Lithuania, 2004

Allow me to express my

sincere thanks to the President of the General

Assembly at its previous session, Julian Hunte, whose

able and skilful leadership we enjoyed during the past

session. I also wish the President at the fifty-ninth

session, Jean Ping, a year of highly constructive and

successful work.

It is our common duty to make this fifty-ninth

session a success and a fitting preparation for the

sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations and the first

high-level review of the implementation of the

Millennium Declaration, to be held next year. I believe

these two occasions will offer an excellent framework

for a serious review of how the changing global

situation can be met by a renewed United Nations.

The risks and challenges of the new millennium

affect us all and can be tackled only by common

efforts. Threats such as terrorism recognize no borders,

no differentiation by race, religion, or ethnicity. The

horror, devastation and fear that terrorism brings are

31

the same whether in Casablanca, Madrid, New York,

Jerusalem or Beslan. Terrorism cannot be justified.

And there can be no excuses and no leniency in

confronting it. The fight against terrorism must remain

one of the priority tasks of individual Member States

and of the United Nations.

Even as we speak, humanitarian crises, poverty,

famine and disease continue to plague large parts of the

world. Across the globe, almost a billion people

survive on less than a dollar a day. In sub-Saharan

Africa alone, around 300 million people live in abject

poverty.

In Iraq, the hope for universal and free elections

is marred by almost daily explosions, and security

remains too precarious for the United Nations to

resume its pivotal role. The Middle East conflict

continues taking its desperate death toll. And the word

genocide is once again on our lips owing to the Darfur

crisis in Sudan.

Therefore, we need to go the extra mile, to make

extra efforts to empower the United Nations to deal

successfully with these and other threats and

challenges, because the United Nations, despite all the

criticism, remains the only Organization capable of

embodying the principles of a truly global and

effective multilateralism. The United Nations can offer

the global reach and legitimacy necessary to enable the

international community to act.

As the nature of threats before us is changing and

new responses are needed, it is high time to agree on

future policies and principles. Today we need to build a

shared understanding of the nature of modern threats to

international peace and security. Much depends on the

ability of the United Nations — that is, on us — to

reach a new consensus on collective security. Our

strength lies in our resolve to deal collectively with

major challenges to peace, security and sustainable

development.

Today, more than ever before, the United Nations

has to play the leading role in building societies that

follow the path of good governance, respect human

rights and the rule of law. We must be able to intervene

and to prevent situations of massive human rights

violations.

We must also be firm in our struggle against all

attempts to encroach upon human dignity, against all

forms and manifestations of intolerance, anti-Semitism,

racism or Islamophobia. The international community

is vulnerable to the dangers posed by the proliferation

of weapons of mass destruction, international

organized crime, environmental degradation and the

spread of highly dangerous diseases, such as

HIV/AIDS. Our common efforts against these and

other threats must be universal, consistent, systematic

and unwavering.

No less universal and consistent must be our

efforts to reduce poverty and hunger, to diminish

disparities between and within nations, to improve

living conditions for women and children and to offer a

hope of a dignified life to ever-larger segments of the

world’s population, as pledged in the Millennium

Declaration.

We need to press ahead with the implementation

of the Millennium Development Goals. We need to

reinforce our political will to make our global

partnership more effective, by fully honouring the

commitments undertaken by the Monterrey Consensus.

Without peace there is no development. Without

development there is no peace. This recognized linkage

of security and development should be better reflected

in our global agenda. Only by confronting these issues

in a coherent and coordinated manner shall we be able

to build our common future.

Lithuania is ready to contribute bilaterally and

multilaterally to the implementation of the Millennium

Goals, and by sharing our experience of a national

reform process. Our membership in the enlarged

European Union and the North Atlantic Alliance

enables us to play a more active role by embracing the

principles of development policy and by adopting the

role of a donor.

Next year we will discuss how to find consensus

on the institutional and political framework for the

United Nations to operate in the future. Lithuania fully

embraces the need for reform of the United Nations for

the sake of enhancing its effectiveness and

inclusiveness. We hope that the outcome of the

deliberations of the High-Level Panel on Threats,

Challenges and Change will be able to contribute

significantly to giving a renewed impetus to the reform

of the United Nations. If so, the next test will be to find

broad agreement on changes and follow their

implementation.

32

I hope, too, that next year will be crucial in

moving ahead with the long-debated reform of the

Security Council. The issue is not whether the Security

Council should be enlarged. It is how to make it

effective and representative. Therefore, Lithuania fully

embraces the idea of ensuring broader representation

and responsibility for the Security Council.

In addition, the Economic and Social Council

must be renewed and strengthened. By dedicating

ourselves to Economic and Social Council reform we

have a real chance to make it an effective tool in the

hands of active and responsible United Nations

members.

It is my hope and wish that by the end of this

session we shall arrive at marking the sixtieth

anniversary of the United Nations with the conviction

and satisfaction that we have done everything in our

power to build a better Organization, one capable of

responding to both old and new, hard and soft, threats

and challenges in an effective and comprehensive way.

Fully aware that the United Nations was created

to serve humankind, let us embrace this challenge. Let

us bring to fruition the promise that the United Nations

is capable of fulfilling the hopes and aspirations of the

peoples for whom it was created.