Chile, 1996

First of all, Sir, I wish to express our pleasure at seeing the

Minister for Foreign Affairs of Honduras — a country with

which we have long-standing and well-established ties of

friendship and with which we are currently working in the

Security Council — preside over this meeting. I would also

like through you to convey my Government's

congratulations to Ambassador Razali Ismail on his election

to the presidency of the General Assembly at its fifty-first

session.

This is a transitional period for the United Nations and

is therefore not devoid of complexities and uncertainty. Yet

we still have confidence in the ability of Member States

and in the privileged forum provided by this Organization

to develop new policies and management structures to deal

with the gamut of emerging international problems.

As this session of the General Assembly begins, we

once again renew our commitment to the principles and

purposes of the Charter, the living instrument essential to

the future work of this Organization. The United Nations is

an Organization which, through its nature, principles and

objectives, transcends any individual or national interests to

represent, instead, the interests of all.

Not even those who criticize the United Nations in the

hopes that they can weaken it or shrink its role have ever

been able to propose any better way for us to come

together to address the major problems of an increasingly

interdependent world. That is why we are convinced that,

far from becoming weaker, this Organization will be called

upon to play an increasingly important role in this new era

of globalization, in which cooperation is the only possible

option for a true international order.

International peace and security, free trade, social

development based on growth with equity, environmental

protection, democracy and human rights are the basic

components of the future work of our multilateral system.

These are the areas of action of our Organization to which

Chile attaches the highest priority and in which we will try,

within our means to make our greatest contribution.

It has often been said that the end of the super-Power

confrontation that characterized the first 50 years of the life

of this Organization makes it easier than ever to shape the

conditions for peace and stability. And yet, the challenges

of bipolar confrontation have been replaced by new ones

posed by the emergence of numerous local conflicts.

These are often characterized by mass violations of

human rights, uncontrolled population flows and

humanitarian emergencies that threaten the security of

individuals and States and eventually may affect the

international system as a whole.

Our participation in the work of the Security Council

is aimed at contributing our fair share to the maintenance

of international peace and security. We encourage

preventive diplomacy, consensus solutions, the

implementation of measures to contain conflicts, the

promotion of peaceful solutions through peace-keeping

operations, conciliation, good offices and, in particular,

the protection of affected populations and victims.

At the same time, it is indisputable that peace and

security are not simply the absence of tensions and

conflict between States. Harmony between people within

the same border has now become a fundamental factor in

international peace and security. Chile has suggested that

the Security Council should act in cases where there is a

real or potential risk of mass and systematic violations to

which the international community has reacted strongly

and when earlier mechanisms or bodies trying to resolve

the problem have been exhausted.

Recent measures adopted by the Council, such as

resolution 688 (1991) on protecting the Kurdish minority,

770 (1992) on providing assistance to victims of the

conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, resolution 986 (1995)

on alleviating the burden of sanctions on the civilian Iraqi

population, are a few examples of a broader and more

progressive interpretation of what constitutes a threat to

peace and establish valuable precedents for helping the

Security Council to deal with these kinds of conflict.

These criteria also guided us in our active

participation on the question of Burundi, which led to the

adoption of resolution 1072 (1996) establishing

procedures for the various parties to the conflict to be

able to agree on a political path to a peaceful resolution

of their differences. We must continue to pay close

attention to developments in this situation. The

international community, the United Nations and the

Security Council cannot risk another tragedy like that of

Rwanda and must exhaust all possible means of averting

such a tragedy.

Today we would also like to express our great

concern at the serious crisis that has arisen in the last few

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General Assembly 11th plenary meeting

Fifty-first session 26 September 1996

hours affecting the peace process in the Middle East, a

process we have supported from the outset. We urge the

parties to the conflict not to waste what has been built up

in the last few years and to resume dialogue within the

context of respect for agreements reached and for the

beliefs of the peoples involved.

Establishing stability requires clear commitment to

disarmament and arms control and limitation. My country

has played an active role in this area, as shown in the

recent ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention,

membership in the Conference on Disarmament, which

Chile had long aspired to, ratification of the Treaty on the

Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and our

unstinting support for nuclear-weapon-free zones.

Last Tuesday, 24 September 1996, I had the honour to

sign on behalf of my country the Comprehensive Nuclear-

Test-Ban Treaty. Just one year ago, this Assembly was

discussing the nuclear-weapon tests still being conducted in

the South Pacific and Asia. Today we are meeting to sign

a Treaty that eliminates those tests once and for all and is

the combined effort of almost all the countries in this

Assembly, including all the present nuclear-weapon States.

When the United Nations is criticized for its alleged

inefficiency I think we should also vaunt our successes.

These initiatives, along with progress in the area of

conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction,

help to create the right conditions for peace and security

and enable the international community to concentrate its

efforts and material resources on the development of

nations and environmental protection.

Peacekeeping operations are one of the most important

instruments of this system. Peacekeeping forces have to

strive for results in the framework of clear and well-defined

and legitimate mandates. Chile has participated in

peacekeeping operations in India, Pakistan, the Middle East,

Cambodia and Kuwait, and we are currently taking part in

the activities of the United Nations Special Commission

(UNSCOM) in Iraq.

However, there is no doubt that this mechanism needs

to be tailored to dealing with current political

circumstances. To this end, Chile is active in deliberations

on how to improve planning and rapid-reaction capacity to

deal with incipient conflicts. In all these aspects, a

multilateral approach, action that enjoys the consent of the

parties and financing through the Organization all help to

ensure success in our work. We hope to increase

significantly our contribution to operations such as the

ones I have just described.

A broad understanding of the maintenance of

international peace and security requires decisive action

in the area of social development, democracy and the

promotion of human rights. The world order of the next

century will need broader basic freedoms. The global

society of the next century is appearing as an open,

heterogenous one, rich in material potential and new

developments. What is needed now is to create conditions

to enable people and States to make the most of this new

setting, with increased access to the goods that are the

fruit of rapid technological development.

In this respect, the six recent world conferences and

summits on the environment and development, human

rights, population and development, women, social

development and, most recently, human settlements, have

all been geared towards promoting protection of the

individual and gradually creating a framework for social

rights.

One tangible result of these meetings, in the social

area, was the emergence of national coordinating bodies

to implement the agreements signed. But these efforts are

not enough, given the tragic reality of most of the less

developed peoples, which means that the United Nations

system must play an ever stronger role in the international

social area. We must speed up the process of

implementation within the context of the United Nations

and of the agreements that emerged from Rio de Janeiro,

Vienna, Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing and Istanbul.

The first steps have now been taken within the

various bodies of the system, particularly in the Economic

and Social Council and its functional commissions. It is

encouraging that the Economic and Social Council bodies

dealing with sustainable development, women, social

development and population have adopted multi-year

agendas as a follow-up to the conferences.

Similarly, the agreements reached at the World

Summit for Social Development include the decision to

hold a special session of this Assembly in the year 2000

to assess the implementation of the agreements.

In this connection, Chile wishes to propose the

establishment of a working group of this Assembly that,

with that special session as its basis, can provide follow-

up to the six conferences, taking into account the Agenda

for Development, so that in the year 2000 the General

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General Assembly 11th plenary meeting

Fifty-first session 26 September 1996

Assembly can take up a very wide-ranging and coordinated

assessment of the implementation of the commitments of

the 1990s and make the necessary recommendations for

future work.

In recent years Latin America has taken major steps

forward with regard to free trade. This Assembly has

already heard about progress in the Southern Cone

Common Market (MERCOSUR), Chile's recent accession

to that agreement and MERCOSUR’s decision to negotiate

similar agreements with the Andean Group and Mexico.

Taken alongside the progress made by other subregional

groups, such as the Central America Common Market

(CACM) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), these

achievements all go to show the new impetus in Latin

America for integration based on economic ideas that differ

from those of the past but that remain true to the political

will for unity that has always existed among our peoples.

However, none of these regional developments in

which Chile has been very active constitutes an alternative

to multilateralism. Chile continues to believe that a

multilateral system to establish standards and practices to

ensure free trade throughout the world, with clear

institutional machinery for negotiations and dispute

settlement, is the best option for the global economy and

for each of our countries.

For this reason we have always insisted that our

negotiations fit into the multilateral framework of the World

Trade Organization (WTO). Latin America wants to be

integrated so that it can become more of a part of the

global economy, not cut off from it. Our bilateral and

regional agreements are based on open regionalism. The

best proof that this is being put into practice is that during

this period of increased integration, external tariffs in the

countries of our region have also fallen considerably,

compared with those of the rest of the world.

One of the most promising developments of recent

years has been the strengthening of the multilateral trade

system through the establishment of the WTO. The

existence of a standing multilateral forum means that more

energy can be devoted to implementing the agreements

reached and provides an institutional framework for

continuous progress in negotiations and for opening up

world trade.

In this connection, Chile attaches great importance to

the follow-up meeting to the Uruguay Round, to be held in

Singapore in December 1996. This, the first biannual

meeting in the framework of the WTO, will be crucial in

determining how effective the new mechanism is.

In the last few years many regions and countries in

the world have made major progress towards broadening

and consolidating democracy and respect for human

rights. Latin America in particular has been experiencing

a rapid movement towards democracy that is

unprecedented in its history. This is accompanied by a

considerable increase in political dialogue and regional

coordination, evident mainly in the Rio Group, which has

been active and fruitful for 10 years now.

Far from making us complacent, this emphasizes our

concern that in many parts of the world there are still

situations of massive violation of human rights and

fundamental freedoms. Sometimes these situations relate

to the peace and security problems we mentioned earlier.

As democracies develop, the support given them by

the people depends more and more on their ability to

ensure stable, efficient and transparent governments. The

legitimacy of democratic governments is closely related

to their accountability, but in many countries there is still

corruption, inefficiency and insensitivity to social needs.

This erodes the legitimacy of democracy and highlights

its fragility.

The Government of our President, Eduardo Frei, has

made democratic governance the main subject of the sixth

summit of Ibero-American Heads of State and

Government, to be held in Chile in November 1996. To

this end, we have enjoyed the valuable cooperation of the

United Nations, through the United Nations Development

Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). We hope

that our Organization's work in this area will spread to

other regions in coming years.

One of the most dramatic changes for mankind in

the last few decades has been our awareness that nature

is fragile in the hands of man. There is a vulnerability in

nature we had not suspected until we saw the damage

done, much of it irreparable. And so there is a new

dimension to human responsibility to nature. The

possibility of altering life on our planet for the worse

means that our unbounded scientific and technological

power must be accompanied by a new principle: and that

is the idea of shared responsibility.

The work facing us is hard, but the path was already

laid out in 1992 at the Conference on Environment and

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General Assembly 11th plenary meeting

Fifty-first session 26 September 1996

Development. In Rio de Janeiro there was agreement on

fundamental aspects. On the basis of the consensus, and the

commitments reached there, my country is prepared to

proceed. Since that Earth Summit, Chile has further

developed its environmental legislation. We have embraced

the principles of the Rio Declaration that we consider

fundamental, such as preventing environmental pollution,

cooperation and the primary responsibility of the polluter.

The State has accepted its obligation to adopt the most

suitable instruments for preventive environmental

management. But we also believe that society must be

given a leading role in protecting the environment, and to

this end various social actors must be more committed and

more responsible.

My Government thinks it is also important to stress

the political commitment of the world community to this

issue that is by nature international and in many respects

global. Hence, we attach great importance to the

functioning of the bodies set up and to the monitoring of

the agreements reached at the Earth Summit.

Developments in the international arena, the increasing

diversity of issues to be taken up and the number of actors

involved in the United Nations — all of this revitalizing the

reform process of our Organization essential in order to

adapt it to emerging realities and challenges. Integrated and

multidisciplinary focus must be given preference in dealing

with these problems. This constitutes the conceptual

framework of the Organization and a basis for the urgently

needed process of reform. This requires a very thorough

analysis of the content of our multilateral work, of the

Organization's agenda, of the functioning of

intergovernmental bodies, of our human and financial

resources and of the structure of the Secretariat. By doing

all that, we can carry out reforms that are more than

rhetoric, that will enable us to take up the challenges of the

next century with policies and organizations adapted to the

new reality.

Chile wishes to reiterate its appreciation for the work

being done by the Secretary-General in this area. In

difficult budgetary circumstances and facing a very difficult

political situation, Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali has decisively

begun, within his purview, the process of reforming the

Organization.

We welcome all initiatives that can enhance the

efficiency of our Organization, reduce its bureaucratic

excesses or alleviate its financial problems. But we believe

that United Nations reform should not be mistakenly

identified with one single issue of administration or

budgetary efficiency. There is quite a contradiction

between saying that we need an Organization adapted to

the new challenges and focused on the next century, and

then reducing the practical debate simply to cost-cutting

and better control of resources. We have to enhance

administrative efficiency, but we must also appreciate

substantive effectiveness. Our objective should be to

strengthen the Organization as well as to streamline it.

Before concluding, I cannot fail to mention a

question of reform on this year's agenda that is more

urgent than it was in previous years. The plethora of

decisions taken by the Security Council has resulted in a

growing desire on the part of the other Members of the

United Nations to be more involved in Council decisions,

so as to strengthen its legitimacy and the political support

for its actions.

Improving the working methods of the Security

Council has opened up additional ways of enhancing its

credibility. There has been progress, but much remains to

be done, particularly in connection with consultations with

countries that contribute troops to peacekeeping

operations, consultations with countries neighbouring a

conflict area that might be affected, and third States that

are negatively affected by the application of sanctions.

A second determining factor of legitimacy and

political support for Council decisions relates to its

membership. In this connection, Chile believes it essential

to resolve once and for all the problems of increasing the

membership of the Security Council, which have

concerned the Assembly since 1992. We think there is a

broad base of agreement for allowing Germany and Japan

to become permanent members of the Council, and at the

same time for giving developing countries one permanent

seat per region, the occupants of which would be elected

at the regional level.

Also, in order to meet the need for representativity,

given the great increase in membership of the United

Nations in the last decade, the number of non-permanent

seats should be increased from 10 to 15, with appropriate

equitable geographical distribution. A membership of

twenty-five members would not undermine the

effectiveness of the Security Council but would enhance

the representativity of its actions.

However, we wish to emphasize that Chile is willing

to act with maximum flexibility here. This means we are

willing to consider other proposals by other Member

States that also seek to combine the two fundamental

elements that should guide our decision: recognition of the

new international realities and a legitimate desire for

representativity in the principal bodies of our system.

We wished to touch upon those issues that, in Chile’s

view, will be the Organization’s main tasks in the years to

come, with a view to establishing the framework of stability

and legitimacy necessary to achieve United Nations

objectives. Chile commits its firm support to this difficult

understanding, which will be attainable with the will and

participation of all members of the international community.