Lithuania, 2008

First, I would like to

express my great respect to the leadership of the

General Assembly as it guides the Organization

through global issues and challenges.

When I stood at this podium 10 years ago, the list

of issues to be urgently addressed was about the same,

yet the mood was different. The Kyoto Protocol had

just been signed and preparations for the Millennium

Summit, including the drafting of the Millennium

Development Goals, were under way. The international

community, guided by the principles and the leadership

of the United Nations, showed the will and the

ambition to resolve global issues.

But did we manage to turn that collective will

into principled and decisive actions? I have to admit

that many nations, big and small, have many more

concerns today than they did a decade ago. Today we

feel less secure. The very structure of the international

system seems to be fracturing, depriving us of the

protection provided by international law and

international institutions. In my region, in Eastern

Europe and in the eastern neighbourhood of the

European Union (EU), that is more obvious than

anywhere else.

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Take energy security: oil supplies to Lithuania

have been cut off without warning, and we do not stand

a chance of conducting a normal civilized dialogue on

how to fix the problem. Gas supplies were interrupted

to our neighbours Ukraine and Belarus. In that light,

and on the eve of closing down our only independent

power generator, we have very serious reason to worry

about the possible risks for the future of our economy.

I would also say that other countries of our region also

have concerns about unreliable energy supplies. Such a

situation threatens the stability of the entire region. The

United Nations cannot be a mere passive observer if,

and when, universal values and international law are

under threat. Too often, we remain observers in the

face of mounting security crises.

What happened to Georgia a few months ago is a

case in point. The United Nations largely failed to react

to an act of aggression against a small nation that has

been a Member of the United Nations since 1992.

Perhaps we failed to react because one of the interested

sides to the conflict is a permanent member of the

Security Council, which has the responsibility to

protect both the letter and the spirit of the Charter of

the United Nations and various United Nations

resolutions.

But maybe we also failed to react because our

faith in the United Nations has weakened. It is the very

essence of the Organization’s mission to protect human

life and human rights, but too often voting on human

rights receives less and less support from Member

States. Today, there are still about 26 million internally

displaced persons in the world, including in the Sudan,

Somalia, the South Caucasus nations of Georgia and

Azerbaijan, and other places. Last year alone, we faced

serious crises in different corners of the planet,

including in Myanmar, the Sudan and Zimbabwe. The

world needed United Nations leadership, but the

Organization has not acted accordingly. That is because

some States hide behind technicalities or the shield of

national sovereignty, thereby paralysing the United

Nations.

It is quite evident that the United Nations cannot

continue with business as usual. It needs reform and a

greater role in areas that will determine the future of

the twenty-first century, such as energy, information

security, anti-terrorism, the fight against

fundamentalism and the like. How long will we

continue with cold-war-era security definitions, closing

our eyes to the less visible, but no less dangerous

dangers of the twenty-first century? When 17 years

ago, following the Soviet occupation, my country

regained independence and joined the United Nations,

we were told that never again would Molotovs and

Ribbentrops dare to decide the future of other nations.

Next year we will mark the seventieth anniversary of

the shameful Molotov-Ribbentrop secret protocols.

But Lithuania and other nations of the former

Soviet Union still have to fight against the revisionism

seeping down from the Kremlin’s towers and the

blatant claims that there was no occupation of the

Baltic States and that there was no Holodomor in

Ukraine, where millions of people were starved to

death by a ruthless dictator. Should not an alarm bell

ring across the entire international community when

we see such bold attempts to cover up crimes against

humanity?

Today, my nation is commemorating the Day of

Genocide of Lithuanian Jews. That tragedy is a

powerful reminder to us all of the vulnerability of

freedom, but it also teaches us that sincere efforts to

admit one’s crimes help nations to reconcile and create

a truly peaceful, secure and stable area. Therefore, on

this solemn day we not only remember but we also

learn.

If we are to reform the United Nations in a

meaningful way, perhaps we should have a better look

at the experience of European nations after the end of

the Second World War and the end of the cold war.

Based on that experience, it is obvious that we need to

strengthen democracy at home in order to have good

governance and responsible leadership. Perhaps

responsible leaders will not protect us from all global

challenges, but they will at least seek cooperation with

their people and other nations to resolve their

persisting problems.

It is only through integration that truly indivisible

security can be achieved. Indivisible security has

special meaning and importance for smaller nations,

which have all too often fallen victim to the redrawing

of maps. It is my conviction that the interaction of, and

cooperation among, different organizations — like the

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,

EU, NATO and the Council of Europe — have been,

and should remain, the foundation for security and

stability in Europe. There are difficulties and

deficiencies; but there is no alternative, and new

alternatives are not needed. I am therefore deeply

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worried by new calls to revise the institutional

structure of European security, rather than to abide by

commitments undertaken before the whole

international community.

Security based on cooperation should remain the

basic principle of different European organizations and

of international relations as a whole. The philosophy of

the balance of power, which is again growing popular

in some capitals, has no place in contemporary Europe.

And because security is indivisible, it is in the interest

of the international community that the United Nations

should play a greater role in strengthening preventive

diplomacy and making the principle of the

responsibility to protect work.

The United Nations also has to be more

responsive to emerging threats, such as unreliable

energy supplies, fundamentalism and cyber attacks. It

does not matter if the world is unipolar, bipolar or

multipolar. Human life and human rights remain at the

heart of our world. Only such a world can create a truly

viable architecture among States — an architecture

based on trust, openness and respect for human rights.

But did we see efforts to create such an architecture in

the Georgia-Russia conflict? What we saw instead

were renewed attempts to divide the world into zones

of influence or privileged interests. That should be

unacceptable to the international community in the

twenty-first century. Division and exclusion are bad

remedies for conflict resolution. Conflict resolution in

South Ossetia, Abkhazia and elsewhere should

therefore be the responsibility of the international

community and international institutions, not of one

participating side, which hardly remains impartial.

We also have to maintain commitments to value-

based policies. It is through our commitment to change

and reform that Lithuania has become what it is today:

a consolidated democracy, a strong reformed economy

and an active contributor to international peacekeeping

missions from the Balkans to Afghanistan.

I believe that we, the peoples of the United

Nations, have to renew our commitment to universal

values and principles, so that we march together and in

the same direction and our steps become stronger. I

believe that we must learn those lessons well, so that in

another 10-years’ time we can celebrate not only the

fulfilled promise of the Millennium Development

Goals but also the fulfilled promise of creating lasting

peace and an era of progress, prosperity and human

integrity. It is because the United Nations consists

primarily not of the sum total of votes but of universal

principles that those principles shall be a guiding light

for us in the years to come. I still believe that that is

the core mission of the Organization. I care deeply

about it.