Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1995

I should like to join the speakers who have

preceded me at this rostrum in offering you, Sir, on behalf

of my delegation and on my own behalf, warm and hearty

congratulations on your election to the presidency of the

General Assembly at its fiftieth regular session. I am

particularly pleased that the President of the General

Assembly is the representative of Portugal, a friendly

country with which my country, the Republic of Zaire, has

long enjoyed excellent relations marked by trust and mutual

respect. We feel that your intellectual abilities and

diplomatic skills, together with your long experience of

international affairs, guarantee the success of our work

here.

My congratulations go also to the other elected

members of the Bureau, and I wish them every success in

their delicate task of providing you with assistance.

Allow me also to pay tribute to your predecessor,

His Excellency Mr. Essy Amara, Minister for Foreign

Affairs of the sister Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, to whom

I am bound by long-standing ties of personal friendship.

I should like to express to him our joy and pride on

seeing how masterfully he guided the work of the General

Assembly at its forty-ninth regular session and our

appreciation of the energy, skill and ability with which he

discharged his mandate.

Finally, I should like to pay a well-deserved tribute

to the Secretary-General, Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, for

his excellent preparatory work for this session, his

outstanding efforts to strengthen the role of the United

Nations and his many commendable initiatives in support

of international peace and security.

My thoughts here will turn mainly to the lessons of

50 years of the existence of the United Nations; the

revitalization and restructuring of the United Nations; the

situation in the subregion of the Great Lakes, particularly

Rwanda and Burundi; the efforts for peace in the Middle

East; the support of the United Nations system for efforts

by Governments to promote and strengthen new or

restored democracies; external debt, international

economic cooperation and development; disarmament

efforts; and, finally, the question of the return or

restoration of cultural property to its country of origin.

This year the United Nations is commemorating its

fiftieth anniversary. When it was founded, it set itself

goals that corresponded to the enthusiasm, hopes and

needs that emerged with the end of a devastating war

whose traumatic effects have not yet faded away entirely.

Those goals were to maintain international peace and

security, guarantee justice and human rights, foster social

progress and establish better living conditions in greater

freedom.

Where do we stand today?

A fiftieth anniversary is an important milestone in the

life of persons, institutions and nations. A person who has

made nothing of his life by the time he is 50 is not likely

to set a new course for his life afterwards. An institution

that after 50 years has done nothing to attain the objectives

it set when it was founded inevitably raises the question of

its viability and the usefulness of its existence. A nation

that has done nothing for its people in 50 years must surely

step back and re-examine everything — its political leaders,

programmes, social projects, management and methods.

Fortunately, this is not the case of the United Nations.

It has some outstanding accomplishments to its credit. It

has achieved real successes and made real efforts in the

areas of economic and social development, decolonization,

human rights, development and peace-keeping. Its work in

establishing norms indisputably represents the highest

aspirations of man, of all mankind and all peoples, for a

world free from war, threats, intimidation, poverty,

oppression and suffering.

Today, therefore, the United Nations must preserve

and consolidate its accomplishments while also adapting

itself to face the new challenges borne in the wake of the

astonishing transformations the world has undergone since

the end of the Second World War.

For those of us from Africa, decolonization was an

extremely important page in this story. What would

decolonization have been without the United Nations,

particularly the adoption of resolution 1514 (XV), the

Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial

Countries and Peoples? What would have happened in

South Africa without the mobilization by the United

Nations of the entire international community against the

scourge of apartheid, and without its support for the heroic

and legitimate struggle of the South African people under

the leadership of the recognized liberation movements,

particularly the African National Congress (ANC)?

In Zaire we have not forgotten that 34 years and 10

days ago, striving to promote peace and restore and

maintain the political independence and territorial integrity

of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is today

Zaire, one of the most devoted servants of the United

Nations, its late Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld,

died at Ndola.

We have not forgotten that from July 1960 to June

1964 the United Nations Operation in the Congo

represented the largest assistance programme undertaken

by the United Nations up to that time.

And so it is thanks to this major contribution by the

United Nations that Zaire preserved its unity and

territorial integrity. Let me extend to the United Nations

the deep appreciation of the Zairian people for this. That

page in our history, which is also a page in the history of

the United Nations, reminds us that our people paid a

heavy price for peace, and it made a pledge that the

generations must hand down from one to another: no

more civil war; no more secessions because of tribal,

inter-ethnic or power conflicts; a firm commitment to

peace and dialogue for development, whatever the nature

or the intensity of our internal differences.

That is why we gave the name of Dag

Hammarskjöld to an important bridge in the city of

Kinshasa, to pay tribute to the United Nations by

immortalizing the memory of the Secretary-General who

died on the battlefield in the struggle for peace. The

symbol of the bridge derives from our understanding of

the message of the United Nations. As an opening on the

world and forum of nations, is not the United Nations,

with its message of peace and dialogue, building a bridge

between nations?

And yet, despite the outstanding progress

indisputably made throughout the world, many other

things have also happened. The cold war has ended

without this being much help to the development process

in the countries of the South, particularly in Africa, where

poverty has increased in a worsening economic and social

situation.

In the wake of this worsening situation, Africa, in

particular, is experiencing the reappearance of diseases

which had been eradicated and the appearance of new

endemic diseases, without having the necessary resources

to cope with them.

Decolonization is virtually over now. Apartheid has

been abolished, and Africa, facing the new challenges of

democratization and development, seized by the fever of

democratization, is undergoing irreversible change

accompanied by new difficulties.

2

At the international level, new kinds of domination are

emerging, and could lead to the same results as those of the

past, if we are not careful. Will “globalization” of people’s

behaviour and standardization of reflexes and needs

imprison freedom, stifle identities and crush the cultural

expression of peoples?

There has been no Third World War, but, as in former

Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Burundi and elsewhere, a new kind of

war has emerged, based on ethnic and tribal “cleansing”,

tragic consequences for security, peace, the environment

and the development of nations that are very disturbing.

A new kind of international crime is engulfing Africa

and the world: violence — attacks on individuals and their

property, armed robbery and highway robbery; economic

and financial crime — counterfeiting, money-laundering,

illicit drug trafficking, large-scale fraud in commodities and

so forth; political crime — fundamentalism and

international terrorism, which take us back to the times of

the pirates and the corsairs. Of course the telegraph, the

telephone, air travel, radio, television, computers and videos

have done a great deal to shrink distances, but they have

also helped to strengthen the forces of disorder.

Multilateral cooperation, development financing and

the spirit of international solidarity have all been frittered

away. The new international economic order has not

emerged, and bilateral cooperation has been halted for

various reasons, some political in many countries, such as

Zaire, at the precise moment when those countries are faced

with a sharp reduction in financial resources. The

conditions attached to development aid are more stringent

than ever, and assistance for democratization, strongly

encouraged at the La Baule Summit, is also subject to

conditionalities.

The phenomenon of refugees and displaced persons is

now unprecedented in scope.

A century of hope, particularly the last half of the

century, would thus seem to be ending on a note of despair

when we look at what the causes of the new threat to world

peace in general and peace in Africa in particular are:

armed conflicts, serious internal struggles, poverty,

unemployment, inequality, discrimination, intolerance,

policies of exclusion, the struggle against State despotism,

political and social failures, and so on.

To those who are seeking refuge from tyranny we can

also add — on our continent those who are fleeing anarchy.

The tragic fate of persons displaced because of civil war or

violence is one of the major humanitarian problems of our

age. There are many armed conflicts today which derive

from the struggle between communities swept along by

intolerance.

It is therefore imperative that the members of the

international community shoulder their responsibilities,

help each other and act together to reverse these negative

trends.

As the Secretary-General of the United Nations

noted on 20 October 1994, quite rightly:

“Societies that used to think they were completely

autonomous now know that they are very closely

linked to one another. The life of each individual,

wherever he may come from, is today part of a

planetary whole. Today it is recognized that the

loftiest objectives of mankind — peace, justice and

prosperity — can be attained only if an increasingly

broadly agreed effort is made. And then a whole

series of new problems whose worldwide dimensions

are quite clear demand solutions that no one country

or group of countries can find in isolation.”

In order to cope with the new challenges facing us

all, with the problems of development, peace and security,

the United Nations has to rethink its methods, its

organization, and its effectiveness.

The influx of nearly 3 million Rwandese refugees to

eastern Zaire, about which I shall speak later, revealed to

us some of the shortcomings of the United Nations

system faced with new challenges.

First, 30,000 armed men belonging to the former

armed forces of Rwanda came to Zaire on 14 July 1994,

and obviously we were not expecting them. They came to

regions of North and South Kivu following the civil war

in Rwanda. After being disarmed, they were supposed to

be taken care of. But by whom? Problems arose as to

their status.

Were they prisoners of war? Zaire was not at war

with Rwanda, we were told. Were they war detainees?

“No”, we were told by the International Committee of the

Red Cross (ICRC), “they are not within our competence.”

Are they, then, political refugees? “No”, the Office of the

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR) replied. “Men in military uniform are not

political refugees, and so they do not fall within our

competence.”

3

And so, the 30,000 military men of the former

Rwandan armed forces began to take care of themselves, to

the detriment of the villagers and local populations, while

the United Nations system looked on, powerless.

Secondly, at the behest of the Secretary-General and

the international community, we agreed to move them far

away from our border with Rwanda, for obvious reasons.

So we found sites in Shaba, Maniema and Equateur. Joint

United Nations-Zaire evaluation missions were sent to these

regions.

Assuming that there were three people in each family,

we identified 90,000 individuals belonging to the former

Rwandan Army to be moved from the Rwandan border.

Having seen this evaluation, the United Nations

declared the cost exorbitant, and the Secretary-General was

unable to find the financial resources needed. So, the idea

was abandoned and the United Nations asked Zaire to take

appropriate security measures and to keep the 30,000

military men where they were, namely on the border with

Rwanda.

But, leaving them there made the Kigali Government

nervous about possible destabilization, and so it began

spreading unfounded accusations against Zaire. Without

checking the facts at all, the United Nations then

recognized Kigali’s claims and lifted the arms embargo on

Rwanda which had been established pursuant to Security

Council resolution 1011 (1995) of 16 August 1995, in order

to help that country protect itself against some hypothetical

threat, but the United Nations has done nothing at all about

the 30,000 military men left to be cared for by Zaire

without any assistance.

And what is more, after lifting the arms embargo on

Rwanda on 16 August 1995 so that it could arm itself and

deal with the threat of destabilization from Zaire, the

Security Council adopted resolution 1013 (1995) two weeks

later setting up an international Commission of Inquiry to

look into allegations that the former Rwandan Government

forces were being trained and supplied with weapons from

Zaire in order to destabilize Rwanda. This is all quite

astonishing, not least because the highest level of the

collective security system of the United Nations was

involved. I myself have served on the Security Council. I

was President during the Malvinas war and I have always

believed that at that level of responsibility, matters should

be considered with the utmost care.

Either the Security Council has proof and takes

action, the setting up of an investigative commission

being now irrelevant; or the Security Council has no

proof, so it investigates and takes a decision after it has

checked the facts. The credibility of our Organization is

at stake here. These are just two cases showing the

inability of the United Nations to deal with the new

challenges.

The much-needed revitalization of the United

Nations depends on the interest and the efficacy it shows

in dealing with conflicts and complex situations that call

for its intervention.

The same holds true for its restructuring. Fifty years

after its inception, the United Nations needs to adjust and

adapt to the new challenges facing the world today,

including economic and social development; political

conflicts against a backdrop of ethnic cleansing; changes

affecting international relations; and the changes that have

taken place in the world since 24 October 1945; the need

to enlarge the circle of decision-makers in matters of

international peace and security; the need to ensure more

equitable and balanced representation of the nations of the

world on the Security Council and to avoid any danger of

the collective security system being manipulated; and the

inadequacy of the financial resources to cover the scale of

the tasks facing this universal Organization.

This therefore seems to be the cost of ensuring a

new dynamism in United Nations activities, for this

changing world is not exactly reassuring. And many

events are taking place without the nations of the world

knowing why or how. There is a danger that political

lobbies may use the cogs of the United Nations

machinery to their own ends, using their influence,

without any counterbalance, and that certain Governments

may bring pressure to bear on the United Nations. This

slippery slope was certainly not foreseen when the

collective security system was established.

The Republic of Zaire welcomes the current peace

process in the Middle East. We noted with satisfaction the

agreements signed between the State of Israel and the

Palestine Liberation Organization on the one hand and

between Israel and Jordan on the other. To our mind,

these are important steps towards the establishment of an

overall peace.

Zaire wholeheartedly supports the bilateral

negotiations and the progress made thus far in the peace

process and urges all parties to implement the agreements.

4

We trust that efforts will be made to ensure that further

negotiations are held soon between Israel and other Arab

States.

Emphasizing the need to ensure progress in Arab-

Israeli negotiations in other directions of the peace process,

the Republic of Zaire would urge the establishment of

dialogue between the protagonists, and encourage them to

do their utmost to reach agreements that reflect the

legitimate aspirations of each side.

This is the only way in which we will be able to

overcome an age-old distrust and create the conditions

needed for progress and development in the Middle East, in

the spirit of peace that has been so long in coming.

The situation in the Great Lakes subregion in Central

Africa is of great concern in the Republic of Zaire because

it calls into question the peace, stability, security and

development, not just of Rwanda and Burundi, but of the

region as a whole.

The Republic of Zaire, I wish to emphasize, has no

particular problem with Rwanda or with Burundi.

Yesterday, Zaire offered refuge to the Tutsis who were

driven from their home and today we are offering refuge to

those who have left their country. A human tragedy of an

unprecedented scale is unfolding in this region. Everything

borders on the extreme, including the urge to exclude other

people; the hatred that pits the fraternal enemies, the Tutsis

and the Hutus, against each other; the dramatic

peregrinations of people who are hounded because of their

ethnic origins or political opinions; the ease with which

human lives are destroyed, including the lives of children,

women, old people, and intellectuals; the instinct for

violence; the scale of the flow of people searching for

shelter, fleeing certain death; the imbalance in the division

of political and military power and the rejection of

democratic principles in the running of the country.

As former Tutsi refugees from 1959 and from 1962-

1963 are returning home, thanks to the return to power of

the Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR), it is now the turn of

millions of Hutus, who represent 85 per cent of the

population, to leave their country, abandoning their

property, their land and their houses to the newcomers.

The Tutsis, who were forced out in the 1960s at the

height of the Hutus’ power, and who account for 15 per

cent of the population, took 30 years to prepare their

forcible return to power. How long does the international

community want to wait until it is the turn of the Hutu

majority to return to power using force?

Every time there is this kind of swing, new human

dramas will be condemned and major problems of

reinsertion and reinstallation will emerge.

In this cycle of deliberate violence, it will become

increasingly impossible to say who is innocent of

something and who is not guilty of something.

Faced with a tragedy of such magnitude, the

international community and the United Nations seem to

us to be rather helpless. Who then will take the necessary

measures to help these countries, to prevent their situation

from deteriorating, to preserve peace and security in the

region and to prevent further genocide?

The resolutions and declarations adopted to date by

the United Nations do not take account of all the realities

on the ground. They do not cover all the aspects of the

tragedy that I have just described that exists in Rwanda,

Burundi and in the subregion of the Great Lakes as a

whole. And these resolutions and declarations have

political implications that contribute to the region’s

instability.

No purpose can be served at the stage where we are

today by quoting lofty principles or deciding who is right

on the basis of who can best present their version of the

situation and the facts. Instead, we must objectively

define the concrete problems facing Rwanda and Burundi

as States and take specific measures, within the

framework of an overall approach to the question, to

ensure the repatriation of refugees; national reconciliation;

power-sharing; the establishment of the needed balance in

the armies that now constitute the political support of

Governments, in order to create republican armed forces;

the establishment or revitalization of the democratization

process; assistance in reintegrating refugees into society;

reconstruction and development assistance for the

countries of origin and of asylum; and, finally, the

establishment of viable judicial structures, so that there

can be some justice. There is indeed a justice problem,

and it must be solved.

It is in this spirit that the Republic of Zaire supports

the holding of a regional conference on peace, stability

and security in the Great Lakes subregion, following the

signing of bilateral agreements on the repatriation of

refugees. If this conference is to succeed, it must, for

obvious reasons, be planned very carefully. The

5

Government of Zaire welcomed the appointment by the

Secretary-General of the United Nations of Ambassador

Jesus to the post of Special Envoy. Zaire will cooperate

fully with him in order to ensure the success of his mission.

I should like also to draw the Assembly’s attention to

the fact that the influx of Rwandese refugees into eastern

Zaire, an event unheard of since the end of the Second

World War, appears to have been relegated to the back

pages of international news now that its sensationalist

aspect has worn thin. The refugees destroyed a priceless

national heritage: the national park of Virunga, a site listed

by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization (UNESCO) as a national treasure. The local

flora and fauna — mountain gorillas, elephants and other

protected species — were not spared. The environment, the

ecology, and basic sanitary and educational infrastructures

were destroyed. General Assembly resolution 49/24 of 2

December 1994, on special assistance to countries —

including Zaire — receiving refugees to help restore the

areas destroyed by the massive presence of refugees, has so

far had no impact or follow-up whatsoever.

Zaire, a victim of the tragedy in Rwanda by virtue of

their common border, has been accused, with increasing

frequency, of attempting to destabilize Rwanda. The

accusers are none other than those who wish to use the

refugee question to destabilize the Great Lakes area in

order to live out their dream of creating a new Ima empire

that would challenge the principle, inherited from colonized

times, of the inviolability of borders; they would attempt to

resolve the ethnic conflicts in the region by distributing

land here and there — all this to the detriment of Zaire.

This approach shows that a political issue underlies the

whole problem. Either we are dealing with refugees, in the

true sense of the word, and then their massive presence and

the destruction they have wrought in our country cause our

people a serious safety and security problem — which

would entitle us to invoke the exception envisaged in the

Declaration on Territorial Asylum; or we are dealing with

people quietly expelled from their country for political and

ethnic reasons, in which case, since no constitution in the

world would allow a country to expel its citizens for ethnic

or political reasons, we do not have to accept these

castaways of “ethnic cleansing”. That is why, in order that

the pretext of Zaire’s supposed attempt to destabilize

Rwanda not give certain countries the opportunity to carry

out a plot against my country, Zaire — in the wake of the

lifting of the arms embargo on Rwanda, which was decided

on by the Security Council, and in the face of the

jeopardizing of our national security and the serious threats

that face our population — resorted to one of the existing

international instruments concerning refugees, namely

General Assembly resolution 2312 (XXII), of 14

December 1967, the Declaration on Territorial Asylum, to

urge the international community and the United Nations

to shoulder their responsibilities, because Zaire does not

have the means to bear alone the burden of the massive

presence of refugees in its territory, particularly since it

is on the eve of holding elections.

I would recall, since much has been said about this,

that the second preambular paragraph of the Declaration

on Territorial Asylum states that a person faced with

persecution

“has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries

asylum from persecution”

and paragraph 1 of article 3 states that such a person shall

not be

“subjected to measures such as rejection at the

border or, if he has already entered the territory in

which he seeks asylum, expulsion or compulsory

return”.

Since 1960, Zaire has been taking in refugees from

Rwanda — sometimes Tutsi, sometimes Hutu — and we

have always followed that provision to the letter. But

paragraph 2 of article 3 states:

“Exception may be made to the foregoing principle

only for overriding reasons of national security or in

order to safeguard the population, as in the case of

a mass influx of persons”.

And if a State should decide that, for whatever

reason, an exception to that provision is justified, it can

“consider the possibility of granting to the person

concerned an opportunity of going to another State”,

and can then bring this matter before the international

community.

This is precisely the situation that Zaire found itself

in. It decided to be an exception to the principle, and so

informed the Secretary-General and the Security Council

of the United Nations. Countries wishing to take in these

refugees are welcome to do so, but Zaire refuses to

continue to be accused of destabilizing Rwanda simply

because we accepted 3 million Rwandese on our land. We

6

wish to cut out at the root the trumped-up charges against

our country. In this way, the international community will

be able to judge better our determination to live in peace

with our neighbours.

However, acceding to the request by the Secretary-

General of the United Nations, the Zaire Government held

talks with Mrs. Sadako Ogata, the head of the Office of the

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR), and asked her to organize, on the UNHCR level,

a voluntary repatriation, on a massive and uninterrupted

scale, of the refugees to their countries of origin, so that by

31 December 1995 all of the refugees would have returned

home.

The international community has an obligation to help

Rwanda and Burundi to deal with the problems of

repatriation and reinsertion of their nationals. During our

last meeting in Geneva on 25 September 1995, we agreed

with Rwanda’s Minister of Rehabilitation and with Mrs.

Ogata on the modalities for repatriating the refugees by 31

December, to the tune of 8,000 to 10,000 persons per day,

at various points of entry, which were identified —

Shangugu, Kiseni or Gibumba.

We can think of no Government that would hesitate as

to what course to take if it had to choose between the

requirements of international solidarity and those of national

security and the protection of its population.

To judge by the information that appears in the

international press, the impression that some wish to give

of Zaire is that it is a hell where it would not be very

pleasant to live.

Zaireans are human beings. Like human beings

anywhere, some are good and some are bad, some not so

good and not so bad. We are also a people. Whatever one

thinks of me personally, or of any other politician in my

country, this cannot be allowed to discredit an entire

people, or affect the image of my people as a whole.

When many fled the horrors and the violence of war,

it was to the “hell” of Zaire that they chose to come and

live. But one might well wonder what would become of

peace in Central Africa if Zaire were incapable of

managing conflicts between tribes — we have more than

450, as well as our other internal political problems — and

if it exploded like Rwanda, spilling our 47 million people

into neighbouring countries.

For countries such as ours, that have experienced the

whole range of turbulence that a people can know —

above and beyond the colonial period, which more or less

persisted into the first years of independence, and the

price of building a post-colonial State in conformity with

the aspirations of our people — there is no greater good

in the world than peace. Without it, all illusions aside,

progress and development are out of the question.

In the name of peace, every State must be fully

responsible for its people and must learn to live with its

own national contradictions and refrain from obliging

others to bear the burden of its incapacity to manage

those contradictions. Otherwise, the international

community, both at the regional and global levels, must

come to its aid to develop its capacity to resolve its

problems without inflicting further wounds, and above all

without inflicting them on other countries, developing

countries like our own, whose resources are needed for

other purposes.

The international community thus has the duty and

should have the courage to impose peace and

reconciliation in the Great Lakes region and state clearly

its refusal to countenance the drift towards exclusion and

ethnicity.

Zaire shelters many African refugees on its territory

and, out of a sense of common humanity and an

appreciation of our historic ties with its neighbours,

decided to take in our Rwandese brothers. But we can no

longer pay for the tragedies that are engulfing our

neighbours, with all their economic and security

repercussions on our border population.

As I have said, we believe the international

community must do all it can to reassure our people by

helping the Governments of Rwanda and Burundi to make

all the necessary provisions to guarantee the speedy return

of the refugees and their reintegration in their homeland.

We reaffirm here our resolve to work for the restoration

of a climate of peace in our subregion and to make our

contribution towards all the efforts at reconciliation aimed

at strengthening mutual confidence and security there.

But we can no longer cope alone with those

refugees. We can no longer shoulder alone the

humanitarian burden imposed upon us by humanitarian

principles and the agreements we have signed.

On behalf of my Government, I should like to take

this opportunity to thank Mrs. Sadako Ogata and the

7

Executive Committee of the High Commissioner for

Refugees for the efforts they have been making with

limited resources to solve the problem of refugees in the

Great Lakes region and for their assistance in rehabilitating

the Bukavu airport and the port of Uvira.

Our thanks also go to the member States of the

European Union which have pledged contributions for the

repair of roads in North and South Kivu in advance of the

organization of elections.

In the 1960s, few governing structures in the countries

of the South demonstrated particular interest in or

attachment to the close connection that exists between

democracy and development; democracy and human rights;

and human rights and development.

With the passage of time, the difficult experience of

management has taught us some lessons. It makes more

sense to manage growth and wealth than degradation and

poverty; it is not enough to consume what others produce,

but one should learn to produce what one consumes;

inheriting infrastructure and ways of life conceived by

others is one thing, but conceiving one’s own communal

approach to life and to fix one’s own limits for oneself is

another.

In all things, it is the individual that remains the focus

and the medium. An individual whose rights and freedoms

are flouted, who is aware that he does not count in national

affairs, drifts away from the ruling circles and from the

national effort for development imposed on him from

above, from policies out of touch with his own daily life.

Many of our countries have, in the course of the last 30

years, experienced the indifference of the individual whose

rights and freedoms were left out of account.

Today, in the light of the economic and social

collapse, that link between human rights, democracy and

development is understood and acknowledged. It is not just

because of what was said at the conference at La Baule, but

because of the importance and the intensity of the message

we heard at La Baule, that the process of democratization

in Africa must also be understood as an act of awareness,

of self-awareness. That is how this process becomes truly

irreversible.

In the Republic of Zaire, five years of difficult

transition have done considerable damage at the political,

economic and social levels. That is why we have not been

able to play our full part in the arena of free nations.

Domestically, we have not been fully able to shoulder our

responsibilities to deal with the socio-economic

requirements of our people.

But now we have decided to bury the past and to

assume our duties to the full and to offer our contribution

to the solution of problems facing the international

community, if it be only through our analysis of the

situation.

We intend to strengthen ties with all friendly

countries, particularly our traditional friends, in finding

together appropriate solutions to the problems which have

beset our relations. At the same time, we mean to give

sustained, real and useful meaning to the diversification

of our external relations in the field of development.

Internally, through another kind of management, of

which the Prime Minister spoke in September 1994, and

in the context of restored liberties, we intend to meet the

aspirations of our people to a better quality of life. This

is a matter of priority.

Democracy does not mean licence, and the state of

laws implies that all citizens are subject without

discrimination to the law. In our countries, educating as

many people as possible, changing the way people think,

raising the general level of education and political and

democratic awareness — all of these draw upon the

limited financial resources of the State to strengthen,

following the forthcoming elections, democracy and the

state of law and of progress.

While the Government is seeking to create

conditions of legal security and an economic environment

favourable to the creation of fruitful partnerships and

mutually advantageous cooperation, we want to count on

our external partners and the international financial

institutions — in short, on the international community —

to take up with us the challenge of development. The

present institutional order in our country conforms to the

desires of our people as expressed through its political

class as a whole, and is designed to extricate us from the

crisis rationally and methodically. But our efforts alone

will not suffice. That is why we seek aid to accompany

the process of democratization, because, unfortunately, the

support of the people for political scenarios is also

important to finding a solution to their daily concerns.

As the Manila Declaration emphasizes, by mutual

support, the internal and external forces that endanger the

new democracy can be overcome. The United Nations

thus has a duty to support efforts by Governments,

8

including ours, to promote or consolidate new or

re-established democracies.

The eradication of extreme poverty in all countries,

particularly developing countries, has become one of the

priority development goals of the 1990s, in keeping with

resolutions 47/196 and 47/197. The year 1996 has been

proclaimed International Year for the Eradication of

Poverty. This honours our Organization.

Over the past 50 years, the United Nations has made

serious efforts to intensify international economic

cooperation. In particular, it has adopted the Charter of

Economic Rights and Duties of States and the Declaration

and Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New

International Economic Order based on justice and equity.

None the less, the trade relations between the developed

and the developing countries continue to show an imbalance

which, having been allowed to persist and grow, is today a

real threat to peace everywhere.

In Africa, efforts made at the national, subregional and

regional levels to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty

have not been sufficiently supported by the international

community. Stricken by an unprecedented crisis, Africa has

for years groaned under the weight of its debt. It has

suffered the effects of lowered commodity prices, of the

deterioration in the terms of trade, of protectionism in the

developed countries, and of a drop in official development

assistance.

The debt is a major hindrance to economic growth and

development in Africa. The heavy debt burden absorbs one

third of our countries’ export earnings and represents a

serious drain on resources which would otherwise have

served to finance growth and development.

In order to implement economic reform, stabilization

and structural adjustment programmes and to eradicate

poverty, the debtor developing countries need to mobilize

the resources necessary to their efforts. They also need new

supplies of financial resources and concessional financial

assistance from creditor countries and multilateral financial

institutions.

Debt relief is becoming increasingly unavoidable if

national resources are to be freed up to support activities

necessary to social development. The responsibilities which

debt and debt servicing impose on our developing countries

are so alarming that we must apply ourselves with

particular inventiveness and urgency to the search for

solutions to the problems to which they give rise. They

require a leap of imagination.

That is why we feel it to be necessary and urgent to

assess the progress made in the various United Nations

bodies in the establishment of a new international

economic order, so that, in response to the results of this

assessment, we can take appropriate measures to promote

development in developing countries and international

economic cooperation.

The Republic of Zaire hopes that, at this session, the

General Assembly, in the framework of agenda item 96

(c), on the external debt crisis and development, will take

into consideration the recommendations made by the

non-aligned countries at their meeting in Jakarta from 13

to 15 August 1994. It may find therein ways and means

of resolving the problem of the debt of developing

countries and of promoting their harmonious development.

Everyone knows that the external debt of the

developing countries cannot be absorbed at its current

level without the cooperation of the developed countries

and the international financial institutions, which must

agree on the establishment of a new world economic

order that would take the vital interests of its partners into

account. The countries of the North would also benefit by

making an additional effort to understand that the debtor

countries can only honour their debt-service obligations

according to their financial capacities. In the current

situation, compelling them to meet all their financial

commitments could end up in a collapse of their

economies, despite all their good-faith efforts.

1995 has been proclaimed World Year of Peoples’

Commemoration of the Victims of the Second World War

and Member States have been called upon solemnly to

commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the

Second World War. This year we will also consider and

assess mid-way the Declaration of the 1990s as the Third

Disarmament Decade.

How can we commemorate the victims of the

Second World War today without also giving thought to

the victims of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Liberia,

Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi and elsewhere? When will we

commemorate the victims of those wars? There is no

destruction of human life that is more appropriate than

any other. The United Nations was supposed to save

succeeding generations from the scourge of war — but

which war, what kind of war? True, the kind of war

fought from 1939 to 1945 has not recurred, but can we

9

assert today that mankind has mastered the arts of peace?

It is in men’s minds that the instinct for war must be

replaced by the spirit of peace if the world is to be saved

from the scourge of war. If it is not, any progress we have

made will remain fragile.

The United Nations offers us the opportunity to

consider from a global perspective the questions of war,

peace and security. It remains an essential instrument for

achieving the objectives of arms control and disarmament.

But situations of conflict and tension must be prevented

more effectively. An efficient system of collective security

that allows States to reduce their military capacities must be

put in place. It is no longer enough to limit arms and

promote disarmament by regulating weaponry and

establishing the balance of power at lower levels. We feel

that that is not the way to achieve the goal of development

for all, which is the new major challenge facing the United

Nations.

We must reinvent trust in international relations. We

must make a new creative effort to ensure that disarmament

goes hand-in-hand with the achievement of peace, security

and development throughout the world. In this context, we

believe that the Convention on the Prohibition of the

Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical

Weapons and on Their Destruction — the first global and

truly verifiable disarmament treaty — offers a worthwhile

avenue. Indeed, it carries a security gain for all States

through the total elimination of an entire category of

weapons of mass destruction. We hope that this Convention

will soon have the required number of ratifications to enter

into force and thus become a standard shared by all States.

Since the inclusion in the General Assembly’s agenda,

in 1973, of the item on the restitution of works of art to

countries victims of expropriation, we have noted with

satisfaction the continued and growing interest in this item

shown by Members of the United Nations. In addition to

bilateral negotiations for the restitution of cultural property,

we now have the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting

and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of

Ownership of Cultural Property, to which the number of

States Parties continues to grow.

However, the quantity and quality of the cultural

property “returned” or restored are insignificant compared

to the importance which the General Assembly attaches to

the item. Promises made to Zaire by countries which still

hold works of art and other cultural treasures belonging to

Zaire, as well as museum pieces and archives that are

essential to preserving and nourishing cultural values,

have not been fully kept.

We call on the Secretary-General, in cooperation

with the Director-General of the United Nations

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, to do

everything possible to encourage those countries to

honour their obligations so that the objectives of the

United Nations and the countries of origin can be met.

I wish the General Assembly every success to the

work of its fiftieth session and I wish the United Nations

a long life.