India, 2002

I

congratulate Mr. Kavan on his election as President of

the General Assembly at its fifty-seventh session. I also

extend my best wishes to Secretary-General Kofi

Annan in this first year of his second term in office.

Two days ago, we commemorated the first

anniversary of a terrible event that focused the

collective global consciousness on international

terrorism. Terrorism did not start on 11 September. It

was on that day that it brazenly announced itself on the

global stage, flaunting its immunity from distance and

power.

15

As a country exposed to the depredations of

terrorism for decades, India empathized with the pain

of the American people, admired their resilience in

coming to terms with the consequences and supported

the bold decision to counter-attack terrorism at its very

source.

The international community has taken some

collective decisions in the global effort to combat

terrorism and to choke off its lifelines. Security

Council resolution 1373 (2001) contains the essence of

these decisions. The Council's Counter-Terrorism

Committee should now move beyond information

compilation and legal assistance to enforcing

compliance by States known to be sponsoring,

sheltering, funding, arming and training terrorists.

In our South Asian region, nuclear blackmail has

emerged over the past few months as a new arrow in

the quiver of State-sponsored terrorism. Dark threats

were held out that actions by India to stamp out cross-

border terrorism could provoke a nuclear war. To

succumb to such blatant nuclear terrorism would mean

forgetting the bitter lessons of the 11 September

tragedy.

As far as India is concerned, we have repeatedly

clarified that no one in our country wants a war,

conventional or otherwise. Nor are we seeking any

territory. But absolutely everyone in India wants an end

to the cross-border terrorism which has claimed

thousands of innocent lives and denied entire

generations their right to a peaceful existence with

normal economic and social activity. We are

determined to end it with all the means at our

command. Let there be no doubt about that in any

quarter.

Yesterday we heard the extraordinary claim in

this Assembly that the brutal murder of innocent

civilians in Jammu and Kashmir is actually a freedom

struggle and that the forthcoming elections in that state

are a farce, since they cannot be a substitute for a

plebiscite demanded over 50 years ago. It requires an

effort of acrobatic logic to believe that the carnage

among innocents is an instrument for freedom and that

elections are a symbol of deception and repression. If

the elections are a mere fraud, why are terrorists being

trained and infiltrating India at the command of the

Inter-Services Intelligence Agency of Pakistan to kill

election candidates and to intimidate voters?

If Pakistan claims to be a crucial partner in the

international coalition against terrorism, how can it

continue to use terrorism as an instrument of State

policy against India?

How can the international coalition condone

Pakistan-directed killings of thousands of innocent

civilians women and children included to

promote a bizarre version of self-determination? Those

who speak of underlying or root causes of terrorism

offer alibis to the terrorists and absolve them of

responsibility for their heinous actions, such as the 11

September attacks on the United States or the 13

December attack on our Parliament.

Yesterday we heard yet another patently false and

self-serving claim that in India Muslims and other

minorities are the target of Hindu extremists. With 150

million Muslims, India has the second largest Muslim

population in the world; greater than that of Pakistan.

We are proud of the multi-religious character of our

society. Equal respect for all faiths and non-

discrimination on the basis of religion are not just part

of our Constitutional obligations, but, as the whole

world knows, they are the signature theme of India's

civilization and culture.

We have to recognize that the developmental

divide between the North and the South is becoming

wider and deeper by the day. The challenges that face

us are stark, and there is no alternative to having all

countries of the world join hands to face them together.

Over the last decade, 10 million people have been

joining the ranks of the poor each year. A quarter of the

world's population lives in extreme poverty.

We have to find US$ 24 billion annually for

investment in poor countries, if we are to achieve the

World Food Summit goal of halving hunger by 2015.

The continuation of widespread poverty, at a time

when unimaginable wealth is concentrated in a small

social layer, is totally unacceptable. The twenty-first

century has all the means to end this sad legacy of the

past centuries. What is lacking is the political will

among the developed countries to sincerely and

speedily address the legitimate developmental needs of

the developing countries, especially the least developed

ones.

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Casting an even longer shadow over this grim

developmental canvas is global climate change, from

which the poor will most suffer, though they

contributed least to it. The recent floods and forest fires

in Europe are a forewarning that the countries of Asia

and Africa are not the only victims of the fury of a

degraded environment. The Earth's atmosphere and

biosphere know no national boundaries. The choice

before the global community is stark: Either we take

urgent steps to protect the environment or be prepared

for far worse natural calamities.

Early this month, the Johannesburg Summit for

Sustainable Development debated some of the linkages

between poverty, trade, environment, national,

international and corporate governance and global

financial flows. We emerged from the Summit with

some encouraging outcomes, but these fell well short

of the demands of our time.

It has become a categorical imperative to

understand and address man's developmental needs in

their totality, and not in isolated parts. It is

disconcerting that the highways of development are

jammed with the noisy and unruly traffic of

materialism and its brash cousin, consumerism. Human

values have become mute bystanders in most political,

economic and social activities.

The result of this imbalance between our material

and non-material needs can never be happy for

mankind. On the contrary, if we are guided by

compassion, care, feeling for our fellow human beings,

cooperation and other human values, we are bound to

get the right solutions to every problem on our planet.

Humanity is crying out for a harmonious

integration of the economic, social, political,

environmental and spiritual dimensions of

development. This task calls for the closest possible

cooperation among nations and communities, with a

readiness to accept the best from every cultural and

spiritual tradition around the globe. The United Nations

needs to take up newer and bigger initiatives in this

direction.

In this Assembly, less than a year ago, and in the

United States Congress the year before, I had extended

India's offer to coordinate a comprehensive global

development dialogue. I reiterate that offer today. If we

are to achieve the development goals we have promised

ourselves by 2015, we need such a dialogue urgently.

As we come together once again at the United

Nations, at a time of new and diverse challenges, we

should reflect on our collective commitment to the

Charter, its purposes and principles. There is a growing

perception, particularly among the weaker and poorer

countries, that responses to issues of far-reaching

impact often seem arbitrary and contradictory.

A common destiny is at stake. The world needs

collective multilateralism. It needs the United Nations,

the coming together and working together of all its

nations in the development of a common and collective

perspective.

Conflicts arise when there is no spirit of

democracy within and among nations. A genuinely

democratic framework enables us to respect alternative

points of view, to value diversity and to fashion

solutions responsive to the aspirations of people.

India's own experience as a hugely populated and

diverse nation shows how complex problems can be

addressed within a constitutional and democratic

framework.

These values need to be assiduously nurtured in

our societies, so that at least a future generation is rid

of the scourge of poverty, intolerance, obscurantism

and religious extremism.

Democratic societies are far less prone to

ideologies based on violence or militarist yearnings,

since they do not have their fingers permanently on the

trigger of a gun. We have to be vigilant against threats

to democracy worldwide arising from forces that are

opposed to it, be they rooted in fundamentalist political

ideologies or extremist religious dogmas.

All of us are aware of the challenges. Most of us

are agreed that a stable global order has to rest on the

four strong pillars of peace, security, sustainable

development and democracy. We have to ensure that

each of these pillars is strong and resilient.

We are conscious of our collective responsibility.

It is the leap from this theoretical understanding to its

practical realization that we have often failed to

execute. We should not fail again. Our future

generations will not forgive us if we do.