Oman, 1993

On

behalf of the Government of the Sultanate of Oman, allow

me at the outset to convey to your Excellency our sincere

congratulations and to express our pleasure on your election

as President of the forty-eighth session of the General

Assembly. I am confident that thanks to your well-known

competence and diplomatic skills, our deliberations will

reach a successful and meaningful conclusion.

Permit me also to take this opportunity to extend

profound gratitude and appreciation to your predecessor, Mr.

Stoyan Ganev, for the exemplary manner in which he steered

the work of the forty-seventh session.

At this point, I feel it is important to refer to the

Secretary-General’s comprehensive report (A/48/1) issued in

September 1993, which dealt with the activities of the

United Nations and the issues and concerns on its agenda.

In particular, I wish to refer to paragraphs 353 to 366

regarding the situation between Iraq and Kuwait.

We highly commend the Secretary-General,

Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, for his great efforts, and we

shall be looking forward to contributing, with all Member

States, in achieving a unified stand that will ultimately lead

to an integrated approach of coordination, understanding and

cooperation towards the advancement of our goals of

development, peace and stability.

This session is convened at a time when the hopes and

expectations of all peoples are geared towards a new phase

of constructive international cooperation between the

Members of the United Nations, whose number has been

increasing annually. In this context, our country welcomes

the admission of Eritrea to the membership of the United

Nations after its accession to independence through its

people’s decades-long struggle. Eritrea is a country with

which we have cultural and historical ties and with which we

share aspirations after stability and peace. My country also

welcomes the admission of the Czech Republic and the

Slovak Republic as Members of the international

organization and commends them for having settled their

political problems peacefully and avoided conflicts,

bloodshed and suffering. We also welcome the admission of

the Republic of Macedonia, Andorra and Monaco to our

Organization. We are confident that the enlargement of our

international family will give us more strength and

confidence in undertaking further innovative international

cooperation.

These countries joined the United Nations after they

had gained their independence through the long and painful

struggle of their peoples during the cold war and the period

that was overshadowed by conflict between the great

Powers. Today, in the post-cold-war world, we see positive

political developments taking place. In addition to the

emergence of several sovereign nations, we have seen great

political developments which give us renewed hope that a

new world will be established on the basis of brotherhood

and cooperation instead of conflict and bloodshed, a world

in which wounds are healed.

Our presence here underscores our conviction that the

General Assembly is the unique international forum for

discussing and exchanging views among all Member States,

regardless of their size or strength. As Members of the

United Nations, we must engage in positive talks and

negotiations with the purpose of settling international

problems.

This forty-eighth session of the General Assembly is

held under circumstances that should encourage us to

establish a set of advanced rules that would govern

international relations. This we should do by taking

advantage of the newly acquired capability of the United

Nations to enforce the rule of the law in peacemaking and

peace-keeping the world over. We are confident that our

Organization, which shoulders a heavy burden of serious

Forty-eighth session - 8 October l993 5

responsibility will be able to rise to the challenges that face

it, so long as the international community continues to be

committed to and redoubles its efforts in supporting the

United Nations and the principles it stands for.

There is no doubt that, the success of the United

Nations depends on the coordinated efforts of Member States

in addressing the outstanding issues and crises which must

be solved collectively in the cause of building our new world

order. There is an urgent need for the organs of the United

Nations to provide positive conditions and effective

mechanisms before the United Nations is required to deal

with any regional or international crisis. We are convinced

that no matter how far apart the positions of the parties to

any conflict are, they will not reject intervention by the

United Nations if the intervention is timely and appropriate.

In any case, the tasks of the United Nations should be

exclusively in the areas of achieving peace and providing

humanitarian assistance.

The march towards peace between the two peoples of

Palestine and Israel has just begun. The first important step

has been taken towards the comprehensive solution for

which we have long waited. The United Nations which,

together with all its organs, played a prominent role in the

Arab-Israeli conflict should feel a sense of satisfaction at

what has been achieved. However, much work lies ahead

for the United Nations and its organs in pursuing and

preserving this historic agreement that will benefit not only

the people of the Middle East, but the entire world as well.

It is high time the Palestinian people put behind them their

long-drawn-out suffering and looked forward to economic

and social development under the new world order.

The Palestinian-Israeli agreement has paved the way

towards other agreements between the Arabs and Israel.

However, we should not be over-optimistic. The residues of

bitter conflict are there, and unless the peoples and States of

the Middle East are fully taken care of, those residues will

constitute real obstacles which will make difficult the

achievement of the goal we all aspire after.

The leaders of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples have

shouldered their responsibilities and have done what was

expected of them. Now it is the responsibility of all States

of the world to maintain and preserve this achievement. It

is not enough to extend congratulations to those leaders or

to give them our moral support. The United Nations must

take positive complementary steps towards sponsoring

projects from which they could benefit economically and

socially.

My country has voiced its support for this agreement

between Israel and Palestine. We are very pleased to

welcome this accord and look forward to a comprehensive

peace agreement that would guarantee the mutual interests,

rights and benefits of all parties on the basis of the

implementation of United Nations Security Council

resolutions 242 (1967), 338 (1973), 425 (1978) and the

principle of land for peace.

Thus, we call upon all States Members of the United

Nations to support this process. We look forward to any

positive contribution to any role played by the United

Nations in making the peace we hope for.

Regional cooperation in the area of economic and social

development will always be an indispensable prerequisite of

any new order in the Middle-East region. In order for the

new dawn of peace which has just emerged with the

signature of the historic agreement between the Palestine

Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel to continue,

develop and become a reality, the international community

has assisted in rehabilitating the countries that suffered from

the war situation which, until recently, prevailed in the

region. In this context, while we pay special attention to

supporting the Palestinian people’s progress to

self-determination, we must also bear in mind the urgent

need of the Lebanese people for assistance and help them

rebuild their economic and social infrastructures. Whatever

assistance the international community can offer by way of

economic and administrative support will provide the

foundation for hope in a future of peace.

The Middle-East region is not the only part of the

world where optimism is diluted by fear. In many other

parts of the world, the United Nations is deploying efforts

that aim at tipping the scales in favour of optimism against

anxiety and fear.

In this context, while we value the United Nations

efforts in Somalia, we believe that such efforts should be

based on concordance between the United Nations and the

different Somali factions. The success of the United Nations

operations in Somalia depends on the cooperation that can

be achieved between the United Nations and the Somali

factions. The restoration of peace and stability cannot be

achieved unless all Somali factions commit themselves to

cooperate effectively with the United Nations in addressing

the problems and difficulties that face the Somali people.

On the European continent, the international community

continues to witness another serious and highly sensitive

problem, namely the situation in the Republic of Bosnia and

Herzegovina. There is no doubt that it is the European

6 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

countries that bear the responsibility of addressing the

humanitarian, political, security and economic aspects of this

problem.

The principles of human rights, justice and equality

have always been the lofty ideals that civilized Europe

preached and called upon the world to adhere to.

Paradoxically, the world has yet to see those lofty principles

being put into practice and translated into measures that

would rescue the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina from

their agony and from injustice and persecution. Although

Europe is making efforts to steer the warring factions

towards reconciliation, the fact that Europe has failed to take

a decisive stand on the basis of justice and equality has

made the continuing tragedy of the people of Bosnia and

Herzegovina doubly dangerous as its persistence may very

well encourage the forces of evil and oppression in other

parts of the world to take heart and follow in the footsteps

of the aggressors in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a matter

of fact, we are beginning to witness examples of such

behaviour, in the strife between Azerbaijan and Armenia, in

the continuing plight of Georgia, in the explosive situation

in Tajikistan, and in the continuing civil war in Angola and

in many other war-stricken areas, hotbeds of tension which

may explode at any moment and threaten world peace and

security.

Some of those problems, as well as many others, are

left-overs from the cold war conflicts. They persist in

various forms and put a heavy burden on the United Nations

and its organs. As I said earlier, this international

Organization, with its present capabilities, cannot shoulder its

responsibilities as vigorously as it should if it is to achieve

full success in restoring stability whenever one of those

problems explodes. Therefore, we believe that the United

Nations should concentrate on issues of a humanitarian

nature which attract a measure of regional and international

consensus that would support United Nations action. It must

be realized that if the United Nations goes on taking it upon

itself to address the world’s problems all in one go, it will

squander its capabilities and will risk failure. It is therefore

most important to establish a mechanism that would

coordinate the efforts of the United Nations and the regional

organizations in addressing such problems and crises.

We, as members of this international Organization, are

enthusiastic and eager to develop the current mechanisms of

the United Nations so that the Organization may be able to

continue to play an essential and dynamic role in the world

of tomorrow that should be built on the principles of

dialogue and cooperation between countries and regional

economic groups. Economic development and scientific

progress will be principal features of that future world.

Hence the pressing need for re-examining the economic

structures of the various regimes that existed during the cold

war era. Such re-examination should be guided primarily by

the principles of free-market mechanisms and oriented

towards freeing the potential of third-world countries to

acquire advanced technology in order for those countries to

be able to develop their resources and market their products

without any economic barriers or restrictions. This, in our

view, will help consolidate the world economic order and

contribute to the world economic recovery from the

recession that is currently wreaking havoc on the economies

of the developed countries.

Cognizant of the growing interdependence and

globalization of the world economy, the Sultanate of Oman

contributes vigorously in this direction. For instance, in

cooperation with large international institutions, the Sultanate

of Oman has been involved in petrol resources development

projects in Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation with the

aim, inter alia, of assisting in the development and

improvement of the economies of these countries which we

believe could ultimately lead to greater general security and

stability.

The Sultanate of Oman believes that the increasingly

interdependent nature of the world economy is a major

development in the post cold war era. We shall, therefore,

work with our neighbours and partners to promote mutual

economic prosperity. Our initiative towards building a

strategic pipeline to transfer natural gas to the peninsula of

the Indian subcontinent aims at fostering the economic

growth of fraternal countries in that region. We call upon

the world to take collective action towards alleviating

poverty and hunger, which are the two main sources of

regional tensions and political upheavals.

Allow me to take this opportunity to convey, on behalf

of my Government, my sincere appreciation to the members

of the Asian Group for their support and endorsement of the

candidature of the Sultanate of Oman for membership in the

Security Council during the period of 1994-1995. By the

same token, my heartfelt gratitude goes to those countries

and other groups which supported the candidature of my

country. I should like to assure our supporters and all

Member States that from the very beginning of its

membership, the Sultanate of Oman will do its utmost to

contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the United

Nations, particularly in the area of establishing and

maintaining peace.

With the desire for membership in the Security Council

comes a strong awareness of the special responsibilities

entrusted to the members of the Council. We commit

Forty-eighth session - 8 October l993 7

ourselves to work collectively to achieve the effectiveness

required for the implementation of the Security Council’s

resolutions and the success of the Secretary-General’s

efforts.

The Sultanate of Oman feels special responsibility

towards its youth and their future, as they are the future

generation that will work to maintain the new world order.

For this reason, my country, based on its demographic

profile, has given priority to the promotion of youth

programs in its developmental, social and economic plans.

We look forward to cooperating with other States through

the United Nations in pursuing activities particularly aimed

at the welfare of the youth of our communities.

In this context, I am delighted to highlight the

September 1993 report of the United Nations Children’s

Fund (UNICEF) which describes the achievements of

countries in the spheres of health and welfare of children.

The report states that the Sultanate of Oman ranked first

among Middle Eastern and North African countries and

second world wide in the reduction of the child mortality

rate for under fives. Moreover, the Sultanate of Oman

occupied the first place among Middle Eastern and North

African countries in the provision of vaccinations against

measles. In the field of education, 91 per cent of our five-

year-old children are attending elementary school, a statistic

which exceeds regional and international averages.

We shall continue to improve on these achievements

through the fruitful cooperation between the Sultanate of

Oman and the organs of the United Nations, especially

UNICEF, in the field of health programmes that would

ensure children’s welfare and development to our

satisfaction. We view such efforts as good examples of how

international cooperation can be seen to bring positive and

beneficial results to our communities. We shall endeavour

to achieve even better results in this area.

While we continue to focus on our youth, we also work

simultaneously and enthusiastically to conserve the

environment in order to ensure a healthy and better place for

the next generation. In this regard, I should like to inform

the General Assembly that my country has recently become

part of the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the

Ozone Layer and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that

Deplete the Ozone Layer. This is in line with our conviction

that the international agreements on the environment and our

commitment to such agreements are the right way to protect

this planet and its resources.

The environment, on which survival on this planet

depends, is still beset by pollution and the exhaustion of

essential resources. Such a situation undermines the

prosperity of the inhabitants of the planet. Without

operational and effective economic plans for the

implementation of, and the relevant special procedures for,

the environment conservation programme, the prospects of

success for our efforts will be meagre indeed.

As in other areas, the differing levels of economic

development from one country to the other lie behind

environmental problems. We believe that the prevailing

chronic recession in the world has not made it feasible to re-

examine and redefine our economic priorities. However,

there is a pressing and urgent need for such re-examination

to be carried out against the backdrop of the environmental

and economic challenges now facing us.

The recession that now plagues the industrialized

countries has resulted from the deterioration of growth rates

in the Third World countries. We hope that the developed

countries will realize the importance of allowing the

developing countries to revitalize their economies so that the

economic order may regain the balance between the supply

side upon which the economies of the industrialized

countries depend and the demand side which constitutes the

basis of the economic growth of the Third World countries.

We are concerned that if the developed countries are

not fully responsive to and supportive of the essential

requirements of economic recovery in the Third World

countries, the present world economic situation will

ultimately lead to a cancerous recession that will affect the

whole world and lead to disastrously negative consequences.

Finally, it must be said that despite all this, we should

tip the scales in favour of optimism regarding the prospects

of building a new world of peace, brotherhood and

prosperity. Regardless of the many hotbeds of regional and

ethnic conflicts, we are confident that our constructive

discussions at this session and at all levels will ensure the

emergence of a better world in the coming century that will

be free of all the tragic negative residues of the past. Our

best guarantee that it will be so is that our common future

will depend on positive cooperation between all countries in

the interests of international stability and prosperity under

the rule of law and in consonance with the behests of justice

and sagacity.