Vietnam, 2000

I would like to

convey our warm congratulations to Mr. Harri Holkeri

on his election to the presidency of this fifty-fifth

session of the General Assembly. I wish also to extend

our greetings to Tuvalu as a new Member of the United

Nations.

This year's session of the General Assembly is of

special significance, as it is taking place right after the

Millennium Summit. The Summit marked an important

milestone for the United Nations in the discharge of the

lofty responsibilities of the Organization and its

Member States towards the future of humankind. The

Millennium Declaration adopted by the Summit points

out humanity's most pressing issues and the

Organization's primary priorities and directions at the

beginning of this new era. Thus the Millennium

Declaration can be considered a new charter and

platform of action of the United Nations.

The question now confronting the international

community is how to translate the Millennium

Declaration into reality. This session of the General

Assembly must mark the beginning of a new awareness

and determination, to be demonstrated by concrete

results. Only by so doing can we further consolidate

the confidence of the world's people in the work of the

United Nations, the largest Organization on our planet.

The realization of the Millennium Declaration

will be a long process, but not a simple one. It will

require the strong determination and efforts of each

country, the international community and the United

Nations, especially since globalization is having

negative effects, leading to the uneven distribution of

opportunities and benefits at the expense of developing

countries.

Poverty eradication and development must be

accorded primary priority and supported so that we can

achieve the targets set by the Millennium Summit,

including the target to halve, by the year 2015, the

current proportion of the world's poor people,

endeavouring to make the right to development a

reality for everyone. Among human rights, the right to

development is of paramount importance. With poverty

and without development, there can be no peace and

stability, let alone human rights. On the other hand, the

consolidation of international peace and security will

help to create a stable, enabling environment for

development and poverty eradication, in each country

and each region, as well as throughout the world.

To achieve development and poverty eradication,

the first decisive requirement is for countries to

enhance their efforts and adopt suitable policies and

programmes aimed at making the fullest use of their

resources and potential, while at the same time fully

mobilizing and effectively utilizing resources from

outside. The United Nations, for its part, should

strengthen its capacity and direct the necessary

resources necessary to support the poverty-eradication

efforts of the Member States.

Another extremely important point is that the

developed and industrialized countries, as well as

economic centres, must further enhance their assistance

to developing countries in their endeavour to achieve

development and poverty eradication. That should

include debt-relief and write-off measures and an

increase in official development assistance to 0.7 per

cent of gross domestic product, to which they have

committed themselves.

The objectives set out in the Millennium

Declaration have long been considered by Viet Nam as

its primary policy priorities. For example, through our

own determined efforts and with the assistance of the

United Nations and other countries, we have reduced

the poverty rate, according to Viet Nam's criteria, to 11

per cent in 2000 from 30 per cent in 1992. We hope

that this support and assistance will be further

enhanced to facilitate Viet Nam's consolidation of the

achievements recorded.

In the final analysis, all of these issues are aimed

at serving the human being. Human resources and

cultural development are two closely related aspects

within the overall programme of development and

poverty eradication. They are therefore both the goal

and the driving force of development. This is the lesson

that we can draw from the experience of many decades.

It needs to be given appropriate and close attention in

the policies of all countries.

Those objectives have been reflected also in

Vision 2020 of the Association of South-East Asian

Nations (ASEAN) and in the Hanoi Programme of

Action. They include the expansion of cooperation in

South-East Asia and in East Asia and the building of

development triangles and quadrangles crossing poor

regions. Concrete examples include the promising

initiatives of the East-West corridor for development

and the proclamation of the first decade of the twenty-

first century as the Decade of Greater Mekong

Subregion Development Cooperation, a proclamation

which is supported by the Economic and Social

Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). Those

programmes are fully compatible with the directives

contained in the Millennium Declaration, and they

should therefore be properly supported by the United

Nations and by the international community. Viet Nam

and ASEAN will also contribute to further advances

along this path.

In many regions of the world, protracted conflicts

continue, causing instability and hindering the efforts

of those regions and the countries in them to eradicate

poverty eradication and attain development. Viet Nam

and ASEAN support the resolution of disputes by

peaceful means, without interference or imposition, so

as to improve and consolidate regional peace, and not

to further complicate the situation and adversely affect

the confidence of the peoples of the countries

concerned in the endeavours of the international

community. Our common responsibility is therefore to

guarantee that there will no repetition of interference of

the kind that occurred recently in violation of the

United Nations Charter and to put an end to the

embargoes that have imposed untold sufferings on the

peoples of Cuba and Iraq.

Greater efforts should be made to further enhance

disarmament, especially disarmament relating to

nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass

destruction, and to curb the growing danger of a new

arms race, including attempts to deploy new missile

systems.

In South-East Asia and in East Asia, the ASEAN

countries have been leading the effort to build a region

of amity, cooperation and prosperity, free from nuclear

weapons; to resolve outstanding issues in the region; to

implement the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in

South-East Asia and the Treaty on the South-East Asia

Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone; and to promote the

ASEAN Regional Forum for dialogue and cooperation

with other countries and organizations. In this field,

confidence-building measures should be enhanced on

the basis of strict respect for the principles of non-

interference in the internal affairs of other States, and

of the preservation of the national and cultural identity

of each country and of each region as a whole. Viet

Nam and ASEAN, bilaterally or through the Regional

Forum, will further promote efforts to develop a

regional code of conduct on the South China Sea

between ASEAN and China. We fully support the 1992

ASEAN Declaration on principles for resolving

24

disputes in the South China Sea, and we welcome

recent positive developments on the Korean peninsula.

In order to implement the new major directives of

the Millennium Summit and to follow up the

momentum created by it, the General Assembly should,

at this session, further enhance the process of

reforming, revitalizing and democratizing the United

Nations. Viet Nam supports the restoration and

strengthening of the central position of the General

Assembly, an organ that represents all Member States

on the basis of sovereign equality. The reform of the

United Nations and most important, the reform of

the structure, composition and decision-making process

of the Security Council ó is the responsibility of all

Member States.

Reform of the Security Council should be based

on the principles of the United Nations Charter. It

should ensure increased representativeness, democracy

and equitable geographical distribution, through which

developing countries will be represented appropriately

and will participate fully in the Council's decisions on

important matters of world peace and security. Viet

Nam supports expansion in both categories of Council

membership, permanent and non-permanent. Regarding

the increase in the permanent membership, the general

package to be agreed upon should ensure that

developing countries from the three continents of Asia,

Africa and Latin America are represented; and it may

also take into account the inclusion of some developing

countries that can play a significant role and of certain

developed countries that have made major financial

and material contributions to the United Nations. Such

countries would include India, Japan and Germany.

Now more than ever before, the United Nations

must ensure that it can demonstrate the ability to

reform itself and move forward with tangible steps. We

need to act, and to ensure that the reform reflects the

abundant vitality of the United Nations.

As it participates in this session, Viet Nam shares

the common resolve to implement the historic

Millennium Declaration to build a just and better world

and a worthier and more effective United Nations.

Fully aware of its responsibility as a Member State

towards the United Nations and towards the

international community, Viet Nam has for many years

been making an effort to attain the common goals of

mankind and of the United Nations, and it will

continue to do so in the future. A very recent vivid

example was the proposal put forward by the President

of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam at the

Millennium Summit, recommending that the first

decade of the twenty-first century be proclaimed a

decade of the greatest efforts towards development and

poverty eradication.

In its capacity as a Member of the United Nations

and as Chairman of ASEAN, Viet Nam will do its

utmost to contribute actively to the development of the

United Nations in general and of ASEAN in particular,

and to promote cooperation between Viet Nam and the

United Nations as well as between ASEAN and the

United Nations. We wish at the same time to develop

close and effective cooperation with other Member

States and with organizations of the United Nations.