Singapore, 2000

First let me warmly

congratulate you, Sir, on your election, which is doubly

significant, as few Prime Ministers have held the post

of President of the General Assembly. Your unique

practical experience in both domestic and international

affairs will stand us in good stead as we try to reform

the United Nations. I also thank your distinguished

predecessor, Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab, for the excellent

work he has done and for ushering the United Nations

successfully into the new millennium.

As a fellow small State, Singapore is also

delighted to extend a warm welcome to Tuvalu, the

United Nations newest Member. We hope that Tuvalu

will also join the Forum of Small States.

As the text of my speech has been circulated, in

the interest of saving time I will not read the entire

text.

The recently concluded Millennium Summit

confirmed that the United Nations, whatever its

imperfections, remains an indispensable organization.

The overriding theme of the speeches in plenary

meetings was the need for the United Nations to be

revitalized and better equipped to deal with the

challenges of the twenty-first century. Our immediate

challenge is to respond with concrete follow-up. This

may be stating the obvious but doing it will not be easy

nor is it assured. The United Nations record of

implementation, it must be conceded, has not always

inspired confidence.

In his report to the Millennium Summit, the

Secretary-General drew attention to a 1999 Gallup poll

of some 57,000 individuals in 60 countries. One

conclusion was that, globally, less than half of those

interviewed judged the performance of the United

Nations to be satisfactory. We need to reflect on this.

But it is also an unfortunate fact that the United

Nations has not usually got credit for what it has done

successfully, while continuing to attract criticism for

what it has not yet done. Thus, a critical political

factor — hitherto inadequately addressed — is how to

manage expectations.

Managing expectations is a key to success. The

window of opportunity opened for the United Nations

by the end of the cold war was perhaps squandered by

an overly ambitious agenda, leading almost inevitably

to disillusionment. We should not repeat this mistake

after the Millennium Summit. To resolutely implement

the Summit's results, we must not only accurately

identify them, but engage in a realistic assessment of

what is and is not possible. Otherwise, we risk

undermining the political will and support needed for

the United Nations to be effective.

The United Nations serves two essential functions

for our community of nations. It provides all of us with

a valuable instrument to advance our common interests,

including the setting of norms for relations between

nations and on human rights. It also provides each of

us with an important avenue to advance or defend our

national interests. There is no necessary contradiction

between these two functions. That which is in the

interest of humanity ought to be in our individual

national interests. But the practical problem is in

identifying what is common and reconciling different

national interests.

The twentieth century has seen a creative tension

between two apparently contradictory sets of ideals:

the sovereignty of nation States and the progressive

elaboration of international law and organization.

Sovereignty implies the right of each State to

determine for itself its own rules. Yet today States

interact within a web of complex relationships,

international institutions and regimes, covering an

ever-widening range of matters, which implies a

serious limitation of sovereignty. We live with this

apparent contradiction every day.

But we do not have to choose between the two

ideals of absolute sovereignty or absolute international

law and organization. The real question is how to strike

an appropriate balance to move forward.

It was therefore timely for the Secretary-General

to convene the Millennium Summit. We now have a

broad consensus on what to do to meet the challenges

of the twenty-first century.

The question then is: how do we proceed from

here. Taking a narrower but more focused approach

may be the only practical solution to many seemingly

intractable issues. But I do not underestimate the

complexities of putting this into practice. Let me

illustrate the complexities with reference to two of the

core functions of the United Nations: development and

security.

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On development, earlier calls for a new

international economic order fell on deaf ears. The

stalemate in North-South negotiations over the last

three decades or so was the direct consequence of the

resistance on the part of certain developed countries to

admit the necessity of changing the functioning of the

world economy.

However, I believe that resistance can be more

easily overcome and the urgent remedial action that is

needed may be easier to take if there is a mind-set shift

by both developing and developed countries. The

candid debate the leaders had at the recent interactive

round table discussions saw a common

acknowledgement that both the North and the South

must find collective solutions to the problems of

development. There was agreement that developing

countries must be given help to build up capacity to

benefit from the forces of globalization. The developed

economies have also pointed out that they too face

serious problems that can be attributed to the pressures

of globalization. But there can be no doubt that the

problems of the South are of a far greater magnitude

and deserve far more attention. Domestic problems at

home should not give the North any excuse to ignore

their important international obligations.

Today, it is commonly accepted that no country,

whatever its development status, can afford to opt out

of the global economy or go it alone. The issue for all

is to develop the national capacity to take advantage of

the benefits of globalization while mitigating its

downsides.

The United Nations is now in its fourth

development decade. A new discipline for both

developed and developing countries is needed if the

results are to be less disappointing than the first three.

The issue for the United Nations is to help the

developing countries acquire the capabilities to deal

with the pressures of globalization and to plug it.

In this process, difficult domestic structural

changes will be necessary to ensure that policies and

institutions meet international best practices. These

standards are today largely Western, but can and ought

to be internationally negotiated. And it is imperative

that the developed countries avoid a sterile “one-size-

fits-all” prescription. As suggested by the Secretary-

General, the United Nations can play a mediating role

in the negotiations so that it will not be undertaken on

the basis of categories biased towards zero-sum

solutions. Instead, the United Nations can help develop

“win-win” solutions for both developed and developing

countries.

However, the United Nations cannot work in

isolation. The United Nations has a role to play to

ensure that the international financial institutions like

the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and

the World Trade Organization coordinate their efforts

and work as one team. No other institution is better

placed than the United Nations to do this. The United

Nations is the natural forum for regular dialogues

among the multilateral organizations to coordinate

programmes that would help developing nations build

capacity. The United Nations could also help make the

decision-making processes of these organizations more

transparent, consultative and inclusive.

Turning next to security, the end of the cold war

has obviously not meant the end to international

conflict. In the eleven years since the end of 1989,

when the Berlin Wall fell, the Security Council

authorized some 40 peacekeeping operations. But in

the preceding 42 years, it had authorized only 17. It has

been estimated that the total cumulative amount of the

United Nations peacekeeping budget from 1948 to

1989 was $3 billion. But since 1989, it has escalated to

about $18 billion. Not only have the numbers and the

costs of peacekeeping operations risen sharply, but

their scope has also changed. Of the 40 peacekeeping

operations authorized since 1989, only five were

clearly in response to clear inter-State conflicts.

Throughout history we have witnessed oppressive

internal conflicts and human rights atrocities

perpetuated by a State against its own people. The

difference today is that with the advent of technology,

instant communication through television, the Internet

and the role of non-governmental organizations, these

conflicts and atrocities are made known to the whole

world instantaneously. Very few are regarded as purely

local or regional situations. Most are regarded as

internationalized. This galvanizing of public outrage

leads to expectations that the international community

must act. Often this increases the pressures on the

United Nations and the Security Council to take

interventionist actions, severely testing the United

Nations capacity and stretching its resources. The

dilemma is: how can the United Nations be responsive

to these pressures if its Members are unwilling to give

it the required resources. And if the United Nations

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tries to be selective, how can it prevent itself from

being accused of practising double standards?

In 1995 Professor Paul Kennedy of Yale

University, who headed a team of scholars retained by

the United Nations Secretariat to study the future of the

Organization, concluded that Member States faced an

urgent decision: either to reduce their demands on the

United Nations, thereby giving it a decent chance to

carry on at a lower level of activity within existing

resources, or to expand available resources so that the

United Nations could meet what Professor Kennedy

saw as inexorably growing demands from Member

States unable to cope with the technological pace,

population growth and environmental pressures of the

twenty-first century. He concluded that, in the light of

global circumstances, opting for expanded resources

would be the wiser choice.

There is now a growing consensus that it is

important to ensure that the United Nations has

adequate resources for its current and future

peacekeeping activities. Discussions on how this can

best be effected are already under way and Singapore

supports them. Nevertheless, let us not forget that

every prudent accounting must deal squarely with how

decisions are made on peacekeeping operations. We

have to be honest here. There is no level playing field.

Most of the time, most decisions are in reality made by

the permanent members of the Security Council. The

rest of us have to pay our dues, but have a minimal say

in the decisions.

Hence, when we review the current peacekeeping

scale of assessments, we hope that the Security Council

will also review its current decision-making

procedures.

Recent developments in Africa serve as a

sobering reminder of the need to undertake an urgent

overhaul of United Nations peacekeeping. The Security

Council met at the level of heads of State and

Government during the Millennium Summit to discuss

the need to ensure an effective role for it in maintaining

international peace and security, particularly in Africa.

Sadly, apart from a general description, the Security

Council summit did not produce any new concrete

proposals for or commitments to further action. The

Council could and I believe should do better than this.

Fortunately, the Brahimi Panel has come up with

a set of concrete recommendations, which when put in

place will significantly revamp United Nations

peacekeeping. In a nutshell, the Panel advocated that

should the United Nations decide to send a

peacekeeping force to uphold peace, the peacekeepers

must be rapidly deployed with a credible deterrence,

and be authorized, with robust mandates, to carry out

their mission and defend themselves. Only then can the

tragedies of past peacekeeping operations be avoided.

What this entails is that United Nations peacekeeping

missions must be given the necessary resources,

including better trained and better equipped

peacekeepers, and receive better support from United

Nations Headquarters — in particular, an enlarged

Department of Peacekeeping Operations. In turn,

Member States must have the political will to support

the United Nations politically, financially and

operationally.

I think I have said enough to underscore the point

that a focused approach is not necessarily an easier or

less complex one, but I believe that it is the only

practical way forward.

The Secretary-General's report to the Millennium

Summit was designed as a guide to action, and it

should be actively used as such and not simply praised

and then forgotten. We took the first step at the

Millennium Summit by endorsing and adopting many

of the proposals of the report in the form of a

Millennium Declaration. The real challenge now is to

fulfil the ambitious and wide-ranging promises that we

have made to the world.

Where are the material, financial and human

resources to come from to fulfil our promises? The

United Nations Secretariat and agencies by themselves

obviously do not have them. The United Nations

cannot do everything on its own. As the millennium

report makes clear, the necessary long-term effort to

deliver the solution will have to be shared — shared

among national Governments, the United Nations,

other international institutions and other important

actors, such as corporations and non-governmental

organizations. Then, and only then, will there be any

chance of success.

The Millennium Summit has provided a good

basis on which to begin the process of practical

negotiations that will lead to real solutions, rather than

political posturing, which will only complicate already

complex issues. We must start somewhere. I suggest

that we start here and now.

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