New Zealand, 1997

May I begin by

congratulating the President on his election to preside over

the General Assembly at its fifty-second session. We are in

good hands as we begin our work during what the

Secretary-General has called “the reform Assembly.”

I know, too, that my Foreign Minister, on whose

behalf I am speaking, would want to warmly congratulate

the outgoing President, Ambassador Razali Ismail of

Malaysia, on his efforts during the past 12 months. It has

been a challenging time, and he has demonstrated the

decisive leadership we all expected of him.

Two years ago, at the fiftieth anniversary of the

United Nations, world leaders undertook to give the twenty-

first century an Organization equipped, financed and

structured to serve effectively the peoples in whose name

it was established. With the year 2000 now only 27 months

away, we are still far from that goal. This is a matter of

great concern to New Zealand. We firmly believe in the

United Nations as a vehicle to a better life for the world's

citizens, and not just for those who live now. We have a

responsibility to strengthen the Organization for our

grandchildren and beyond. We must not let them and

ourselves down by allowing an unreformed United Nations

to slide into increasing irrelevance.

We do not pretend the process of reform is easy or

finite. As the Secretary-General has said, “Reform is not an

event; it is a process.” [A/51/950, para. 25] Our own in

volvement on the intergovernmental track, including co-

chairing the Working Group on the Strengthening of the

United Nations System and the Working Group on an

Agenda for Development, has given us a good appreciation

of the complexities involved in producing positive outcomes

acceptable to 185 Member States.

We know the Secretary-General faces the same

issues with his 16 July package. As with any package, it

is inevitable that some Member States will find fault with

individual elements. But we are firmly of the belief that

the package should be viewed as a whole. This will be

for the greater good of the Organization. Difficulties with

individual elements of the package should not be allowed

to unpick the overall good which is in it. We appeal to

Member States to acknowledge this reality and to give the

Secretary-General their generous support. It is small

countries like New Zealand, and developing countries,

which, as we see it, stand most to benefit from what the

Secretary-General is trying to achieve.

To reform and strengthen the United Nations

effectively, we see a need to redistribute resources away

from administration and into areas which are important

for those of us who place a high priority on the United

Nations itself. We support efficiencies, not cost-cutting.

The crucial difference between the two is that one

approach seeks simply to save money without regard to

the impact on the Organization. We cannot support this.

The United Nations is too important to us to allow such

a downgrading.

An approach based on efficiencies allows us to

reinvigorate the United Nations by reinvesting the money

saved from outdated administrative practices. This is

central to the Secretary-General's package. In particular,

the proposal for a “development dividend” channelling

resources freed by administrative efficiencies into

strengthening the development activities of the United

Nations is most welcome. We can certify from our own

national experience that the sort of management reforms

proposed in the package do indeed lead to a reduction in

administrative overheads, allowing more to be delivered

in terms of substantive programmes.

At a time when development funds are diminishing,

the significance of this step should not be lost. New

Zealand is a country that is increasing its overseas aid —

by 40 per cent since the 1992 United Nations Conference

on Environment and Development, the Rio Summit. Our

contributions through the United Nations system have also

increased by nearly 50 per cent over the last five years.

But the global trend is the opposite, particularly among

the larger traditional donors. It is becoming harder and

harder for Governments to meet their Charter commitment

to promote the economic and social advancement of all

peoples. One of the modest outcomes of the last two

years of reform efforts within the United Nations has

been the elaboration of an Agenda for Development

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reaffirming the primacy of development, setting objectives

and recommending ways of achieving them. But, with the

best will in the world, implementing that Agenda will come

to naught in the absence of adequate funding.

The Secretary-General's reforms are designed to

deliver more for development. Equally important, they are

designed to boost confidence in the United Nations,

confidence which two weeks ago was given tangible form

by Mr. Ted Turner's billion-dollar grant to assist United

Nations agencies in key development activities. That

generous offer has given the Organization a real boost and

could be a catalyst for leveraging further private-sector

funds for development. We must support the Secretary-

General's efforts to make the United Nations the best

vehicle for delivering such assistance.

Member States need to trust the Secretary-General to

fulfil his responsibilities under the Charter: to give effect to

the policy directions which they set. We need to be clear

and realistic in the priorities we set for the United Nations.

We cannot mandate the Organization with more and more

new tasks and somehow expect these to be achieved within

current resources. And, having set the priorities, we must

resist the temptation to micro-manage. This will involve a

sea-change in the way Member States have become

accustomed to operating. The Fifth Committee still makes

decisions about staff numbers and placement within the

Secretariat, administrative decisions that in any modern

organization would be the responsibility of its managers.

We know that the transitional process of change will

not be easy for those working in the Secretariat either.

But — and we are conscious of our own experience in New

Zealand in instituting public-sector reform — the

managerial and results-based budgeting proposals in the

July package will improve work performance and will

deliver greater job satisfaction to those working for the

United Nations. The Organization's most important resource

is its people. The package recognizes the vital importance

of investment in staff. If the best and brightest are to be

attracted to and retained by the United Nations, they must

be recruited, trained, promoted and paid according to

procedures which are as good as the best employed by

Member States.

It is also important to stress here the loyalty owed to

the Secretary-General by those who work for him. He has

the right to expect their full support for his leadership and

for the initiatives he puts forward. Anything less would be

dishonourable, would subvert due process and would

potentially disenfranchise Member States. It could not be

tolerated.

I referred earlier to the intergovernmental track. It is

worth touching on the key issues of Security Council and

financial reform.

On the former, New Zealand will judge specific

proposals for enlargement of the Security Council by the

yardstick of democracy and the representativeness of the

institution as a whole. Increasing the proportion of

permanent to non-permanent members runs counter to this

principle. Nor could a package on Security Council

reform be acceptable to us without substantive proposals

opening up and modernizing the workings of the Council.

Sunshine, an American jurist once observed, is the best

disinfectant. Member States must continue to participate

in the debate in the search for a consensus solution.

On financial reform, New Zealand is strongly

concerned about the crisis facing the United Nations. It is

true that there are problems with the scales of assessments

for both the regular and the peacekeeping budgets. The

present floor has a negative impact on smaller, vulnerable

nations, such as the South Pacific island countries, New

Zealand's neighbours. This is just one example of the kind

of problem that needs to be addressed.

But those who want to see changes made to the

scale need to offer genuine inducements, not threats. We

cannot accept that any Member State is entitled to

withhold payments unilaterally or that the assessment of

those countries that will not pay their dues should be

picked up by others. All assessed contributions must be

paid in full, on time and unconditionally. It is a violation

of international legal obligations to do otherwise. This

must be regarded with the utmost seriousness by Member

States. It undermines the Organization's ability to operate.

It penalizes, through damage to the Organization, those

Member States that abide by their obligations. When the

State responsible for the largest percentage of arrears

owed to the United Nations is also the richest, and when

that State in addition attaches conditions to the payment

of only a portion of what it owes, it is understandable that

these actions should generate real scepticism in this

Assembly.

This sorry state of affairs must be resolved quickly.

But it can be resolved only on the basis of a credible

commitment that all conditions will be eliminated now

and that all payments will be made on time. And that

means in January each year.

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I would like to raise another reform issue which has

not featured prominently in discussions to date, namely

United Nations regional groupings. It seems to us that this

is an issue that deserves examination. The groupings are in

need of revision to bring them up to date with present-day

geopolitical realities. It is anomalous, for example, that our

Pacific island neighbours, members with us of the South

Pacific Forum grouping, belong to the Asian Group while,

for historical reasons, New Zealand belongs to the Group

of Western European and Other States. The fundamental

importance we accord our membership of the institutions of

the South Pacific Forum, of the Asia-Pacific Economic

Cooperation Council and of the Regional Forum of the

Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and our

relationship with ASEAN itself, should be able to be better

reflected in the regional groupings. We accordingly see

value in a reconfiguration of New York electoral groupings

to bring them more in line with those used elsewhere in the

United Nations system, where New Zealand in most cases

sits with our South Pacific partners and our East Asian

neighbours.

Developments in other regions will result in further

anomalies in the present structure. We see at a future stage

some long and complex negotiations over regional seat

allocations for a revised system of regional groups. New

Zealand of course will join with others in negotiating new

and equitable allocations of seats. While we look forward

to the outcome of that process, we realize that it will not

come overnight. In the meantime, and as a matter of high

priority, my delegation is working to forge a closer

relationship with the Asian regional group in New York.

I would like to close my statement by focusing once

more on the utmost importance of Member States' giving

positive endorsement to the Secretary-General's package at

this General Assembly, as New Zealand will be doing —

not only because it provides a positive and concrete start to

a reform process, but also because the alternative of not

supporting the Secretary-General will, in our view,

seriously undermine the credibility of the United Nations.

For two years the United Nations has been involved in

the current reform exercise. But none of us can pretend that

reform is an end in itself, or that introspection is an

ongoing excuse for inaction. The United Nations exists to

deliver concrete, substantive assistance to the hundreds of

millions most in need. No amount of self-analysis is a

substitute for that. Moreover, sustained emphasis on

introspection will erode the Organization's capacity, and

possibly also its will, to perform the tasks for which it was

created.

The challenge now is to embrace the bold

programme of reform outlined by the Secretary-General,

to use this General Assembly to begin to implement it,

and then to direct our energy where it rightly belongs, to

taking practical steps to reduce suffering and build a

better and more peaceful world: like drawing up a solid,

practical programme for alleviating poverty in the coming

decade; like establishing an international criminal court

which will ensure that individuals are held responsible for

war crimes; like supporting and enhancing the United

Nations capability for preventive diplomacy; and like

invigorating the United Nations capacity for

peacekeeping.

These are the standards by which the real success or

failure of the United Nations will be judged. New Zealand

is determined that the verdict will be a positive one.

Working together, we can ensure that it is.