Niger, 1998

His illustrious election to the presidency of the

General Assembly at its fifty-third session gives me the

pleasant opportunity to express to Mr. Opertti, on behalf of

the people and Government of the Niger, our warmest

congratulations. His unanimous election is assuredly a

legitimate confirmation both of his personal merits and of

the firm commitment of his country, Uruguay, to the

triumph of our Organization?s noble ideals.

These congratulations I extend to the other members

of the Bureau who help the President in his task, in the

achievement of whose success I can guarantee the full

cooperation of the delegation of Niger.

I would also like to express my sincere compliments

to the President?s predecessor, Mr. Hennadiy Udovenko,

for his invaluable work as President.

To Mr. Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of our

Organization, I am happy to repeat here the full support

of the Government of Niger for his remarkable activities

in the service of world peace and the courageous reform

work he is doing in order to allow the United Nations to

better respond to the challenges of the coming new

millennium. I cannot fail to pay tribute to his outstanding

success in finding, through determination and courage, a

diplomatic way out of the Iraq crisis at the beginning of

this year, thus greatly contributing to the safeguarding of

peace and security in the region and thus to enhancing the

credibility and the prestige of our Organization, as well as

to the strengthening of his personal commitment and his

authority.

For more than a half century the United Nations has

carried out one of its main missions by saving us from a

third world conflict, which certainly would have been

fatal to humankind. The end of the cold war brought hope

of the emergence of a new international order based on

total respect for the principles laid down in the United

Nations Charter and international law, even if that hope

needs further strengthening, in particular because of the

persistence of violent and murderous conflicts, the

increase of tensions of all kinds and the accumulation of

increasingly destructive weapons by a growing number of

nations.

Africa remains the region of the globe most affected

by conflicts — repeated, disturbing conflicts, genuine

sources of instability, of intolerable suffering and of

apocalyptic movements of populations and

impoverishment. That is why the Government of Niger

welcomed the Security Council initiative to invite the

Secretary-General to submit a report to it on the causes of

conflict in Africa and their possible remedies. I would

like once again to congratulate the Secretary-General on

the important report (S/1998/318) he submitted, a report

remarkable for its frankness and its realistic

recommendations for assuring durable peace and

sustainable development in Africa. It is our earnest hope

that this report will contribute to awakening the human

conscience and bringing the international community to a

point where it will further help the efforts of the African

countries in their unremitting search for peace and

prosperity.

6

Within the framework of the efforts made in Africa to

redress the situation, the people and Government of Niger

welcome the success this year in defusing numerous

conflicts, particularly those in the Central African Republic

and Sierra Leone. By personally participating in the

festivities which marked the return to power of Mr. Ahmad

Tejan Kabbah, the democratically elected President of

Sierra Leone, I was able to show my Government and

people?s deep commitment to democratic processes and the

establishment of the rule of law in Africa.

This is a good opportunity to pay tribute to the

decisive, beneficial role played by the Economic

Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Monitoring

Group (ECOMOG) in the restoration of constitutional

legality and the return of calm to Sierra Leone, thereby

implementing the political will and determination of the

ECOWAS heads of State. The exemplary intervention of

ECOWAS to resolve conflicts in the West Africa subregion

testifies to the opportuneness of giving more responsibility

to subregional and regional organizations in the prevention

and management of conflicts. Their unparalleled local

knowledge could, when necessary, be given the logistic

support and expertise of the United Nations to deal with

local conflicts, in keeping with the prescriptions of the

Agenda for Peace of the Secretary-General and with the

provisions of the Charter.

Despite major progress achieved in this respect, the

hostilities which are troubling several subregions show that

the goal of peace is far from being achieved on the

continent.

Somalia remains deep in torment, despite laudable

efforts by neighbouring countries and the international

community to promote national reconciliation and the

restoration of a normal political and social life.

Confrontations and strife are continuing in the Great

Lakes region, where instability and insecurity, as well as

the poverty which accompanies massive movements of

populations, daily trouble our consciences.

Faced with the unremitting recurrence of differences

and disputes which degenerate here and there into armed

conflicts, we urge the countries concerned to show restraint

and to accede, with the help of the international community,

to offers of mediation to resolve their differences, in

keeping with the provisions of the Charter of the United

Nations and the Organization of African Unity (OAU), to

which they have freely subscribed.

Certain claims relating to identity, as well as the

exacerbation of social, cultural or political characteristics,

often generate violent upheavals, which may rapidly take

the form of terrorism, at times blind and bloody. Faced

with these phenomena, the international community must

unite in efforts to pursue and deepen its thinking and the

collective action initiated a few years ago at the Sharm el-

Sheikh summit in Egypt, in order to deal appropriately

with these problems.

In this regard, Niger would like, through me, from

this lofty rostrum, to reaffirm once again its firm

condemnation of terrorism and any use of violence in

relations between nations, peoples and States. Just as we

explicitly and firmly condemned the cowardly attacks

carried out last August against American diplomatic

representatives in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, and in

Nairobi, Kenya, so do we disapprove of the unilateral

resort to military force against sovereign States.

In this regard, the Government of Niger deplores the

attack against the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in

Khartoum, an attack which took the lives of many

innocent people and undermined the provision of

pharmaceutical products in several countries of the region.

Therefore, it seems necessary to us to consider quickly

sending to Khartoum an international mission of inquiry,

as requested by the Sudanese authorities. We in Niger

believe the request to be sincere, having had the privilege

of visiting on 6 May the sites and the pharmaceutical

factory in question.

The Middle East peace process has been at a

stalemate for more than a year now despite the invaluable

efforts of its sponsors to revive it. Therefore it is

necessary to deploy every effort to bring the Government

of Prime Minister Netanyahu to a point where it will

respect the commitments Israel has solemnly made.

The Government and people of Niger would like to

reiterate their unswerving support for the cause of the

Palestinian people and to reaffirm once again their

conviction that no peace in the Middle East can be just

and lasting until the Palestinian people regain their

inalienable rights, including their right to establish an

independent state on their national territory.

Of course, peace in the region also means the

withdrawal by Israel from the Syrian Golan and from

southern Lebanon. That is why my Government welcomes

the recent General Assembly resolution giving more

prerogatives to the Palestinian representation within the

7

Assembly. It is our wish that this significant progress lead

to the recognition of Palestine as a fully fledged member of

the community of States.

Turning to the question of Jammu and Kashmir, Niger,

which supports the just struggle of the people of Kashmir

to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination,

deeply wishes that the international community continue to

give full attention to this issue.

The arms race and the escalation that we have seen in

that area recently strengthens our conviction that we should

urgently convene a new and fourth special session of the

General Assembly on disarmament. Additional progress

appears indispensable in the area of the control of weapons

of mass destruction and the establishment of more effective

standards concerning conventional weapons.

The success achieved in banning anti-personnel mines

should encourage us to go farther in order to bring about a

better regulation of small arms and small-calibre weapons.

In this case my country welcomes the measures taken to

strengthen the Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament

in Lomé.

For several decades our Organization has been seeking

to adopt a coherent approach to effectively meet the major

challenges of poverty and development, in particular by

working to establish a strengthened world partnership to

finance development. It is time, therefore, to reverse the

trend of reduced official development assistance and to join

our efforts together to increase the scope of that assistance

by revising its modalities. In this respect my country

expects a great deal from the second Tokyo International

Conference on African Development, set for October 1998.

We expect that Conference to explore new strategies for

mobilizing official development assistance and to reaffirm

the international community?s commitment to make the

development of Africa one of its priorities.

It is indispensable, moreover, resolutely to implement

bold policies to relieve and even to forgive the external

debt of the poorer countries as part of a general agreement

to resolve this problem, whose solution is overdue. That

external debt represents an insuperable hindrance to any

effort to bring about economic growth and human

development in a large number of developing countries, and

in particular in the most deprived among them.

The marginalization of the African continent is

continuing, which, in this era of globalization, calls for the

establishment of an international mechanism that is capable

of ensuring a more extensive integration of the developing

countries into the world economy.

As is well known, my country, Niger, is facing

various factors that limit its efforts at development:

increasingly harsh climatic conditions; food shortages;

strong demographic pressure; being landlocked; a drop in

the price of its main export product, uranium; too heavy

an external debt; and low investment. All of these things

have contributed to making us for some time now a

country at the bottom of the ladder in terms of the human

development index.

But we have never given up, and my Government

has drafted a national programme framework to combat

poverty, proposing as a participatory measure a package

of strategies in the medium term intended to control this

scourge and to stimulate economic growth. This

programme, moreover, is an essential component of our

Economic Recovery Programme, which was adopted by

our National Assembly in July 1997 and which last

March in Geneva was the subject of a particularly

successful round table.

I take this opportunity, since these organizations are

part of the United Nations system, to say here how deeply

we thank not only the Bretton Woods institutions — the

World Bank and the International Monetary Fund — but

also the United Nations Development Programme, the

United Nations Children?s Fund and the United Nations

Population Fund. These agencies, which often have been

among the first to perceive the key role that the right

political and social environment plays in creative reform

at the national level, have given us the benefit of their

expertise and their advice and thus contributed to the

success of that round table. We are certain that the

promises of contributions they made at that meeting will

very rapidly materialize.

At this stage I wish to reaffirm solemnly here in the

Assembly and before the entire international community

that the democratic process is making headway in Niger

and will remain irreversible under my guidance. The

vitality of our democracy is reflected in, inter alia, a

multi-party system, with an unhindered opposition, that is

tirelessly attempting to establish a culture of dialogue and

peace on a permanent basis. But our democracy is also

reflected in the existence of a totally free private press, a

civil society that plays a front-ranking role and an

independent judicial system that is determined to protect

the rights and freedoms that the Constitution guarantees

to citizens.

8

As part of strengthening the democratic process and

consolidating peace, particular attention is being given to

strengthen intermediate bodies, which are important partners

of civil society — the non-governmental organizations,

associations and labour unions — so as to allow them

effectively to contribute to the process of creating a more

dynamic and conscious political life. My Government is

resolutely committed to consolidating these democratic

achievements, as evidenced by the holding on 22 November

of this year of local elections that will establish a policy of

decentralization which we have chosen to promote the

participation of the people in development and also to bring

about good governance in Niger.

Similarly, on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I wish to reaffirm

solemnly that my Government will work tirelessly to do

everything in its power to bring about respect for, and to

respect, human rights, based on its conviction that this

respect is a precondition for the progress of human society.

In conclusion, I should like to express the full

confidence that we have in the United Nations. In our view,

this irreplaceable institution remains the only forum that can

ensure the advent of a new world order based on justice,

fairness, liberty and peace.