced by some and denigrated by others, which

does not augur well for peace in Burundi. It is our

fervent hope that those who have not embraced the

Arusha peace agreement will do so. In having President

Mandela as Facilitator, the people of Burundi could not

have been more fortunate — and for the second time.

Before President Mandela, it was the late

President Mwalimu Nyerere, may his soul rest in

peace, who gave so much of himself for peace in

Burundi. Burundi may not be so fortunate a third time.

On that occasion, President Clinton had this to say: “So

I plead with you: you have to help your children

remember their history, but you must not force them to

relive their history.” Burundi would do well to heed

these words and save its children from the scourge of

endemic conflict.

The Great Lakes region of Central Africa needs

peace. The neighbours of the Democratic Republic of

the Congo and Burundi, all of them, will not have

peace so long as carnage continues in their backyard.

Angola will not have peace so long as its neighbours to

the north are strife-torn.

The United Nations is making steady progress in

Sierra Leone, following initial mishaps which

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threatened to reduce this Organization to an object of

ridicule. The size of the United Nations force in that

small country should be enough to frustrate the

murderous activities of the bandits of the

Revolutionary United Front (RUF). In the final

analysis, however, the future stability of Sierra Leone

cannot be imposed by the United Nations or even,

indeed, by the Economic Community of West African

States. It is the people of Sierra Leone themselves who

must embrace the logic of peace through national

dialogue and reconciliation.

The silence of the guns in the Horn of Africa in

the tragic war between Eritrea and Ethiopia could not

have been more welcome. The region has more than

enough problems without endless war. Famine is

stalking the area, evoking earlier episodes of human

devastation, particularly in Ethiopia and Somalia. In

peace, it is hoped the international community will be

able to assist the affected areas without hindrance. Our

hearts and best wishes go out to the people of Somalia

in their difficult endeavour to restore normalcy to their

fractured country. We hope the new central authority

they have established will be respected by all the

parties in the country.

The struggle for peace in Africa, if it is to be

successful, must be prosecuted on two fronts —

political and economic. On both fronts, I can assure

this Assembly that Africa is not a hopeless continent,

as some of our detractors would have the world

believe.

The Secretary-General's seminal report on the

causes of conflict in Africa has not fallen on deaf ears.

Our continent has been changing for the better for

some time now. Changing democratically elected

governments by unconstitutional means, whatever the

reason, is no longer tolerated. Coup makers are no

longer welcome in the councils of the OAU. We have

come to accept that good governance and the rule of

law, far from being regarded as sinister neo-colonialist

concepts as some may wish to stigmatize them, simply

mean accountability and transparency on the part of

those who are entrusted with the responsibility of

running the affairs of their nations. They mean

cultivating a culture of incorruptibility, openness and

tolerance.

On the economic front, I cannot gainsay the

obvious fact that people cannot eat democracy or good

governance. Democracy in an environment

characterized by abject poverty and ignorance is an

endangered species. Africa needs investment and aid to

buttress its democratization process. The challenge

facing the United Nations in the new century is

therefore to strive to ensure that Africa's difficult

renaissance is not simply encouraged but also

supported in material ways.

The western world would do well not simply to

shout at Africans, to pontificate about human rights

and good governance and deprecate the continent's

civil wars and endemic instability, from the privileged

comfort of Western Europe and North America.

Africans need and deserve hands-on solidarity and

constructive engagement with the developed world if

they are to succeed in their struggle for peace and

development.

Let me state the obvious. Small States like my

own derive a sense of security from our membership in

the United Nations. The United Nations is our shield

against the vagaries and predatory nature of world

politics. That is why we have been unstinting in the

fulfilment of our obligations to the Organization. We

pay our dues to the Organization without fail. We have

participated in its peacekeeping activities. And we have

defended it against its many detractors.

It is no secret, however, that this United Nations

to which we all habitually profess our unflinching

commitment and devotion is perpetually tottering on

the brink of insolvency. This is unfortunately so, even

as we equally habitually burden the Organization with

escalating tasks for it to perform on a shoestring

budget. The Secretary-General is right in challenging

us, the Member States, to hold one another responsible

for the financial difficulties faced by the United

Nations. We alone can resolve these difficulties. We

must honour our Charter obligations and do so without

conditions.

We must strengthen the United Nations in order

to secure our future, the future of mankind. We must

continually reform the Organization to adapt it to the

realities of the post-cold-war world and the new

millennium. A crucial part of this reform and

adaptation is the reconfiguration of the Security

Council, on which there is sufficient consensus in our

United Nations family. The Council needs a heavy dose

of democratization and accountability; about this, there

is no dissension.

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We must strengthen the peacekeeping arm of the

United Nations to make good or deliver on our

Charter's pledge “to save succeeding generations from

the scourge of war ...”. Peacekeeping has always been a

crucial function of the United Nations. And so the need

to enhance the rapid reaction of the United Nations to

conflict situations around the world has long been

recognized and is deeply felt. The lessons in Kosovo,

East Timor and, more recently, Sierra Leone have

taught us that the United Nations needs better trained

and well-equipped troops, as well as innovative,

imaginative and realistic mandates from the Security

Council.

Let there be no repetition of the kind of

humiliation the United Nations recently suffered in

Sierra Leone at the hands of a ragtag army of bandits.

The conflicts that are wreaking havoc on societies

today are radically different from those that

preoccupied the United Nations during the cold war

era. We must therefore devise new and creative

mechanisms and strategies for responding to them.

Let me conclude my statement by reiterating

Botswana's commitment to the United Nations and its

Charter. This Organization is irreplaceable, and I am

sure the presence here two weeks ago of so many world

leaders to mark the turn of a new millennium is more

than enough testimony to this obvious fact.