El Salvador, 2002

Allow me to express, on behalf of the people

and the Government of El Salvador, our most sincere

congratulations to the President on being elected to

conduct the work of this session of the General

Assembly.

Likewise, we would like to express our

recognition to Mr. Han Seung-soo for the successful

work he carried out during the past session. We

commend Secretary-General Kofi Annan for his work

and attention in the prevention and solution of

conflicts, and we encourage him to continue moving

forward in the reform process of the United Nations.

26

We welcome to this important world forum the

Swiss Confederation and, soon, the Democratic

Republic of Timor-Leste in their new capacity of

Member States. In this context, we reiterate our request

to review the special international situation of the

Republic of China on Taiwan, whose 23 million

inhabitants are being denied the right to representation

in this forum. We nurture the hope that in the near

future the participation in this world Organization of

all the nations of the world without exclusion — as is

currently the case with Taiwan — will become a

reality.

The Government of El Salvador is convinced that

it is necessary to examine new and visionary initiatives

to remove existing obstacles in the discussions on the

composition and role of the Security Council in the

new millennium. That is necessary and essential in

order for the United Nations to continue to be the

principal world forum of collective action in the face of

challenges to international peace and security.

This year, my country commemorated the tenth

anniversary of the signing of the peace accords, which

put an end to armed conflict and paved the way for a

new reality of hope, peace, democracy and

development. Our democratic process has

progressively been consolidated and is advancing with

normality within the same dynamic of open debates

and deliberations that characterize all democracies.

This has been a result of the firm desire of all

Salvadorians to construct a free and democratic society,

which we, the Member States, should feel proud of and

part of, through the successful role played by the

United Nations.

In the economic and social fields, we have

achieved significant progress in strengthening peace

and democracy. The Government of President

Francisco Flores Pérez has strongly promoted an

economic model featuring economic rights as a means

to advance towards development and to take advantage

of the opportunities offered by the opportunities of

globalization. We have also favoured human

development, investing primarily in education, health,

housing and basic services, as those areas are

indispensable elements contributing to social well-

being, to the improvement in the quality of life of our

people and to development.

Ten years after the signing of the peace accords,

El Salvador has successfully culminated its peace

process and is now enjoying the dividends of peace.

Therefore, we are grateful for the valuable support of

the international community and of the United Nations.

We are particularly grateful to the Group of Friends of

the Secretary-General for the peace process of El

Salvador — Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Venezuela and

the United States of America — for the support they

offered during the unfolding of that process, whose

successful outcome continues to assist efforts for

conflict resolution throughout the world.

With regard to Central America, I wish to

reaffirm El Salvador's spirit of integration, which leads

us to attach high priority to our relations with

neighbouring countries in seeking common

development for the region and in strengthening the

Central American integration process in its political,

economic and social facets. We do so because it is only

through a stable and united region that we will be able

to complement one another in order to strengthen our

position in the world economic environment and jointly

face the challenges of globalization. Only through

integration will we be able to overcome our narrow

territorial limitations to effectively respond to the just

demands of our citizens in the areas of education,

health and opportunities for the future. Being united

and open to the world as a region will be the only way

we will be able to cease to appear small in the face of

the great challenge of creating, with all the requisite

speed, more and better jobs so that all our peoples will

be able to forge for themselves a worthy future in their

own homelands.

It is in that context that the Presidents of Central

America have agreed on an economic integration plan

of action effective immediately. That plan includes the

formation of a customs union by next year. Likewise,

among other things, we will continue to work on

adopting common duty tariffs and facilitating trade and

the free movement of all products. With that goal in

mind, and having already attained positive results with

the Central American agreements now in effect with

Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Chile and Panama,

we are also jointly negotiating free trade agreements

with Canada and United States. We are also working to

strengthen and implement the Puebla-Panama Plan by

implementing eight large meso-American integration

projects. Through the Puebla-Panama Plan we intend to

take advantage of the potential of Central America and

of the southern and south-eastern regions of Mexico as

27

a natural corridor linking North and South America and

joining two oceans.

We have responsibly assumed the historical

challenge to address through relevant bodies the border

disagreements inherited by the current generation of

Central Americans. El Salvador has done its share in

this regard. We are convinced that strict compliance

with international law provides the foundation for

harmony among neighbouring countries. We have

therefore recently reached an agreement at the

presidential level with the Republic of Honduras to

accelerate the demarcation of our territorial borders.

Furthermore, we have also recently resorted to the

International Court of Justice to exercise our right to

request a revision of its 1992 judgement, but only with

regard to one of the six areas in dispute in the case that

we jointly submitted in 1986. Through these efforts, El

Salvador and Central America are clearing the way in

order to make unencumbered progress towards the

realization of our common integration projects. In the

end, our goal is for the borders that we are now

defining through law to be erased in practice by

harmony, mutual respect and the development of our

peoples.

In the international sphere — having just

commemorated the first anniversary of the terrorist

attacks perpetrated in the United States — the

Government of El Salvador would like to reiterate its

firm commitment to the worldwide struggle against

terrorism and all related criminal activities. We view

this global effort as a joint and individual endeavour of

Member States. Consequently, we see it as an effort

linked to the deepest respect for the principles

established in the Charter of the United Nations, in

international law and in international humanitarian law.

In that connection, the Government of El Salvador

would like to express its gratitude for the efforts being

made by the Counter-Terrorism Committee established

by Security Council resolution 1373 (2001). We also

reiterate our complete readiness to cooperate in the

unequivocal implementation of that resolution. In

addition, we would like to inform the international

community that El Salvador will host the third session

of the Inter-American Committee against Terrorism.

That meeting will be held in San Salvador during the

first half of 2003. We hope the meeting will adopt

relevant decisions to further strengthen the hemispheric

fight against this scourge.

El Salvador recognizes the progress achieved

with the entry into force of the Statute of the

International Criminal Court. In this regard, my

Government is carrying out the necessary reviews to

bring our constitutional rules in line with those of the

Statute, so as to enable us to initiate the process of

joining the Court.

In the same vein, I am also pleased to inform the

Assembly that last week El Salvador ratified the

International Convention on the Protection of the

Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their

Families, as well as the Optional Protocol to the

Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of

Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.

In his report on the implementation of the

Millennium Declaration, the Secretary-General stated

that the world in which we live today is divided

between rich and poor as never before in human

history. That report also pointed out the harsh reality

experienced by one sixth of all human kind, which

daily fights to survive in a life and death struggle with

sickness, hunger and natural and human disasters.

Meanwhile, another sixth of mankind has attained

levels of well-being that would have been

unimaginable just a few decades ago. Between both

extremes there are the 4 billion inhabitants of

developing countries who, although we may no longer

be living on the verge of disaster, are very far from

achieving the security, capacity and material well-being

enjoyed by the developed world.

As a developing country, El Salvador is following

the course charted at Monterrey. We hope that the

offers of funding made by various countries at the

Conference will become a reality. We are also actively

participating in the preparatory work for the World

Summit on the Information Society, as we are

convinced of the potential benefits that connectivity

and knowledge will bring to the future development of

free societies.

In that sense, El Salvador shares the vision that

international cooperation with medium-income

countries must not be exclusively limited to technical

cooperation. That cooperation should also include

financial cooperation, as the fight against poverty

should not be confined by borders or limited by

statistics pertaining to national averages. Such figures

are far from being a true reflection of existing realities

in different places. Our renewed democracies need to

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be consolidated, strengthened and made sustainable in

a way that gives everyone access to a better quality of

life.

Another of the major challenges we face, namely,

natural disasters, could nullify the efforts we have

made throughout the years. The devastating effects of

such phenomena are no longer limited solely to

traditionally vulnerable regions. As was the case

recently in many European countries, other regions that

previously had not been very much affected by natural

disasters are now experiencing them. In this

connection, the people and the Government of El

Salvador would like to reiterate their complete

solidarity with the Governments of affected countries

and with the families that have suffered as a result of

the devastating floods in Europe.

The Government of El Salvador calls on the

international community to jointly implement the

agreements reached in the five basic areas taken up by

the World Summit on Sustainable Development that

took place recently in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Those included water and sanitation, energy, health,

agriculture and biological diversity. All of them are of

crucial importance to the future of the environment,

particularly in developing countries.

Allow me to conclude by reiterating the firm

commitment and political will of the Government of El

Salvador to contribute actively to the search for

collective and individual solutions to the problems that

we will take up during this session of the General

Assembly. We also wish to reiterate our confidence in

the work that the Secretary-General is doing on behalf

of the nations that make up our Organization and on the

basis of the purposes and principles enshrined in the

Charter. Along with the strengthening of

multilateralism, those purposes and principles remain

entirely valid in the new millennium.