Senegal, 2003

As a Vice-

President at this session, Senegal, through me,

expresses to the President its heartfelt congratulations

on his election to the presidency of the General

Assembly at its fifty-eighth regular session. In that

election, I see a mark of confidence and a tribute to his

wonderful country, Saint Lucia, but also to our entire

sister community, the countries members of the

Caribbean Community. He may therefore be assured of

Senegal's full cooperation in the exercise of his

important duties. Let me also express my sincere

thanks to his predecessor, Mr. Jan Kavan of the Czech

Republic, for the decisive results achieved during his

term of office.

I should like to express my fraternal and friendly

greetings to the Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan,

and to tell him how proud I am of the spirit of

initiative, commitment and resolve that he has

displayed with vigour and determination in his noble

mission in the service of our common aspirations to

peace, universalism and solidarity.

It is precisely in the name of those shared ideals

that my country, Senegal, reaffirms once again its

fervent support for the readmission of the Republic of

China on Taiwan as a full-fledged Member of the

United Nations. By doing that without calling into

question the participation and the legitimate status of

any other Member of the great United Nations

family we would do justice to that country's 23

million hard-working and disciplined inhabitants,

deeply attached to the values of peace, freedom and

democracy enshrined in the Charter of the United

Nations.

Two years ago, on 11 September 2001, the world

discovered the new face of international terrorism,

right here and in all its horror. Certainly, other bloody

attacks have taken place, here and elsewhere, before

and since those tragic events; even the United Nations

has not been spared. The attack that cost the life of

Mr. Sergio Vieira de Mello, High Commissioner for

Human Rights, and those of many other United Nations

staff, is a sinister reminder that the terrorist threat is

now global in its targets and pernicious in its means of

action. Indeed, a defender of human rights has been

deprived of the most basic human right: the right

to life.

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Consequently, a collective, united, coordinated

response is required at all levels. In that spirit, Senegal

took the initiative on 17 October 2001 to call for an

African anti-terrorism summit with a view to

strengthening cooperation in that regard at the

continental level, thus joining its efforts with the

Algiers Convention on the Prevention and Combating

of Terrorism. It is still our conviction that Africa must

not remain the soft underbelly of the system that is

gradually being established to combat international

terrorism in all its forms, in the wake of the armed

conflicts and the humanitarian tragedies that have been

causing bloodshed in the world.

With regard to the situation in Africa, Senegal

salutes the significant progress achieved in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Liberia.

Those two friendly countries, afflicted by so many

years of civil war, seem at last to have embarked on the

path of negotiation and dialogue, an essential condition

for a definitive return to peace. Moreover, Senegal

welcomes the Security Council's decision to send a

peacekeeping force to Liberia in support of the troops

of the Economic Community of West African States

(ECOWAS), including the Senegalese troops already in

place.

In the sisterly Republic of CÙte d'Ivoire, Senegal

welcomes the progress made in the national

reconciliation process on the basis of the Linas-

Marcoussis Agreements, in the hope that the incident

that occurred two days ago will prove to be only a

hitch. I encourage my Ivorian sisters and brothers to

persevere on the path of reconciliation, cooperation and

mutual confidence in order to safeguard that country's

national unity and territorial integrity with the help of

the ECOWAS interposition force under Senegalese

command.

In many respects, sources of concern persist on

the continent, particularly in West Africa, formerly

known for its stability. I am thinking in particular of

those who would call into question democratically

elected regimes. We must say forcefully that the time

must be past for coups d'Ètat in Africa. Everyone must

understand from now on that legitimate power, whose

sole agent remains the people, cannot be acquired,

preserved or transferred except by means of the ballot

box that is, through the force of law, not the law of

force or that of weapons.

Senegal, for its part, is complying strictly with

the Declaration of Algiers of 1999, which enshrines the

principle of excluding from the proceedings of the

African Union any regime established in violation of

internal constitutional order. Last July, it was on the

basis of that Declaration and thanks to the vigorous

reaction of African countries including mine that

constitutional legality was re-established only a few

days after a coup d'Ètat in Sao Tome and Principe. That

example that precedent should serve as a lesson

to anyone who might yet be tempted by this practice,

which runs counter to democratic values.

Only 10 days ago in Guinea-Bissau, a

democratically elected President was deposed by a

group of officers. As soon as I was informed of this, I

cited the position of the African Union in calling for

the military to relinquish power. President Kufuor,

Chairman of the Economic Community of West

African States; President Chissano, President of the

African Union; President Obasanjo of Nigeria; and I

immediately took the situation in hand. This led to the

establishment of an entirely civilian Government. From

this rostrum, I should like to make a solemn appeal to

the international community. Guinea-Bissau, a fraternal

country bordering on Senegal, needs immediate

assistance. Only diligent and consistent economic

assistance can create the conditions for a lasting return

to social peace and political and institutional stability

in that country.

As Chairman of the United Nations Committee on

the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian

People, Senegal remains gravely concerned by the

deadlock in the peace process in the Middle East. Too

much blood has been shed and too much suffering

endured in that land holy to the three great revealed

religions. And yet, one must face the fact that a

peaceful solution is the sole, best guarantee of survival

for all the peoples affected by daily death and anguish.

We must pursue efforts to ensure a return to the

negotiating table on the basis of the relevant

resolutions of the Security Council, the principle of

land for peace and the parameters established in the

road map so that, at last, this long nightmare can yield

to the oft-aborted dream of peoples who cherish peace

and freedom.

However, if the words attributed to one Israeli

authority are well founded, my country would warn

against any attack on the physical integrity of President

Yasser Arafat and against any decision of expulsion.

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Any such act would have incalculable consequences.

Senegal rejects and condemns violence in all its forms,

regardless of who the victims and perpetrators may be

or the reasons invoked, and reiterates its unfailing

support for the establishment of an independent and

sovereign Palestinian State within secure and

internationally recognized borders, just as we have

always recognized Israel's right to exist in the same

conditions. I have the feeling, however, that if we

confine ourselves to issuing statements without making

any real effort to find a concrete solution, the tragedy

that is unfolding before our eyes in cycles of violence

will last a very long time.

The Israeli and Palestinian authorities have asked

me, without my seeking it, to help them to settle this

conflict, which is beginning to look like the Thirty

Years War or even the Hundred Years War. Those

authorities may recall simply that Senegal has resolved

for itself one of the greatest contradictions of our time:

the coexistence in one land of Muslims and Christians,

who live in a ratio of 95 per cent to 5 per cent in our

country. Christians, far from suffering from any

discrimination, are fully integrated into national life, to

the extent that a Christian has been the President of our

Republic for 20 years and supported by Muslims. That

is why I myself have turned to great thinkers and

theoreticians on the issue of conflict to see if their

words might be useful to us.

A compatriot of Jacques Chirac, Mr. Gaston

Boutoul, invented the science of war and, more

generally, of conflict known as polemology, the

objective of which is to understand, through scientific

analysis, the motivations and mechanisms of war and

conflict. A sociological approach includes individual

psychology, collective and social psychology,

economics and the environment. I should like to

subscribe to this approach and, in the light of the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to make a modest

contribution.

It seems to me that there are two possible

approaches to the conflict: that of the aggressor

aggressed' theory and that of the occupier occupied'

theory. If we seek to identify who is in one category

and who is in the other, we find ourselves in a complete

impasse. Unfortunately, that is what each of the parties

is doing. In the first scenario, Israelis and Palestinians

each claim to be the aggressed and accuse each other of

being the aggressor. In the second, while Israel is

undeniably the occupier, it justifies this state of affairs

by pointing to the so-called aggression of Palestinians.

Hence, we return to the first theory and set in motion

an endless cycle.

Let us not play this game, which is one of

massacre for the parties to the conflict and of hide-and-

seek on our side, where political and diplomatic

interests cloud the search for an equitable solution.

The aim of my proposal is to move beyond the

subjective approaches of the two parties by introducing

external action, specifically on the part of the

international community. Instead of pursuing the

course of mutual accusation which, it may be noted,

leads nowhere because each party is subjective I

would simply propose that we eliminate the two

problems by merging them into a single, unique

problem. The dispatch of international forces to secure

uncontested borders and the placing on stand-by'

status of the parts of the territory on which there is no

consensus would eliminate de facto the two approaches

of occupier occupied' and aggressor aggressed'. I

believe that this approach is all the more feasible and

realistic in that Israel has declared itself prepared to

return all the occupied territories 90 per cent of

them first and then negotiating a border correction to

compensate for the other 10 per cent. That would allow

us to abandon the two theories, which can only

eternally pit the two parties against each other and

divide the international community.

The greatest war of all time, that of 1939-1945,

pitted French against German. Today, they no longer

agonize over the question of who was the aggressor

and who the aggressed, or of who was the occupier and

who the occupied. All such issues have today been

confined to history. All the parties have decided to join

efforts in a cooperative project: the European Union. I

would ask, therefore: Can we not dream of a post-war

period in which Israel and Palestine can embark on real

cooperation to the benefit of their two peoples?

As Members know, the Fifth Ministerial

Conference of the World Trade Organization ended in

acknowledged failure just a few days ago in Cancun.

Beyond that specific event, we need to reflect more in

depth on the international trading system. There is

something paradoxical in this system based on a liberal

philosophy, but in which the rich countries spend over

$1 billion a day in various subsidies for their own

agricultural sectors. This ruinous practice leads to the

freefall of the prices of our peasants' agricultural

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commodities and threatens millions of jobs and the

lives of over 2 billion human beings.

The hypothetical mechanism of limiting the

perverse effects of subsidies can in no way be a

credible solution to the enormous damage done to the

developing countries. I believe that the time has come

radically to rethink the mechanisms of international

trade in order to break away from this implacable logic

of injustice and inequity. In that context, I have taken

the initiative of proposing to convene, every two years

in Senegal, an agricultural Davos' an agricultural

Dakar, rather to encourage thinking on a credible

alternative to the current system.

It is indeed in no one's interest for the present

imbalances to persist, because they promote poverty,

favour unemployment and destitution, and fuel the

feelings of exclusion and despair that lead to

extremism of all types. Once again, for us it is a

question of calling not for assistance, but for

the implementation of a minimum level of fairness in

trade free trade, but fair trade.

The challenges of globalization and

interdependence that it entails forces us to devise new

approaches that go beyond the obsolete assistance

policies to create the conditions for a new kind of

partnership, which alone is capable of breaking the

vicious cycle of poverty. Senegal reiterates its

commitment to implementing the 2001-2010 Brussels

Programme of Action for the Least Developed

Countries and renews its support for the Office of the

High Representative for the Least Developed

Countries, whose activities deserve to be strengthened

by the donor community in the framework of a trust

fund established for that purpose.

The vision put forward by the New Partnership

for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is also relevant to

the new kind of partnership just mentioned. For two

years now, our continent has been carrying out a quiet

revolution to firmly take its destiny in its own hands

against the background of key factors such as peace,

stability, good governance in the public and private

sectors and regional cooperation. Specific plans have

been developed and are available to all our partners.

We have been learning as we go along, by

creating a gas pipeline in West Africa, for example,

which will supply along 600 kilometres 3,640,000

cubic metres of gas starting from Nigeria to Benin,

Ghana and Togo. The electricity grids in southern

African that brings together the national electricity

companies of 12 countries of the Southern African

Development Community (SADC) is another example

of Africa's will to pool our resources. Today NEPAD

has designated 14,000 kilometres of roads and just as

many kilometres of railways to be laid, and this is one

of our top priorities. In the area of new information and

communications technology, fibre optics now link

Europe and the United States to Dakar, Pretoria and

Kuala Lumpur, with connections extending inside the

continent. Those specific examples fully show our

determination to make NEPAD a reality rather than a

good intention or unrealistic plan.

On a continent where everything still needs to be

built, it is not a matter of the need to identify

opportunities but rather to seize them. On the whole,

we are committed to creating an environment in which

there will be a clear interest in investment and secure

business operations. On a different order, the African

Peer Review Mechanism has been launched, and

colleagues before me have already spoken about it.

Together with our partners, we are ready to fulfil

the goals of NEPAD. In a few days, some African

heads of State will be in Tokyo to establish cooperative

ties between Japan and Africa through the Tokyo

International Conference on African Development.

In a report on the state of the international

community, the Secretary-General made an analysis

that sounded alarm bells: the world does not seem to be

sharing much anymore. The collective security

machinery established by the Charter is already

threatened. The United Nations system inherited from

the Second World War no longer sufficiently meets the

challenges of the twenty-first century. He therefore

calls for the implementation of reform, as spelled out

in the Millennium Declaration.

Let us explore together the guidelines that were

established by the Secretary-General. Let us make way

for a culture of peace and dialogue among civilizations,

which bears the fertile seeds for consensus,

understanding and peaceful coexistence. Let us resist

the temptation of isolationism and rule of force, for as

Jean-Jacques Rousseau rightly said in The Social

Contract': The strongest is never strong enough to be

always the master, unless he transforms strength into

law, and obedience into duty.' Let us ensure that,

however diverse we may be, the universal values of

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peace, freedom, democracy and respect for human

rights will always be safeguarded.

I take this occasion to voice my support for the

position expressed by President Bush against the

heinous sex trade and other forms of slavery. Instead of

vague, futile statements of intention, let us all agree to

a realistic platform and guarantee that specific

measures are taken. In that regard, we can justly raise

questions on the follow-up to commitments undertaken

at the Monterrey International Conference on

Financing for Development.

Concerning all these issues vital to humanity's

survival, the United Nations must, in accordance with

the Charter, ensure that its mission remain clearly in

sight, a mission that is a focal point at which our

efforts towards humanity's common goals are

harmonized.

I strongly believe that this need corresponds to

the legitimate aspirations of all the peoples whom we

represent here.