Syria, 2002

It gives me great pleasure to congratulate

Mr. Jan Kavan on his election to the presidency of the

General Assembly at its fifty-seventh session. I am

confident that the many posts he has occupied will

facilitate his task in leading the deliberations of the

General Assembly to their desired objectives. I also

express our appreciation to his predecessor for the

efforts he made to bring the deliberations of the fifty-

sixth session to a successful conclusion.

I would be remiss if I failed to express our

appreciation to Secretary-General Kofi Annan for his

efforts to preserve the principles and purposes of the

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United Nations Charter. I wish him success as he

strives to contribute successfully to the just solution of

the problems that the international community faces.

I would also like wholeheartedly to welcome

Switzerland as the long-awaited newest Member of the

Organization. We look forward to cooperating with it

in promoting the principles of the United Nations and

safeguarding its Charter.

This session of the General Assembly has been

convened one year after the 11 September attacks,

which had an impact on the current international

situation. In the aftermath of the attacks, many grave

issues remained unresolved, awaiting effective

solutions, and many questions went unanswered. The

state of confusion, incertitude and tension on the

international scene results from the feeling of the

majority of the world's people that they have lost their

orientation. This results from a tendency on the part of

some to use practices that can be best characterized as

unilateral, expressing an appetite for hegemony and

monopoly over the wealth of others.

The Middle East region is a case in point. After

decades of struggle waged by the people of the region

to liberate themselves from colonialism and foreign

domination and to try to eliminate injustices resulting

from the redrawing of maps and the enforcement of

artificial borders between them, the people of the

region are facing a more vicious attack today than they

faced during earlier colonial periods.

The Arab countries have condemned the attacks

against the United States of America. They have

expressed sympathy for the families of the victims.

Nonetheless, a year after the event that was officially

linked to the Al Qaeda organization and the Taliban

movement, the world wonders how those accusations

were re-channelled so as to be levelled against the

Arab countries to such a degree that some of them are

being threatened, while none of them had anything to

do with the attacks.

The irony is starker since justification for the

accusation is usually linked to the presence of some Al

Qaeda elements in those countries or to the fact that

such elements are nationals of those countries, while it

is public knowledge that elements of the Al Qaeda

organization are present in more than 60 countries

around the world, including the United States of

America, according to official American statements.

Since the end of the Second World War, our

region has witnessed a series of wars and destruction as

a result of an Israeli approach based on occupation,

settlement building and the uprooting of hundreds of

thousands of Palestinians from their homeland. The

United Nations has made efforts to find a just solution

for the Arab-Israeli conflict. To that end, the United

Nations has adopted hundreds of resolutions that Israel

has refused to implement, in a stark challenge to the

will of the international community. Israel continues to

occupy the Golan, the West Bank and Gaza and parts of

Lebanese territory.

When the Arab countries unanimously launched

their peace initiative at the Beirut summit in March

2002, Israel responded by launching a widescale

military attack against Palestinian cities, villages and

camps in the West Bank. Israel's defiance of

international legitimacy assumed proportions that have

been condemned by international public opinion,

particularly when the Israeli Government refused to

receive the fact-finding mission to investigate the

details of the massacre at the Jenin refugee camp.

Israel has claimed that the crimes it has carried

against the Palestinian people under occupation have

been carried out in self-defence and in the war against

terrorism. We see how Israel has manipulated the war

against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. In

that context, it is important to stress that silence in the

face of such manipulation amounts to total disregard

for human values, as much as it is disregard for

defenceless Palestinian souls.

Without going into details of the Israeli attacks

and violations in which American weapons were used,

the only way out of the crisis faced by the peoples of

the region is by making Israel abide by relevant

Security Council resolutions, which thus far are 28 in

number. Is it reasonable for the world to request Iraq to

implement Security Council resolutions, while some

help Israel remain above international law? It is indeed

legitimate for us to ask the United States to distance

itself from the aggressive Israeli practices and to apply

to Israel the American law that prohibits the use of

American weapons against a third party. It is indeed

odd that the United States considers Israel to be acting

in self-defence in occupied territories, which is not in

keeping with Security Council resolutions in whose

drafting and adoption the United States itself has

participated since the founding of the United Nations.

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Just and comprehensive peace in our region can

be achieved only through the implementation of

resolutions of international legitimacy that stress the

need for Israel to withdraw from all the Arab territories

occupied since June 1967 and to safeguard the

legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including

the right to establish their independent State with

Jerusalem as its capital.

Much has been said recently about the danger of

the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and

the possibility that international terrorists might

acquire such weapons. As is well known, that danger is

not limited to one region. Rather, it exists in many

regions of the world. It is regrettable that certain

parties focus only on some Arab and Muslim countries,

and not on others, ignoring in the meantime Israel's

nuclear arsenal. All the countries of the region have

expressed, year after year, their readiness to make the

Middle East region a zone free of all weapons of mass

destruction — nuclear, chemical and biological.

Today more than ever before, we call for urgent

and serious efforts to make our region free of all

weapons of mass destruction, under the supervision of

the United Nations. We declare from this rostrum that

all the Arab countries are prepared to establish such a

zone, provided that Israel will agree to establish such a

zone and to submit all its nuclear facilities to the

safeguards system of the International Atomic Energy

Agency (IAEA), as have the other Middle East, Arab

and Muslim countries of the region.

The majority vote that Syria won upon submitting

its candidacy for membership to the Security Council

highlights the appreciation of these countries for

Syria's constructive role in supporting the United

Nations.

It is well known that Syria has always been in the

forefront of countries whose respect for international

legitimacy constitutes a principled position in their

foreign policy. We agree with the Secretary-General

about the necessity of avoiding unilateral measures and

resorting instead to working within the framework of

the United Nations, which represents international

legitimacy.

In that light, we see no justification for igniting a

new war in the Middle East. We strongly believe that

striking Iraq, which no longer occupies the land of

others, while keeping silent about the Israeli

occupation of the Arab territories occupied since 1967,

represents blind bias and a distorted vision of the real

situation in the Middle East.

The international community is committed to the

unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq. We

cannot recall anyone doubting that commitment. We

also stress that it is the right of the Iraqi people alone

to decide their future without any interference in their

internal affairs. It is the duty of all Members of our

Organization to commit themselves to the

implementation of United Nations resolutions. In

keeping with that commitment, Syria supports the

resumption of dialogue between Iraq and the Secretary-

General with the objective of reaching a political

solution that meets the requirements of the Security

Council and that grants Iraq hope of peace, security

and the lifting of the sanctions imposed on it,

especially as Iraq has officially recognized the State of

Kuwait and its international borders.

Syria has expressed its satisfaction at positive

developments in the African continent. We are

confident that the establishment of the African Union

will have a positive impact on the present and future of

that continent and on solving the urgent problems it

faces. In that regard, we look forward with true hope to

the implementation of agreements recently signed by

the parties concerned to end the fighting in Angola,

Congo and the Great Lakes region.

Syria also expresses its satisfaction at the

increasing international support to end the embargo

against Cuba.

Syria further welcomes the high-level talks

between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

and the Republic of Korea and expresses the hope that

this rapprochement between the two Koreas will help

achieve the aspirations of the people of the Korean

peninsula by peaceful means.

The Syrian Arab Republic hopes that peace and

stability will prevail in Afghanistan in the interest of

the Afghan people, who have long suffered the

scourges of war and internal strife.

Syria supports the efforts of the Government of

the Sudan to preserve the unity and territorial integrity

of the Sudanese people and calls for a ceasefire in the

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south of Sudan as a prelude to the resumption of

dialogue.

Syria supports the Artah agreement reached by

the Somalis and deems it the most viable solution for

achieving national reconciliation in Somalia.

The world's peoples are passing through a

difficult test at this critical juncture; the choices of

even big and influential countries, are getting narrower

rather than broader due to the absence of a just world

order. It is to be regretted that the voices of those who

call for war rise above the voices of those who call for

peace and that those who usurp the rights of people and

encroach on their dignity are drowning out the voices

of those who defend the rights of people regarding

their territory and freedom.

But despite this grim picture, right will, in the

final analysis, triumph over injustice. That is the

correct reading of the history of nations and

civilizations; there is no going back. Arab Syria's

belief in its rights and the rights of other nations cannot

be shaken or undermined by hegemony and the

arrogance of power. We are convinced of the

possibility of building a world in which all coexist in

peace and security, a world free of occupation and

hegemony, a world in which all peoples equally share

the resources of our globe and the fruits of science and

technology in order to achieve prosperity for all.