Chad, 2009

On

behalf of my delegation and in my own name, I would

like to offer the President our warmest congratulations

on his brilliant election to the presidency of the

General Assembly at its sixty-fourth session. It would

be remiss not to express our pride and our pleasure at

the election of the representative of a neighbour

country, brother and friend of Chad. I am referring to

the brother Ali Treki of the great Libyan Arab

Jamahiriya. With his qualities and his long and rich

diplomatic experience, he will find it easy to lead our

work with tact. Through me, the Chadian delegation

assures him of its full cooperation in discharging his

difficult but very lofty task.

I would also like to express our gratitude to his

predecessor for having led the work of the sixty-third

session with skill and perception. Allow me also to pay

due tribute to our Secretary-General, His Excellency

Ban Ki-moon, for his tireless commitment to the work

of defending and promoting the ideals of our

Organization.

From this rostrum, delegations at the sixty-third

session deplored the food, energy and financial crises

that had struck our countries, the consequences of

which were felt differently according to each country’s

level of development. What conclusions should we

draw after a year of intense mobilization, cooperation

and work to overcome those crises?

For us poor States, those crises remain genuine

obstacles to achieving the Millennium Development

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Goals to which we all committed, in particular for the

financing of our development strategies. Despite the

great international mobilization, there is a risk that the

poor countries will fail to meet the 2015 deadline. That

is all the more worrying as the situation persists and

remains the focus of international debates. The

situation continues to also generate consequences that

endanger the implementation of the Monterrey

Consensus, in particular official development

assistance, commercial trade, the debt of the countries

of the South and world trade.

We cannot say it often enough: the developing

countries will continue to pay dearly for an economic

crisis that they did not cause. The international

community must therefore urgently step up its efforts

to alleviate the difficulties that those countries face.

Another major issue of concern, one no less

significant, is the negative impacts of climate change

on the world in general and on developing countries, in

particular the most vulnerable. There too our countries

are victims of a phenomenon caused by the major

greenhouse gas producers, which are the industrialized

countries. We feel those effects daily as the greatest

disaster for our environment, our agriculture, our

livestock farming — in short, for the life of our

populations in the form of famines and all kinds of

illnesses.

The most significant example is the risk of the

complete disappearance of Lake Chad if the

international community does not resolutely commit to

helping us save its world heritage. In 40 years, the

surface area of Lake Chad has shrunk from 25,000 to

less than 3,000 square kilometres. The countries of the

Lake Chad Basin Commission expect the international

community to come to the support of their plan to save

the lake, including by implementing the project to

divert the waters of the Oubangui River in the Central

African Republic to feed Lake Chad.

At the initiative of His Excellency the President

of the Republic, the Head of State, Chad has committed

to planting 10 million trees a year to fight

desertification. That programme, which is part of the

transcontinental project of the Green Great Wall

initiated by the Community of Sahelo-Saharan States,

needs the international community’s support.

Turning to the issue of the settlement of disputes,

while we welcome the progress made here and there,

that is unfortunately not the case for the situation

prevailing in Darfur, which is of serious concern to my

Government. Regarding the African continent, we

reaffirm our support and our readiness to contribute to

all joint actions of the African Union and the United

Nations for the peaceful and lasting settlement of those

conflicts. Indeed, we welcome the initiative recently

undertaken by the Leader of the Libyan Revolution,

President of the African Union, to convene in Tripoli a

special meeting devoted to the consideration and

settlement of conflicts in Africa.

With respect to the question of Palestine, we urge

and encourage our Organization to continue with

greater resolve its efforts towards backing the

conclusion of a peace agreement providing for the

peaceful coexistence of two sovereign States, in

accordance with the principles of international law and

of the United Nations Charter. This is an opportunity to

welcome the commitment of the new American

Administration, under the leadership of President

Barack Obama, to restoring peace to that region long

torn by war.

The new approach to international relations

adopted by the American Administration should also

lead to a new attitude towards Cuba, burdened for

decades by an economic, trade and financial embargo

that is no longer justified today. That is why Chad

wishes the United States of America to rapidly lift the

embargo, which runs counter to the new vision of the

world and to the great principles championed by our

Organization.

Turning now to the crisis in Darfur and our

relations with the Sudan, we would again like to draw

the Assembly’s attention to the seriousness of the

situation, which hangs over the security of our borders

and threatens regional peace and security. The

repercussions of that crisis for security in the camps for

refugees and displaced persons in the east of my

country, for the environment, which is already

vulnerable in that part of the country in particular, and,

in general, for the social and economic development of

my country are quite evident.

The other consequence of that crisis, and not a

minor one, is the phenomenon of child soldiers, who

are very often recruited against their will by the

various armed groups that hold sway in the region.

During its various campaigns, the Chadian national

army succeeded in freeing hundreds of such children

and entrusted them to UNICEF for care and reinsertion

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into civilian life. An inspection and awareness-raising

campaign has been undertaken in varying barracks

throughout the country in collaboration with UNICEF,

the United Nations and a number of diplomatic

missions present in N’Djamena to prevent this

phenomenon and curb it where is already exists.

These are the reasons that lead Chad to cooperate

closely with the United Nations and the international

community to find a solution to that situation, which

has lasted much too long. At the same time, this shows

how wrong it is to believe that my country fuels the

war in Darfur by giving support to Sudanese rebels

there.

Additionally, we would like to reiterate our

complete availability to cooperate with the United

Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and

Chad (MINURCAT) for the fulfilment of its mandate

in the east of our country. We condemn the delays in its

full deployment in the field and the ensuing difficulties

in ensuring effective security for vulnerable

populations such as refugees, displaced persons and

humanitarian workers. It is essential that parties

involved in this Mission step up their efforts to make

up for those delays, whose prolongation means daily

danger for the populations that all of us must protect.

We are very concerned by the uncertain future of

MINURCAT, and we wonder what the national

capacities might be to remedy the situation by

strengthening the operations for maintaining order and

security in zones covered by its mandate.

Regardless of MINURCAT’s efforts, or the

efforts of my country to improve the security of camps

for refugees and displaced persons, a genuine

settlement of the Darfur crisis can be only political in

order to enable refugees and the displaced to return to

their ancestral homelands.

That is why my country welcomes all initiatives

undertaken by the international community in this

regard. My Government has backed, and continues to

back, the Qatar process and welcomes the untiring

efforts by brother-leader Muammar Al-Qadhafi to

secure a political settlement of the crisis and, more

recently, to relaunch the Doha process. Along the same

line, we also welcome the recent American and

Egyptian initiatives.

The efforts of the international community to

normalize relations between our country and the Sudan

are also welcome. A great many agreements have been

signed by my country and the Sudan. All that remains

now is to implement them.

The fact that we have welcomed refugees fleeing

the war in Darfur and have facilitated actions of the

international community to assist them should not be

used as an alibi by our neighbour in any attempt to

destabilize us.

At the national level, the Government of Chad, on

the impetus provided by Mr. Idriss Deby Itno,

President of the Republic, Head of State, continues

political dialogue with the democratic opposition on

the basis of the 13 August 2007 agreement. In this

climate of shared trust we have just concluded a

population census with a view to organizing free and

transparent elections. A national independent electoral

commission composed of representatives of the

Government and the opposition has just been formed

and has already started its work.

Despite repeated attacks by mercenaries and

armed movements with support from abroad against

our territorial integrity and the democratically elected

institutions, the Government continues to advocate

reconciliation and national understanding. A number of

armed groups have regained legal status through

implementing the Sirte Agreement of 25 October 2007.

A great many others have committed themselves to this

path, which we welcome.

In conclusion, I would like to express the support

of my country for the appeal to this Assembly by the

President of the African Union for a just and fair

reform of the Security Council, a reform that would

take into account the legitimate aspirations of the

African continent and the evolution of the history of

relations among States.