Libya, 2000

It gives me great pleasure, Sir, to extend to

you, on behalf of my country's delegation, our

congratulations on your election as President of this

session, and to wish you every success in the

management of its affairs. I would also like to express

our appreciation to your predecessor, Mr. Theo-Ben

Gurirab, the Foreign Minister of Namibia, who

administered the work of the fifty-fourth session of the

General Assembly most competently. I wish also to

seize this opportunity to express our gratitude to

Secretary General Kofi Annan for his initiatives, which

have been instrumental in putting an end to tension in

many parts of the world and for his endeavours aimed

at reform of the United Nations and the enhancement

10

of its role, so that it may better fulfil its duties,

according to the Charter. A word of welcome is also

due to the Republic of Tuvalu, which joined us a few

days ago as a new member of the United Nations.

This session is convened in the aftermath of

several developments. In the past few days, the

Secretary-General submitted Comprehensive report on

peacekeeping operations; it included a number of

recommendations that would assist the United Nations

in assuming its responsibilities in this field.

Furthermore, over the last few months, the General

Assembly convened two special sessions, the first

conducted a review of the progress made in the

implementation of the outcome of the World

Conference on Women, and the second reviewed

progress in the implementation of the outcome of the

World Summit for Social Development and beyond.

Last week, this hall witnessed the convening of the

Millennium Assembly, at the conclusion of which the

leaders of the world expressed their adherence to the

United Nations and renewed their commitment to the

purposes and principles of its Charter, as well as their

intent to lend it their support and to enhance its role to

enable it to cope with the new century, with all its

changes and challenges. In our view, these

developments will undoubtedly contribute to the efforts

aimed at achieving the goals of this Organization.

However, it must also be noted that we are still far

from achieving the ultimate goal for which we strive

namely, the establishment of a world that enjoys peace,

security, freedom, equality, and justice, a world free

from oppression, acts of aggression, and attempts to

impose hegemony and domination.

There are many regions in the world today that

suffer from wars and conflicts. Famine and diseases

such as cancer, malaria, and acquired immune

deficiency syndrome (AIDS) still threaten the lives of

millions. Resources provided by nature for the

sustenance of life are being seriously endangered.

Developing countries have not benefited from the

advantages of globalization in a manner proportional to

their suffering from its negative impact. In fact,

international financial institutions have started to

impose severe conditions on these countries to the

extent that they find themselves at the mercy of a new

form of colonialism. Attempts to intervene in the

internal affairs of other States have threatened to

eliminate sovereignty not only to violate it.

There are also unilateral boycott policies and

imposition of unjust sanctions, even aggression, under

the pretext of so-called international legitimacy. Old

ideological barriers have been replaced by new barriers

that obstruct the States of the South from access to

technology they desperately need for development, and

that impose trade protection measures on their products

by making other markets inaccessible to them. We are

also witnessing selectivity in the sphere of

disarmament and double standard policies in the

treatment of international issues. Furthermore, criminal

activities have increased, including illicit drug

trafficking, the financing of organized crime and all

kinds of transnational crimes.

Such is the current state of the world, with its

various variables and challenges, after the collapse of

international equilibrium. Such a state of affairs

necessitates the adoption of certain measures to combat

and rectify the prevailing conditions. The United

Nations, in its capacity as an instrument and reference

authority for all, should perform a pivotal role in

dealing with these variables. However, we believe that

the Organization will not be capable of making an

effective contribution in this respect unless radical

reforms are introduced into the composition of its

organs and the working mechanisms of its entities. In

order to guarantee success for this process, we should

make it a comprehensive one that takes into account

the aspirations, ideas, and proposals of all Member

States, big and small, strong and weak. The

responsibility for success or failure of this process

must ultimately be a joint responsibility.

My country, wishing to contribute to the ongoing

efforts aimed at reforming the United Nations, believes

that the required reform should achieve the following

objectives: first, strengthening the role of the General

Assembly so that it becomes the authority responsible

for determining and deciding the conditions that must

be deemed truly threatening to international peace and

security. A mechanism answerable to the General

Assembly should be established to ensure the

implementation of its resolutions and to enable it to

control and hold accountable other United Nations

organs, including the Security Council, which itself

should be an executive entity for the implementation of

General Assembly resolutions.

Secondly, restructuring the Security Council so

that it achieves fair geographical representation in its

membership, with equity for African, Asian, and Latin

American States that are not fairly represented in the

membership of the Council.

Thirdly, improving the ways and methods by

which the Security Council conducts its work so that

its activities are rendered more transparent. Its rules of

procedures should also be reviewed. In fact, the

General Assembly, which represents all the Member

States of the Organization, should issue such rules;

otherwise, it would be meaningless to say that the

Council acts on behalf of the international community.

Fourthly, we urge the abolition of the

prerogatives that the victors of the Second World War

granted to themselves, particularly the right of veto,

which should be eliminated because it is non-

democratic and undermines the principle of the full

equality of Member States, as enshrined in the Charter.

Fifthly, in order to enable the Organization to

follow up on its plans and programmes, we propose the

establishment of an international committee answerable

to the United Nations, with subcommittees that cover

most regions of the world, empowered with the

necessary mandates and resources to undertake the

tasks of inspecting and implementing United Nations

programmes.

Despite the problems suffered by many African

countries, the current year has witnessed some

encouraging developments. In Somalia, Parliament was

able to choose a new President for the country and the

disputing parties in Burundi signed a national

reconciliation agreement. The fighting that broke out

between Ethiopia and Eritrea has been contained and

both sides have signed a ceasefire agreement. These

solutions were the fruits of efforts made by the

Organization of African Unity (OAU) and a number of

African leaders who sincerely care for the security,

stability and development of the continent. For its part,

my country has contributed to all these efforts and will

pursue, in cooperation with the OAU and the

Secretary-General of the United Nations, our initiatives

aimed at securing a just settlement acceptable to all

parties to the conflict in Sierra Leone. We will also

continue our good offices with the aim of finding a

solution to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of

Congo and the Great Lakes region on the basis of the

implementation of the Sirte agreement, which was

completed in Lusaka, for the purpose of ending the

dispute in that region.

From the outset, we in Libya have realized that

Africa's problems are partly due to its disunity and the

fragmentation of its own peoples' efforts. Therefore, in

order for the continent to be truly capable of facing the

challenge of disputes, disease and backwardness, as

well as others imposed by new international situations,

Brother Colonel Muammar Al-Qadhafi, the leader of

the revolution, has pursued his efforts to unify the

continent so that it may be ushered into the new

century strong and unified. It was in this spirit that a

meeting of African foreign ministers was held in

Tripoli last April, at which the founding law for the

African Union was drafted. This law was approved in

LomÈ last June at the Assembly of Heads of State and

Government. At the invitation of the leader of the

revolution, the African presidents will meet in Sirte

early next year to declare the official establishment of

the African Union. This bears witness to the fact that

Africa has overcome the negative aspects of the past

and realized the dream of unity, which has been the

aspiration of African peoples for decades.

All these initiatives and endeavours provide new

evidence that Africa fully realizes that the solution to

its problems and the advancement of its capacities

reside basically in the efforts of its own sons and

daughters. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that

international peace is indivisible and that international

stability cannot be achieved partially. This means that

the international community has an obligation to assist

Africa in its efforts to realize peace and stability on its

soil. As we reiterate today our invitation to all States to

help Africa in developing a programme to eliminate

epidemics and diseases, provide a solution to the

problem of its external debt and ensure that the

continent is dealt with on new, just and equitable terms,

rather than be considered merely as a consumer market

for the products of the industrialized world, we wish to

recall, as we have always done, that Africa's problems

lie in the abuse of its resources, the plundering of its

wealth and riches, intervention in its internal affairs

and the imposition of foreign concepts alien to its

traditions and culture. We demand that such practices

be discontinued, as they constitute one of the main

reasons for political instability in many parts of the

continent and for economic backwardness in most. We

also call upon the States that colonized Africa, drew its

borders and scattered and enslaved its people to offer

their apologies to the continent and to fully compensate

it for all the damage inflicted by colonialism.

12

No solution has yet been found to the Palestinian

question because the essence of this problem has been

ignored. My country emphasizes once again that there

is no solution to the Palestinian problem other than the

return of the Palestinian people to their homeland and

the establishment of their State on the land of

Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital. On this

occasion, as we salute the people of Lebanon who,

thanks to their steadfastness, were able to defeat the

enemy and liberate their occupied land, we once again

stress the need for an end to the occupation of the

Syrian Golan Heights. We also demand the immediate

lifting of the sanctions imposed on Iraq and call upon

the international community to put an end to the human

tragedy endured by that country's people, to preserve

the unity and integrity of its territories, to respect its

sovereignty, to refrain from interfering in its internal

affairs and to cease the military aggression waged daily

against it.

The international community has made

continuous efforts in the field of disarmament. My

country, which is a party to most international

conventions in this area, is still fully convinced that

some international conventions addressing certain

aspects in this field should be reviewed. I would refer,

as one example, to the Ottawa Convention on the

Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and

Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on Their

Destruction, which deals only with simple weapons of

limited effect. We, as one of the third world peoples

who are incapable of defending our borders and lands

against the powerful who possess aircraft carriers and

aircraft that refuel in flight, feel that humanity should

be preoccupied with the destruction of nuclear,

chemical and biological weapons, as well as with

ballistic weapons, rather concern itself with mines,

which are a simple form of weaponry.

On the other hand, we have noticed that a number

of obstacles still hinder the efforts to establish a world

free of weapons of mass destruction. Those who

possess nuclear arms have not yet undertaken actual

measures to dispose of their nuclear arsenals. In fact,

some of them have continued to develop these weapons

vertically, instead of beginning to destroy them. The

Israelis, who possess hundreds of nuclear warheads

with which they threaten the Arab people from the

Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Gulf, still refuse to join

the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear

Weapons and to place their nuclear installations under

the supervision and the safeguards system of the

International Atomic Energy Agency.

In raising this most serious and momentous

subject, we are fully convinced that, unless the

international community adopts effective measures to

force the Israelis to accept and implement the

international conventions on nuclear disarmament, and

unless the nuclear-weapon States take practical steps to

prove the seriousness of their undertakings, efforts to

prevent the proliferation of nuclear arms will be utterly

worthless and any claims concerning the destruction of

nuclear arms will be a major act of deception that will

not fool the peoples of the world.

Terrorism still constitutes a source of grave

danger to humanity, because no effective measures

have been taken to trace the roots of this phenomenon

in order to eradicate it. My country, which has been a

direct victim of state terrorism, has relentlessly

reiterated its strong condemnation of terrorist acts and

its willingness to cooperate with all international

efforts aimed at their elimination. My country's

eagerness to put an end to terrorism was so strong that

we called in 1992 for the convening of a special

session of the General Assembly to consider methods

to eradicate all forms of terrorism and violence.

Today, in reiterating this request, it is most

important that we clarify that the correct approach to

eliminating terrorism must begin with providing a

definition for terrorism that is universal, objective,

democratic and scientific. It is genuinely unacceptable

that some still classify the struggle of peoples for their

freedom and the fight of persecuted groups against

their persecutors as forms of terrorism, whereas they

turn a blind eye to real terrorism, embodied in unjust

sanctions, occupation, invasion, foreign military bases,

naval fleets, weapons of mass destruction and the use

and threat of use of force. Unless all such matters are

dealt with, it is certain that any international efforts to

eliminate terrorism will be of no avail.

We believe that it has become necessary to take

additional measures to reinforce international systems,

such as the Statute of the International Criminal Court,

concerned with the punishment of perpetrators of the

most serious crimes against international security. In its

present form, the Statute is designed to try only the

weak. We ask that it be modified to guarantee the trial

of all perpetrators of acts of aggression, drug

smugglers and their trading partners, those responsible

13

for massacres of innocent people, and those who

commit acts of aggression against United Nations

troops.

We look forward to the establishment of a world

in which equality and justice prevail and which is free

from discrimination, oppression and injustice. This will

require the drafting of laws that preserve the rights of

mother and child and guarantee that a person may own

his own house and be a partner in his own productive

work, that his basic needs will not be subject to

commercialization and that his rights are not usurped

as a source of income.

We also look forward to taking practical measures

that lead to the realization of a world free from motives

of aggression, manifestations of violence, epidemics

and diseases. We also hope that efforts will be joined to

combat the phenomenon of the white poisons'.

Moreover, in order to protect our planet from the

dangers that threaten it, we should work to eradicate

pests, strive to establish low-cost water desalination

systems and seek to prevent the flow of waters of

rivers, rain and snow to seas and oceans. Furthermore,

all factors that hinder the prevention of desertification

and the expansion of agricultural development should

be removed. One of these factors is the problem of

mines and other remnants of war from which many

countries, including my own, still suffer. There are still

millions of mines in our lands planted by the fighting

forces during the Second World War. We hope that the

States responsible for planting these mines will

respond to the international decisions that call upon

them to make available maps for their locations and to

provide technical assistance for their removal.

Allow me now to raise a subject that has

preoccupied the attention of the international

community for the last seven years, namely the dispute

between my country and a number of Western States

concerning the Lockerbie incident. I would like to

focus on the manner in which the Security Council has

dealt with this issue since the suspension of the

sanctions in April of last year. As you are well aware,

more than a year and a half have now elapsed since the

two suspects appeared before the Scottish court

convened in the Netherlands. Almost the same period

has elapsed since the Secretary-General submitted his

report to the Security Council pursuant to resolutions

883 (1993) and 1192 (1998), in which he confirmed

that my country has fulfilled the demands stated in the

relevant Security Council resolutions. Despite all these

developments, however, the Council has been

prevented from adopting the resolution that requires

the lifting of the sanctions, because of the intransigence

of one country, the United States. This intransigence

has been such that a threat to use the right of veto was

voiced.

The United States gave a number of justifications

to prevent the Security Council from lifting the unjust

sanctions imposed upon the Libyan people. The first of

these justifications is that Libya still supports

terrorism. This is a groundless pretext. My country,

which was itself a victim of terrorism in 1986 and

before, has repeatedly declared its condemnation of

international terrorism in all its aspects and forms, and

stressed its support for all international efforts aimed at

its eradication. Moreover, the Secretary-General's

report has given irrefutable proof concerning the

vacuity and lack of truth of all American claims that

Libya supports terrorism.

The second of these American justifications is

that Libya should cooperate with the Scottish court

convened in the Netherlands. This is a refutable

justification, as my country has pledged from the

beginning, that it will cooperate fully with the court.

This pledge has, in fact, been proven since the court

started reviewing the case. In fact, the United States is

the one that has not fully cooperated with the court by

hiding basic information requested by the court, which

in itself violates Security Council resolutions that call

upon all States, and in particular the concerned ones, to

cooperate with the Scottish court sitting in the

Netherlands.

The third, and the strangest of these justifications,

is the demand that Libya pay compensation to the

families of the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103. The

question to be raised here is: How could the United

States ask for compensation while the Scottish court

has not yet reached a verdict? Does this not constitute a

complete disregard for the legal principle that

stipulates a presumption of innocence until the accused

is proven guilty? Furthermore, why does the United

States jump to conclusions and deliver a ready

conviction, while acquittal or conviction is a matter for

the court alone to decide? Libya's fulfilment of its

obligations was confirmed by the Secretary- General's

report a year and a half ago. It was also reaffirmed by

the decisions of the Summit of the Organization of

African Unity, the Non-Aligned Movement, the

Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Arab

14

League and lastly the Group of 77 and China, which

called for a complete lifting of the unjust sanctions

imposed on the Libyan people.

In view of all of the above, my country demands

the following:

First, this issue should not politicize, as it has

now become a legal matter that should be left to the

discretion of the Scottish court convened in the

Netherlands without interference from any parties.

Secondly, the Security Council should, as early as

possible, adopt a resolution under which the sanctions

imposed on the Libyan people are fully and irrevocably

lifted. This is the only procedure that reaffirms the

commitment of the Council to paragraph (16) of its

resolution 883 (1993), and the second paragraph of its

resolution 1192 (1998). It would also reaffirm the

Council's response to the wishes of the absolute

majority of the international community, on whose

behalf the Council is supposed to work.

Should the Council be further hindered from

adopting the required resolution, my country will have

no choice but to resort to this august Assembly so it

could take the necessary measures to vindicate us vis-

‡-vis one State that refuses to lift the sanctions, a State

that was behind the imposition of these sanctions in the

first place.