Gabon, 1997

At the outset I should like to convey to you, Sir, the

warm congratulations of the Government of Gabon and of

my delegation on your outstanding election as President

of the General Assembly at its fifty-second session. I

should also like to congratulate the other members of the

Bureau.

In selecting you, Mr. President, our Assembly

acknowledged your country’s role in world politics and,

above all, your personal qualities, which augur well for

the success of this session. I am indeed convinced that

under your guidance our work will be directed towards

continuing our discussions in greater depth, taking

common positions on important issues and adopting

resolutions with the broadest possible consensus.

14

I should like to express our appreciation to your

predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Razali, for the excellent

work he did during his presidency.

This is also the first opportunity I have had to express

my heartfelt congratulations to the Secretary-General,

Mr. Kofi Annan, on his election as head of our

Organization. I assure him of Gabon’s full support for all

the efforts he will need to make to ensure the success of

the action he takes in the service of the United Nations.

It is often said that the international context has

changed, that the fields of activity of the States that we

represent are being subjected to attacks on all sides as

science and technology progress. The globalization of our

economies, based on the proclaimed virtues of liberalism,

has not yet yielded all that it could.

The new world order that we have so long hoped for

has not yet arrived, because so many contradictions are

woven into the fabric of international relations. Yet no one

can fail to see that it represents both the matrix and the

support essential to carrying out the reform of the United

Nations so that it can better serve peace among nations and

the development of their peoples.

I should like first to speak about peace, the chief

wealth of nations, and I shall do so, of course, in the light

of our own experience.

In Gabon our understanding of peace underlies all the

political developments we have experienced and are still

experiencing today. The organization of successive local,

legislative and senatorial elections in a calm political and

social context at the end of 1996 and early this year

provided proof of the fundamental role of the democratic

legitimacy sorely needed today for the exercise of political

power.

This same perception underlies all the activities of

which we are the beneficiaries and which have made

Gabon, through the personal presence of its President,

Omar Bongo, a country that enjoys the great friendship and

trust of other members of the international community,

especially its neighbours.

In fact, Gabon has contributed in a substantial and

significant manner to easing the tension in many parts of

Africa.

Gabon, together with Chad, Burkina Faso, Senegal

and Mali, sent almost 300 soldiers as part of an African

peacekeeping force to restore institutional stability in the

Central African Republic.

On behalf of my country I should like to pay tribute

to the Inter-African Mission to Monitor the

Implementation of the Bangui Agreements, established by

the Security Council.

Given the very disturbing situation in Congo

(Brazzavile), and at the request of the Congolese parties,

Gabon agreed to take charge of the international

mediation committee, under the leadership of His

Excellency El Hadj Omar Bongo, assisted by the joint

United Nations/Organization of African Unity Special

Representative, Ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun. A

similar request had already been made to President Bongo

by our Congolese brothers during earlier crises, in 1992

and 1993. The current crisis, which erupted in early July

1997, is the longest and the most bloody — the official

death toll is 4,000 to 5,000 — and the most complex.

Despite the many obstacles that this mediation effort

is encountering, Gabon is doing its utmost to find a

positive solution to this conflict. It is essentially a

political and internal conflict, but it must be clear to

everyone that the situation could drift out of control, with

repercussions at the subregional and international levels.

Even so, as the French writer Beaumarchais said,

“As success becomes more difficult to achieve, the

need for action becomes more pressing.”

In this connection, I am pleased to note the

encouraging reaction of the international community in

general, and more specifically, of the European Union and

France, which have voiced their support and renewed

their expression of trust in international mediation and in

the Head of State of Gabon, and have urged him to

continue his efforts.

To give the Assembly an idea of what has been

done, I would just like briefly to mention that President

Bongo has proposed, on the one hand, a ceasefire

agreement and, on the other, a political agreement to

cover the transitional period from now until the

presidential elections.

The draft political agreement is the fifth one

proposed since the negotiations began. It is based on the

idea of power-sharing and the balanced participation of all

15

political forces in terms of holding power during the

transitional period. The breakdown is as follows.

Mr. Lissouba will remain as President of the Republic and

Head of State. To counterbalance this, as it were, a Prime

Minister, the Head of Government, will be appointed by the

President from among the members of the Opposition. In

addition, three Vice-Presidents of the Republic are to be

appointed by the Head of State.

We were unable to finalize this draft agreement during

the discussions. Things started to happen quickly in

Brazzaville: fighting continued; Mr. Kolelas, the Mayor of

Brazzaville, who had been heading the national mediation

efforts, was appointed Prime Minister; and a Government

was set up. Of course, all this has meant that negotiations

are on hold.

Against this background of uncertainty, President

Bongo invited nine Heads of State of Central and Western

Africa to a special meeting on the Congo which was held

in Libreville on 14 and 15 September 1997. President

Lissouba was unable to join his colleagues but he sent his

Prime Minister, Mr. Kolelas.

The Libreville summit reaffirmed support for

international mediation efforts led by President Bongo. It

also made an urgent appeal to the warring factions to stop

fighting and resolutely to continue with negotiations to try

and find a political settlement to the crisis. So far, I have

to say, the appeal has not met with the reaction on the

ground we had hoped for. But we are still hopeful that

discussions will soon be resumed, for this is the only way

we are going to find a lasting and constructive settlement.

Faced with this situation, what have we done here in

the United Nations? I should remind the Assembly that very

soon after international mediation began, the President of

the Republic of Gabon called for a commitment from the

international community in terms of deploying an

international force to separate the warring factions in Congo

(Brazzaville).

Several African countries in a commendable upsurge

of solidarity, responded favourably, expressing their

willingness to provide troops for the international force.

President Bongo brought the matter before the Security

Council, which said it accepted the principle, but which

imposed various conditions that, when analysed, leave one

with the impression that if they were met there would be

practically no point in sending the force.

Time is passing. Time is of the essence. Congolese

people are still dying; others are fleeing their country; and

thousands more are still wandering, distraught and

desperate, in the forests of the Congo, seeking makeshift

shelter.

Can we really continue calmly to sit in Manhattan or

in the offices of our capitals and discuss what is going

on? We know that in the recent past in other parts of the

world the same cunning preventive measures — I was

going to say the same procrastination — did not prevail.

No, we must do something for the Congolese people.

They are citizens of the world, our world, as well.

I must emphasize this: the impact of armed conflicts

is so great that it is more necessary than ever to stress

specific measures to prevent them. For developing

countries, like mine, that cannot and must not afford the

luxury of high military expenditure, the maintenance of

international peace and security must be provided for

“upstream” on the basis of preventive measures. It is

because we believe deeply in this principle that the States

in our subregion, Members of the United Nations

Standing Advisory Committee on Security Questions in

Central Africa have been cooperating and taking action

since 1992 to strengthen mutual trust and security at the

subregional level.

These contacts have led, inter alia, to the signing in

Yaoundé in July 1996, by virtually all the members of

this Committee — except one — of a non-aggression

pact, which is an important measure to strengthen peace.

More recently, at its ninth Ministerial Meeting, last

July in Libreville, attended by four out of five

representatives of the permanent members of the Security

Council, we adopted a major plan of action whose main

thrust is: the establishment of an early-warning

mechanism as a way of preventing conflict in Central

Africa; the organization in the medium term of a regional

conference on democratic institutions and peace in Central

Africa; and training seminars for law enforcement

personnel on peacekeeping operations, with the goal of

preparing countries of the subregion to participate, with

United Nations assistance, in possible future peacekeeping

operations.

In my capacity as Chairman of the Bureau of that

Committee, I should like to draw the keen attention of all

executive bodies operating under the aegis of the United

Nations and the European Union, and our partners in the

16

subregion, to the benefits of effectively establishing this

early-warning mechanism before the end of 1997.

Still in that capacity, I wish to appeal to all Member

States and to the international community as a whole to

contribute to the Trust Fund set up by the Secretary-

General to finance the work of the Committee.

Looking at the crises that have erupted recently in

Central Africa, I have to say that today the subregion is

facing the possibility of many conflicts flaring up, involving

populations beyond our national boundaries, threatening the

stability of our States and even calling into question the

principle of the inviolability of borders — a principle that

the Organization of African Unity has held dear since its

inception. The danger is real. We must ward it off.

Through me, Gabon welcomes the United States

initiative to convene a special meeting of the Security

Council on the situation in Africa, the first of its kind. We

are grateful for the fact that on that solemn occasion, on 25

September 1997, the Security Council reaffirmed its

principal responsibility for the preservation of peace on our

continent.

But how can we forget that United Nations files are

bursting with piles of reports, declarations and resolutions

on Africa, all of them equally relevant?

Everyone here will recall that some 10 years ago the

General Assembly held a special session on Africa. Yes, I

know — they say that now that the cold war has ended

Africa is no longer of prime strategic importance. Too bad

for us! For my part, I would say “So much the better for

us”, because we Africans have no reason to cry over the

fall of the Berlin Wall. That was a tremendously important

event for us too; it opened up new prospects. Today,

however, the African peoples, just like others, are no longer

willing to be paid in words and slogans. They thus expect

concrete measures to emerge from the special meeting that

was held by the Security Council last week.

Although Africa is no longer of prime strategic

importance, is Africa not today, where the United Nations

is concerned, its real challenge, I might even say its guilty

conscience — because of the Organization’s underlying

philosophy and vocation?

Looking beyond Africa, Gabon is also greatly

concerned over the blockage in the Middle East process,

and we invite all the parties there to resume the dialogue,

with the support of the whole of the international

community, for there, as elsewhere, no lasting solution

can be achieved through force.

The wars and conflicts we all deplore are made

possible by the devastating force of weapons. We must

therefore patiently and resolutely succeed in disarming the

nations of the world.

Thus, we welcome the progress made in this area by

the entry into force of the Convention on the prohibition

of chemical weapons, which demonstrates the will of the

international community to eliminate that category of

weapons of mass destruction.

In the same connection, my country supports the

Ottawa process aimed at a complete ban on anti-personnel

landmines. The recent Oslo Diplomatic Conference on

that subject worked along the lines we had hoped it

would. We regret, however, that some countries were

unable to join in the powerful and promising consensus

that emerged there. We trust that in the near future they

will be able to do so. The representative I sent to Oslo

told me that some of those present had tried to establish

for those weapons a special category that they would be

able to retain, a category of what they called “intelligent”

anti-personnel mines. I do not know what that means.

Intelligent or stupid, anti-personnel mines kill, and they

often kill the innocent. They must therefore be banned. If

while playing in a field your child’s leg is torn off by a

so-called intelligent mine, you would find no consolation

in the thought that the mine was an intelligent one.

In any event, Gabon urges all United Nations

Member States to bend all their efforts towards adopting

a plan of action for general and complete disarmament.

Humanity will be the better for it.

We are not sufficiently aware of the human suffering

that underlies armed conflicts, particularly the suffering of

the victims, and especially of women, the elderly and

children, for killing them means killing the life, the past

and the future of the human race. In that connection, one

can only employ the word “abominable” in describing the

growing use of children in conflicts.

Over the past decade a million children have been

killed, 6 million have been seriously wounded or

handicapped for life, more than a million have been

orphaned or separated from their families, and millions of

others are suffering serious psychological damage. This

dark picture is even darker in Africa than in other

continents. That is why Gabon, a party to the United

17

Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and a

signatory of the Charter of the Rights and Welfare of the

African Child, joins the United Nations Children’s Fund

(UNICEF) in condemning the use of children as soldiers

and urges Governments and all combatants on the

battlefield to halt a number of particularly shameful

practices, namely, the recruitment of children into the

armed forces, the participation of children in combat, and

violations and abuses to which they are often subjected.

In another area, the Gabonese authorities are deeply

concerned by the struggle against the scourges of crime and

drug proliferation, which are other sources of human

suffering. We have taken a number of initiatives to combat

them, including the reorganization of our security services

and the creation of an interministerial commission to

combat drug addiction. However, combating those

phenomena clearly calls for resolution and determined acts

of solidarity and cooperation at the international level.

Turning now to the question of development, I should

like to recall that the final goal of government is the well-

being of peoples.

Against that background, the international community

has evidenced its will to improve the human condition by

organizing various workshops, seminars and conferences. I

would just mention the Rio Conference on the environment,

the Vienna Conference on human rights, the Beijing

Conference on women, the Cairo Conference on population,

the Copenhagen Conference on social development and the

Stockholm Conference on the sexual exploitation of

children, as well as the very latest special session of the

General Assembly devoted to the mid-term review of

Agenda 21.

However, even after all those meetings that aroused

such hopes, it looks as though our community is not truly

determined to fulfil the obligations it has freely entered

into. It seems to be difficult to translate proclaimed

intentions into action.

Gabon therefore hopes that there will be greater

movement towards action at the forthcoming Kyoto

Conference on climate change, which will be a test of the

industrialized countries’ commitments to sustainable

development.

Similarly, we would encourage the International

Seabed Authority to continue its work, particularly on the

elaboration of a balanced mining code that takes into

account the interests of all States as well as environmental

questions.

The importance of the eight most developed

countries and their real ability to have an impact on the

international economy give us ground to hope that the

commitments entered into at the recent Denver summit

will enable us to work towards strengthening an

international economy at the service of humanity.

This may sound like a litany of ills, but until the

situation improves we must continue to repeat that Africa

is suffering from very serious structural problems. These

consist, inter alia, of economies, often based on a single

crop, that are dependent on the outside world;

deterioration in the terms of trade; reverse finance flow;

the lowest level of development; the largest number of

least developed countries and of displaced persons and

refugees.

However, I think it is important to highlight the fact

that in addition to its potential, which it owes to raw

materials, Africa also represents an effective market of

more than 700 million inhabitants.

We know that if it is to develop, our continent must

first and foremost rely on itself. Yet there is so much to

be done. We are familiar with the slogan, “Trade, not

aid”. It is not entirely untrue. But would it be outrageous

to say that it is not completely true either, because it is

obvious that in Africa there exist countries whose

development level is already allowing them to cherish

some legitimate commercial and trade ambitions on the

international market as well as countries that still require

assistance, at least in certain areas, and particularly in the

social area. To the latter countries, it would be better to

say: “Trade and aid”.

It is in that spirit that Gabon will attend the ninth

summit of the African, Caribbean and Pacific States

(ACP) associated with the European Union in the context

of the Lomé Convention. My country will have the

honour of hosting this summit in its capital on 6 and 7

November 1997. I take this opportunity to say to the ACP

countries — and all of them are here at the General

Assembly — that we are ready to welcome them next

month and that we await them all.

Gabon is a beneficiary of the international economic

environment, and I would therefore like to share with the

Assembly our experience in this area.

18

Since mid-1995, Gabon’s economic performance has

improved considerably. The rate of growth has increased

significantly; inflation has been reduced to a very low level;

and our situation outside the country has been strengthened.

Structural measures and administrative reform are

accelerating. The Government is stepping up the

liberalization of the economy and the cleaning up of the

business environment. A vast programme of privatizing

public enterprises has already been put into effect. It began

with the Gabon Water and Energy Company. The

privatization was carried out in very orderly and transparent

conditions — to the surprise of not a few — and the

programme will be continued in other spheres.

Aware of the decisive role the private sector has to

play in Gabon’s prosperity and in increasing the standard of

living of its people, our Government is trying to establish

a legal and regulatory environment which will facilitate

private investment and open up various sectors of the

economy to competition. We sincerely state that Gabon is

open to all private investment. As President Bongo likes to

say, “Gabon is not the private reserve of anybody”.

The Gabonese authorities are making sure that our

commitments in the area of loans and repayments are

realistic and viable. They call for appropriate treatment in

respect of our foreign public debt, because the strict

deadlines for repayment often hamper our efforts to

revitalize our economy.

Finally, partnership in all areas must be strengthened

and the transfer of technologies encouraged, so that the

national capacities of our countries can be revitalized.

In his speech to the General Assembly, the Secretary-

General expressed the hope that this session will be known

as the Reform Assembly. Indeed, the world today is not

what it was in 1945. Our Organization must adapt to the

new realities. Gabon therefore welcomes the

recommendations of the Secretary-General for the reform

of the Organization.

The current discussions must result in consensus

machinery that will safeguard the various interests of the

Member States. But it remains true that no reform plan can

be successful until the financial situation of the United

Nations is cured.

My country recalls that we attach great priority to the

recommendations formulated by the Organization of

African Unity at its last summit, in Harare, and to the

proposals made by the Non-Aligned Movement at its

Ministerial Conference in New Delhi in April 1997.

President Bongo spoke as long ago as 1977 on the

question of an increase in the membership of the Security

Council, and I had the occasion to repeat his position

before the General Assembly in 1995 and 1996. Let me

repeat it one more time. Gabon suggests that we can

reconcile the seemingly contradictory requirements in this

way: by eliminating the geographical imbalance in the

Security Council so as to consolidate its legitimacy and

effectiveness; by making the decision-making process in

the Council more democratic; and by allowing for a fairer

representation of Africa. Africa calls for two permanent

seats, with the same rights the other permanent members

have; the seats would be rotated in accordance with

principles that the African Group will submit in due time

to the General Assembly.

Gabon reaffirms here its commitment to the

principles of universality and the sovereign equality of

States. These should underlie all the thinking in regard to

reform.

It is my hope that this session of the General

Assembly will enable us to take another step towards

strengthening the ideals we all share.

This transition towards a more humane world will

not be without perils. We will have to combat

simultaneously the upsurge of selfishness and the

development of false solidarity, which can lead our

peoples to fratricidal struggle.

I am convinced that, united, we will take up the

challenge to build a better world.