Kyrgyzstan, 2005

At the

outset, I would like to congratulate you, Sir, on your

election to the important post of President of the

General Assembly at its sixtieth anniversary session

and to wish you every success in your responsible and

difficult task. May I also extend our thanks to your

predecessor, Mr. Jean Ping, for his successful

presidency of the previous session of the Assembly.

The summit that ended yesterday demonstrated

that the United Nations remains the universal

Organization capable of making an important

contribution to strengthening international peace and

security, achieving sustainable development and

finding adequate answers to new global challenges and

threats. In that regard, I hope that this sixtieth

anniversary session of the General Assembly will

become a major event in and give people some hope

for the future.

The rapid changes in today’s world have not

bypassed Kyrgyzstan. Our people, not indifferent to its

own destiny and future, in March of this year chose its

own path to development, progress and creativity.

Another page has been turned in Kyrgyzstan’s modern

history. We enter the twenty-first century full of

resolve to achieve our deepest aspirations and hopes

for peace, prosperity, progress and freedom. We are

confident that that the goals reflected in the

Millennium Declaration will be achieved in the Kyrgyz

Republic as elsewhere.

If it is to preserve the respect and to justify the

hopes of peoples, the United Nations must not lag

behind the swift and ever accelerating changes taking

place in the world today. It must not only adapt to

current realities, but also create more effective

machinery for addressing new challenges and risks.

Kyrgyzstan is convinced that United Nations

reform should fully reflect the will, fundamental rights

and interests of all States Members and peoples.

In recent years, the Security Council has been

repeatedly criticized for its failures in the maintenance

of international peace and security. It is therefore

extremely important that the Security Council find the

most effective way to meet its basic responsibility for

the maintenance of international peace and security.

Kyrgyzstan has consistently advocated expansion of

the membership of the Security Council and reform of

its working methods in order to make it more

representative, democratic and, above all, more

effective. We believe that the reform of the Security

Council should be based on the principles of

universality, efficiency and broad geographic

representation. The Council’s decisions must be as

timely as possible and their implementation

correspondingly expeditious and effective.

The Kyrgyz Republic shares the position that

United Nations reform will be successful only if

Security Council reform is followed by reform of the

General Assembly and the Economic and Social

Council. We support efforts to enhance the activities of

the General Assembly and to strengthen the

coordinating functions of the Economic and Social

Council. Effective coordination among the three

principal organs is extremely important in addressing

the complex problems facing the world today.

We all realize how great and complex are the

challenges facing the United Nations in the

maintenance of peace and security. Kyrgyzstan intends

to make its contribution to those tasks. For the first

time, it has offered its own candidature for non-

permanent membership of the Security Council for the

term 2012-2013. We understand the great responsibility

that membership of that crucial organ of the United

Nations entails. I would venture to assure the

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Assembly that Kyrgyzstan will make every effort to

increase its cooperation with Member States in all

regions and to become a reliable partner in resolving

global political issues.

Today, the United Nations and its agencies are

more engaged with issues of development than with

those of security. While many United Nations agencies

deal every day with the problems of development,

there is only one permanent organ that deals with

security issues. In our opinion, given globalization and

the interrelationship of all issues relating to man-made

and natural disasters, along with international terrorism

and extremism, the United Nations capacity to

maintain global security must be considerably

strengthened. We believe that development

programmes should be endowed with preventive

powers to ensure security and safety.

The history of international relations in the

second half of the last century shows that it is virtually

impossible to preserve international peace and security

when certain basic conditions of life remain unmet.

Poverty and deprivation lead to tension, which in turns

leads to breaches of international peace and security. It

is no accident that it is precisely the poorest regions of

the world that suffer the most serious regional

conflicts. If it is to achieve its security and

development targets, the international community must

adopt a more balanced policy.

The world community must work actively to

overcome disparities and inequalities between the

countries of the North and the South. We feel that the

United Nations needs to establish interactive

machinery to resolve the issues that cause the poorest

countries to opt out of the process of global

development and decision-making. The countries of the

South should become full partners in decisions

involving global problems.

Kyrgyzstan remains committed to the Monterey

Consensus, whereby the developed countries will

increase their development assistance and poor

countries will adapt themselves to using that assistance

more effectively. At various high-level forums, we

have come to understood the concepts of sustainable

economic development and sustainable human

development. We fully support those concepts, with

substantive provisions reflected in our national strategy

and programmes.

Furthermore, the successful implementation of

the national development programmes of many

countries is directly linked to regional and international

cooperation. It is at the juncture where all of those

interests meet that the United Nations and its agencies

must further enhance their role and coordinate their

efforts.

We support the proposal for national development

strategies to be adopted by 2006 and implemented by

2015 as indicators for the implementation of the

development goals set out in the Millennium

Declaration. In our opinion, the United Nations should

mobilize new resources, strengthen coordination and

increase its contribution to the resolution of

development issues.

Donor countries must now move from paying lip-

service to their obligations to concrete action. In that

regard, the Kyrgyz Republic welcomes the decision of

the European Union to allocate 0.7 per cent of its gross

national income to official development assistance by

2009. Kyrgyzstan also advocates the identification of

an acceptable level of indebtedness and the adoption of

urgent and commensurate measures to ease the debt

burden of developing countries.

Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked, mountainous country.

Mountain States are characterized by remoteness,

difficult accessibility, the scarcity of information, harsh

geo-climatic conditions, and high costs of living. While

receiving financial aid from the developed countries,

Kyrgyzstan itself is a donor of environmental services

whose value increases yearly. So, for example, the

Kyrgyz Republic is one of the principal repositories of

glaciers and suppliers of fresh water in the region.

Moreover, in the context of the International

Convention on Biological Diversity, Kyrgyzstan also

operates a network of biosphere areas and releases

much less greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than

most other countries of the world, thus contributing to

the preservation of the planet’s ozone layer.

At the same time, unfortunately, in our territory,

our many stockpiles of radioactive waste are an

inheritance from the military-industrial complex of the

former Soviet period. Their maintenance and the

prevention of further potential ecological accidents for

the entire Central-Asian region are an excessive burden

for Kyrgyzstan. We believe that the international

community, with a coordinating role for the United

Nations, should more actively involve itself in those

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areas of environmental risk and provide more financial

and technical assistance to avert global and regional

ecological disasters.

We also believe that the United Nations should be

more active in assisting poor and developing countries

regarding sustainable development by creating

machinery to shift the burden of external debt to

sustainable development. A significant amount of our

income goes to servicing our debt, hindering the socio-

economic development of mountainous areas.

In addition to disaster preparedness and

mitigation, Kyrgyzstan supports initiatives on the

creation of a worldwide early warning system for

natural disasters. As a mountain country, Kyrgyzstan

regularly faces serious and frequent natural disasters,

such as earthquakes, landslides, avalanches, and the

flooding of cities and settlements. In our harsh

experience, the consequences of such natural disasters

divert huge sums from economic and social

development and highlight the importance of

strengthening ecological security. As a first step,

Kyrgyzstan offers the use of its territory as a pilot area

for the prevention and mitigation of such natural

disasters.

I would also like to express our support for the

establishment of a committee of regional organizations

under United Nations auspices. Such a committee

would enable the exploitation of untapped potential of

the regional and subregional organizations in the

prevention and settlement of conflicts and other

important regional problems. Regional structures with

such potential that are now operating effectively should

play a mutually complementary role in facing new

threats and challenges. Kyrgyzstan supports the

participation in the work of the committee of such

organizations as the Shanghai Cooperation

Organization, the Collective Security Treaty

Organization, the Euro-Asian Economic Union and the

Central Asian Cooperation Organization.

We also support measures to enhance the

effectiveness of peacekeeping operations and welcome

the Secretary-General’s proposal on United Nations

standby forces of peacekeepers and civilian police.

The Kyrgyz Republic is the only country in

Central Asia that participates in United Nations

peacekeeping operations. We have sent military

observers and staff officers to the United Nations

missions in Liberia, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Serbia and

Montenegro, and the Sudan. We are proud of our

contribution and are resolved to continue supporting

that noble endeavour.

Kyrgyzstan actively supports the efforts of the

international community to restore and strengthen

peace in Afghanistan and has opened its territory to the

forces of the counter-terrorism coalition and the

Collective Security Treaty Organization to provide

regional security measures.

We remain committed to the establishment of a

nuclear-weapon-free zone in Central Asia. The text of

the agreement on such a zone has been agreed by five

countries of our region and we are pleased that the

Kyrgyz Republic is to be the depositary of the treaty.

We feel that this is evidence of the great respect and

trust in which our Republic is held with regard to the

initiative to establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone. I am

firmly convinced that the establishment of such a zone

in our region will strengthen global security and

regional stability. We hope to obtain the corresponding

support of the world community.

In conclusion, I would like to note that the world

community is going through a difficult phase in the

establishment of a new system of international

relations. Clearly, it will be a long, drawn-out process.

The States Members of the United Nations should

affirm their readiness to find practical solutions to the

most essential problems of our time: combating

poverty, famine and disease and to work for sustainable

development. This session of the General Assembly

will be remembered as the session of reforms.