Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1999

The convening in the splendid

metropolis of New York of this last General Assembly

session of the millennium affords me the happy

opportunity, on behalf of the people, the Government of

Public Salvation and the head of State, His Excellency

President Laurent-Désiré Kabila, of the Democratic

Republic of the Congo, to convey our warmest greetings to

all people the world over who love peace and justice.

It is my pleasant duty also to congratulate the

President of the General Assembly and the other Assembly

officers on their unanimous election to the leadership of the

Assembly at its fifty-fourth session. My country views the

election to the presidency of Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab as

recognition of his many sterling qualities, both human and

professional, and as an acknowledgement by the

international community of the important role played by his

country, Namibia, in building an Africa and a world that

will be marked by peace, political stability and economic

prosperity. The President may be sure that the delegation of

the Democratic Republic of the Congo will unreservedly

support him in fulfilling his mandate and in guiding the

work of the Assembly to a successful conclusion.

I also extend to his predecessor, Mr. Didier Opertti,

our full appreciation of the extremely important work he

did during his presidency, as well as the commitment he

showed throughout to the triumph of the ideals embodied

in the United Nations Charter.

Finally, my delegation would like to welcome here in

our world Organization three new Members: the Republic

of Kiribati, the Republic of Nauru and the Kingdom of

Tonga.

I invite Members to read my prepared text at their

leisure, so that I may say a few other things. I begin with

a good quotation, from Article 2 of the United Nations

Charter:

“The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of

the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in

accordance with the following Principles.

“1. The Organization is based on the principle

of the sovereign equality of all its Members.

“2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of

them the rights and benefits resulting from

membership, shall fulfil in good faith the obligations

assumed by them in accordance with the present

Charter.

“3. All Members shall settle their international

disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that

international peach and security, and justice, are not

endangered.

“4. All Members shall refrain in their

international relations from the threat or use of force

against the territorial integrity or political

independence of any state, or in any other manner

inconsistent with the Purposes of the United

Nations”.

I say to representatives: This is the United Nations

Charter, your Charter. Are there represented in this Hall

— yes or no — Members that violate these principles

governing relations between nations? Are there

represented in this Hall — yes or no — Members that do

worse than those that do not pay their dues, or pay them

late, regarding which immediate reminders are sent, and

rightly so, since the rules of procedure of the

Organization of which they are Members prescribe that

for its proper functioning each Member must pay its

dues? Failing to do so even means being stripped of the

right to speak here at the United Nations. So, if you have

your right to speak taken away, if you are punished as a

Member of the United Nations because you do not pay

your dues, what about those who violate Article 2 of the

Charter, who cross the boundaries of another State with

their armies, sow hardship in that country, occupy vast

portions of its territory, plunder its natural resources, steal

the fauna and rare species of animals which international

organizations recognize as being received by other

countries, carry out a blitzkrieg such as the one in the

early 1940s, without warning, without provocation,

entering the country of another people with their arms and

everything else they need, under pretexts which I shall

expose in a little while.

On 2 August 1998, some two years ago, our brothers

from the hills of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda invaded

our country in an unprovoked blitzkrieg, without having

declared war, and it continues to this very day. For two

years now those Members of the United Nations have

been violating Article 2, and they continue to violate it,

with arrogance and total impunity, which is not the case

for those who fail to pay their dues.

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It is perhaps better to violate Article 2, occupy other

countries, pillage them, deport their inhabitants and torture

children, women and old persons, than it is to commit the

mortal sin of failing to pay up. There are two yardsticks,

double standards, which we regard as an immense injustice.

As I speak I feel the presence of illustrious persons

who have spoken from this rostrum in the past, such as

Cabral, Nkrumah and — I say this with a great deal of

emotion — Lumumba, who came here to denounce what

was being set in train more than 30 years ago, under United

Nations banners which is now being repeated. We know the

United Nations. The French rightly say “A cat that has been

scalded is even afraid of cold water.” They have already

come, those United Nations forces; they came to restore

peace, and the result was that for one of the most illustrious

sons of our people, the most admired African nationalist

President Patrice Lumumba, the flag of the United Nations

served as a shroud. We do not wish, we will not allow, that

same flag to be a shroud for those who have taken up the

torch that fell from Lumumba's hands and who carried it,

with some help of course, as far as lying down — with

their boots on — in Mobutu's bed. This is something with

which the Assembly is familiar.

It is on behalf of my President, my friend, my long-

time comrade, that I speak. As representatives will see, and

as I often say, we will have no more charming “Rastas”,

because we lost our hair waiting for President Kabila to

return to relight the torch that fell from Lumumba's hands.

If people do not watch out, if they let things slide

along, if they tolerate arrogance and do not stand up to

impunity, there are those who will begin to dream of

wrapping Kabila up in the United Nations flag, as was done

in the case of Patrice Lumumba not long ago.

When events are repeated, they do not always happen

in exactly the same way, but sometimes the repetition

strikes a familiar chord. Now we see the United Nations

delaying putting an end to what it calls euphemistically the

“conflict” in the Great Lakes region. This terminology is

being used for some reason — but what? A foreign army

crosses the border, occupies the country, a part of the

country; it pillages the country's wealth — and the United

Nations calls this a “conflict”? We should check our

dictionaries. This is a war. Instead of shouting themselves

hoarse about sending peacekeepers, Member States must

send people who can put an end to the war. This is what I

am waiting for. Our Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundi

brothers must be solemnly requested here and now to go

back home. They have no business being in our country.

They are undermining all national reconstruction efforts.

This should be clear to those who understand the

condition in which we found this country, which used to

be called Zaire and which we now call, as Lumumba

called it, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The presence of these outsiders, their occupation,

impedes our efforts to reconstruct our country. They came

upon us like thieves who attack without warning. They

attacked while we were busy sowing corn, peanuts and

beans, and we were doing so because that was what we

was needed in this country that is overflowing with

diamonds, gold, cobalt, copper and so forth. In order to

help our people we had begun by planting peanuts, corn

and beans, but our efforts were stopped cold by these

people who are now in our territory, who came from the

hills, who came to defend their borders — their borders

that, according to them, were threatened by genocidal

bands in our country.

I ask the Assembly to look at a map of Africa, a

map of the Congo in particular. I come from the Atlantic

Coast province of Bas-Congo. Do you know where these

people who began the war came from, in order to secure

their borders? They came from 2,000 kilometres away

from my province. They began in my province in order

to secure borders 2,000 kilometres away. They brought

soldiers 2,000 kilometres from their borders in order to

begin the occupation of our country. Luckily, they took a

licking, and they would all have been wiped out if the

Americans had not asked us to allow them to return home

along a designated route. They retreated after their

thrashing and tried their luck in the east of our country.

After the ceasefire requested by Secretary-General

Kofi Annan, United Nations staff went to the area to

carry out an order of the World Health Organization to

vaccinate all children up to five years of age. We have

vaccinated them in the part of the country that we

continue to control. But these others — who only have

two hands, both of which are busy pillaging — have yet

to vaccinate the children in this age group. Thus, these

children are in danger not only of polio, but also of other

diseases that the agencies of our Organization have been

striving to eliminate from our continent.

These soldiers do not have time to vaccinate our

children. They do not even have time to pillage

effectively because these Horatii and Curiatii have taken

to fighting each other on our soil. They came to take

control of our country, but now, how strange, they are

fighting each other, these people who came to teach us

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democracy, these people who came to restore peace. In

order to have a break from their looting, they are enjoying

a little war on our land, and in the process destroying the

3 million doses of vaccine that the United Nations, through

the World Health Organization, sent to Kisangani. They

shoot at each other, each band allied with this or that local.

This is what is happening.

And then these people take their place here as United

Nations Members — after having treated us like that, and

as they continue to do so. They are building up their

arsenals, bringing in troops, taking towns. What reassures

us is the teaching of the Marquis de Sade that taking is not

the same as possessing. Thus, these people are taking towns

but they do not possess them. And they will not posses

them because, just as in erotic relations, there is no

possession without consent — that consent that has been

given to us. Otherwise, our people would not have fled to

the forests to escape from these people who come from the

hills. Our citizens' lengthy stay in the forests has led to the

reappearance of some diseases that were eradicated as long

ago as the Belgian colonial era.

Having to flee the invaders like the plague makes our

citizens' lives more difficult. And these people from the

hills continue to advance even though they signed with us,

last 10 July, a Ceasefire Agreement that lacks both fire and

a cease, as they continue to advance and lay siege to our

cities.

Their latest exploit, which they are now engaged in, is

to lay siege to the city of Mbuji-Mayi, the world diamond

capital, but also the world capital of children afflicted with

polio. I do not think that their haste and willingness to

return to Mbuji-Mayi are out of desire to vaccinate the poor

Congolese children who are infected with or at risk of

getting polio. These people from the hills do not have a

third hand, as I said earlier, yet I am sure that, driven by

their greed, they are going to take as many diamonds and

as much copper and cobalt as they can — and at the risk of

fighting each other for these minerals, since Uganda also

wants to take them. The statistics on sales of diamonds

indicate that last month our Rwandan brothers sold more

than a million carats of diamonds — a mineral not mined

in their country — and with the money from the sales they

are buying weapons so as to be able to fight us. Then they

take more diamonds, buy more weapons and continue to

fight us.

In this Hall speeches have been made against dirty

money. Therefore, we are outraged to see bloodstained

cobalt, bloodstained copper, bloodstained gold and

bloodstained diamonds for sale on the international

market, and to see that it does not occur to the buyers of

this booty to put a stop to this practice by refusing to buy

it — even though they oppose dirty money. Double

standards continue to prevail.

Dirty money poses a threat to the world. And yet,

while the blood of the Congolese people is spattered on

our cobalt, our copper and our gold, that doesn't seem to

bother those from all over the world who buy them and

give money to the pillagers and occupiers our country. If

we revisit this issue, I reserve the right to address it

again.

I wish, however, to speak out loud and clear against

the infamous pretext that has aroused the world's

prurience and sensitivity about genocide. Those who are

guilty of genocide are in our country right now. Let them

leave and go on sowing misery in their own countries:

Rwanda, Uganda or Burundi.

As I said at the outset, President Kabila has raised

Lumumba's torch and welcomed those who sought refuge

in our country, because over there you do not seek

refuge — you get your throat slit. I was just a schoolboy

when I saw Hutus fleeing cutthroat Tutsi and Tutsi

fleeing cutthroat Hutus. They all sought refuge with us.

That is how those who helped us, who walked with us on

our march on Kinshasa, came to be refugees in our

country — they fled Hutus who would have cut their

throats. That is at the heart of the current instability and

reflects the values of our brothers in Rwanda. We must

help our Rwandese to change their political culture.

When the “one man one vote” law was enacted in

1960, the obsession of each of these groups was to seize

power and abuse it in order to hasten the carnage. This

carnage has been alternating and reciprocal and did not

begin in 1994. I cited a date when I was in short pants,

and I can assure the Assembly that it was not yesterday.

It is the open faucet that produced the interahamwe that

we must close. Rwanda must become democratic;

Rwanda must adopt a culture of politics and abandon its

culture of carnage. Rwanda must leave our country;

Uganda must leave our country; Burundi must leave our

country and turn over the task of providing security to

United Nations observers, who will take their place and

serve as a buffer force between us. Those people are our

neighbours and we can never replace our neighbours, but

they are on our territory, which means they are no longer

our neighbours. I ask the Assembly to help us to resume

our status as neighbours. Let them go back home and if

30

there are problems that we must settle among ourselves, we

shall settle them by peaceful means.

I am speaking without acrimony. We hold out our

hands to our brothers from Rwanda, who have been here

for several days. I offer them signals of friendship when we

pass, and they respond. We are here so that in three

months, when the new millennium dawns, we will not still

be fighting. One must deal with urgent matters quickly.

The Lusaka process, in which I participated, raised

hopes that have been dashed by dilatory tactics. One

moment the Congolese and Rwandese affiliates who refuse

to come; the next, it is the Ugandans or their Congolese

puppets. Here we are on 29 September and nothing has yet

been done seriously to implement an Agreement that was

reached on 10 July.

That is why we ask the Assembly, if only out of

respect for the Articles of the Charter, to do something

about it. It is intolerable and incomprehensible that these

people remain, and may even take the floor here, while

they continue to violate the United Nations Charter and the

principles that bring us together here. If you violate the

principles of an organization to which you belong, you are

no longer worthy of belonging.

We must remind our brothers that, as Members of the

United Nations, they are bound to respect the Charter. This

cannot be done by occupying other people's countries. If

differences must be settled by invasion and plunder, there

will no longer be a United Nations, because there will no

longer be any rules to unite us. That prompts my request to

the Assembly, because the suffering being endured by the

Congolese people and the atrocities being visited upon us

are unimaginable.

Under the very nose of the Vatican, in the Italian

mission of Kasika, these new-style Huns entered, tore open

the chest of a traditional chief, pulled out his heart,

shredded it and distributed the pieces like hosts. The killers

who did this sucked on the bloody heart as if it were an

ice-cream cone. We have seen this and continue to witness

such acts. Our United Nations mission is at Members'

disposal to provide irrefutable testimony, which we have

published in a three-volume white paper that could easily

grow into further volumes describing similar incidents. We

have requested that this white paper be issued as a working

document of the Security Council. All are invited to study

it in order to understand precisely what is happening and to

put an end to this situation — to save the United Nations

itself, to help us Africans, and the Congolese in particular,

who had to wait 32 years to defeat and eliminate a regime

of notorious satraps, only to see new satraps step in two

months later to occupy our country and put it to the

sword.

Help us to make our Rwandese, Ugandan and

Burundian brothers understand that they must go home.

They have no business in our country; let them relinquish

their place to United Nations forces, which will secure

their borders. That is in itself a fiction that we have not

had an opportunity to dwell on. They helped us to raise

Lumumba's torch. They were in our army. Most officers

in our army were from Rwanda, as was the Chief of

Staff, who dispatched his troops on the basis of his

particular military skills. Moreover, these people have

occupied that region of our country for two years and are

still hunting the Interahamwe, as the Incas were once

hunted here. They will not stop until Joe the Ugandan and

Bill the Rwandese have extended their hunting grounds to

the entire territory of our country while they prance after

the Interahamwe.

This is just a pretext. If they were not able to catch

a single Interahamwe while their officers were in our

army; if they have been unable to stop the interahamwe

in their two-year occupation of that region, then the task

is beyond them. It must be left to the United Nations to

unseat these Interahamwe, if they exist, and let us pursue

our national reconstruction.

I have a great deal more to say and believe that we

will have further opportunities in due course.