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Statement
by President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko
at the High-Level Plenary
Meeting of the 60th Session of the UN General Assembly
New York
15 September 2005
Mr. President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
To have an honest look at today's world is the reason why state
leaders have convened here at the United Nations. Together we must
gain the understanding of the main thing: do we lead our countries and the
mankind along the right path? We should answer this question for ourselves
and our nations. Without that we have no chance to get out of the deadlock
that we are in.
Fifteen years have passed since the break-up of my country, the USSR. That
event dramatically changed the world order. The Soviet Union, despite
all mistakes and blunders of its leaders, was the source of hope and support
for many states and peoples. The Soviet Union provided for the balance
of the global system.
Today the world is unipolar with all the consequences stemming
from this.
The once prosperous Yugoslavia was devastated and disappeared from the map
of Europe.
The long-suffering Afghanistan became a hotbed of conflicts and drugs
trafficking.
A
bloody slaughter in Iraq is continuing to the present day. The country has
turned into a source of instability for the vast region.
Iran and North Korea are looked at through gun sights.
Belarus is a nation just like the majority represented in this hall. Having
emerged from the debris of the Cold War, Belarus became a state of advanced
science and technology inhabited by ten million of highly educated and
tolerant people. The UN ranked us as a developed country with a high level
of human development.
Like you, what we need from the world is peace and stability. Nothing
more. The rest we shall create ourselves through our own efforts.
My
country is free from conflicts. Different nations and nationalities
peacefully coexist in Belarus each practicing religions of their own and
having their own way of life.
We
do not cause any trouble for our neighbours, neither through territorial
claims nor trying to influence their choice of the way of development.
We
gave up our nuclear arms and voluntarily relinquished the rights of a
nuclear successor to the USSR.
Today we shall sign the Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear
Terrorism. We also declare that we have decided to sign the Additional
Protocol to the Agreement between the Republic of Belarus and the
International Atomic Energy Agency for the Application of Safeguards in
Connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
We
have established a lasting and successful union with Russia as our very
close neighbour.
We
build our country using our own wits and on the basis of our own
traditions.
But it is obvious that this very choice of my people is not to everyone's
pleasure. It doesn't please those who strive to rule the unipolar
world.
Wonder how?
If
there are no conflicts – they are invented.
If
there are no pretexts for intervention – imaginary ones are created.
To
this end a very convenient banner was chosen – democracy and human rights.
And not in their original sense of the rule of people and personal
dignity, but solely and exclusively in the interpretation of the US
leadership.
Has the world really become so black-and-white, deprived of its
diversity of civilizations, multicoloured traditions and ways of life
meeting aspirations of people?
Of
course not! The simple thing is that it is a convenient pretext and an
instrument to control other countries.
Regrettably, the United Nations, though it belongs to us all, allows itself
to be used as a tool of such policy. I am saying this with particular
bitterness and pain as President of the country that co-founded the UN,
after sacrificing the lives of one third of its people during the
Second World War for the sake of our own freedom and the freedom of Europe
and the entire world.
The Human Rights Commission keeps mechanically stamping resolutions on
Belarus, Cuba and other countries. Attempts are being made to impose such
resolutions also on the UN General Assembly.
But how can the United Nations be minding imaginary "problems" while
unable to see true disasters and catastrophes - of the calibre and
nature which nobody other than the UN as community of civilized nations
can cope with and restore justice and order?
Let us give a glance at the world as it is.
Quite recently, in the room next to ours we were shown maps and graphs
allegedly depicting weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Were those weapons
found?
They do not exist. In the meantime, Iraq was razed with bombs, devastated,
people brought to utmost despair. Terrorists are threatening to use weapons
of mass destruction against cities in Europe and America.
Has there been an open and independent trial under UN supervision of the
Guantanamo prisoners? How many of them are there and who are they?
Who will defend the rights of the Abu Graib victims and punish all of their
torturers without exception?
Afghanistan was ravaged with rockets and bombs under the pretext of finding
Bin Laden. Was the world's "number one terrorist" captured? Where is he now?
He
is at large, but Afghanistan and Iraq territories began to generate
hundreds and thousands of international terrorists.
Foreign troops occupied the independent Afghanistan but the drugs production
grew ten-fold. Did those troops enter the country for this purpose?
Today, Belarus, Tajikistan, Russia and other former Soviet states are
literally flooded with a wave of "traditional" drugs from Afghanistan
meeting a wave of previously unknown synthetic drugs from Europe.
The leaders of the destroyed Yugoslavia and Iraq were put behind bars on
groundless, absurd and far-fetched accusations. This was a very
opportune way to conceal the truth about annihilation of their countries.
The trial of Milosevic was made into a caricature since long ago. Saddam
Hussein was abandoned to the winner's mercy, like in barbarian times. There
is nobody to defend their rights except the UN, their states
no longer around, destroyed.
They should be released to be able to defend freely their rights, honour and
human dignity.
AIDS and other diseases are ravaging Africa and Asia.
Poverty and deprivation have become a real and not a virtual
weapon of mass destruction, moreover - racially selective one.
Who will be able to stop this?
Who will insist that the United States of America put an end to its attempts
against Cuba and Venezuela? These countries will independently
determine their lives.
Trafficking in persons has become a flourishing business. Sexual
slavery of women and children are seen as a common thing, almost a norm of
life. Who will protect them and bring to justice consumers of "live
commodity"?
How can this disgrace to our civilization be done away with?
This, in short, is the distressing account of the transition to the
unipolar world.
Was it for that purpose that we established the United Nations?
Is
it not high time for the UN to put an end to internal corruption scandals
and get down in deed to address anguish and misery of the world? The
answer to this question, in our view, is very clear.
Let us be honest to the end. We cannot bury our head in the sand like an
ostrich.
In
the end, the UN is us.
Therefore, it is up to us to take the destiny of the world in our own
hands.
We
must realize that the unipolar world is a world with a single
track, a one-dimensional world.
We
must become aware that the diversity of ways to progress is an
enduring value of our civilization, the only one that can ensure
stability in this world.
The freedom of choice of the way of development is the main precondition
for a democratic world order. This is exactly what this Organization was
established for.
I do hope that the mighty of the world will understand this too.
Otherwise, the unipolar world will ultimately strike them back. Great
American Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, who stood at the
roots of the League of Nations and the United Nations, were conscious of
that.
Should we agree between us on this principal point, then we would succeed in
implementing the principles of multipolarity, diversity and freedom of
choice both in reality and the UN documents that we must abide by. We
would protect the world from terrorism and the vulnerable, women and
children, from slavery. We would protect all those unprotected.
It
is then that the UN would become the organization of the genuinely united
nations. This, and not the numerical increase of the Security Council
membership, is precisely the core of the UN reform.
I
thank you.
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