UN General Assembly
1996

matter how serious they are. This truth has been tried and tested elsewhere, in Mozambique for example, and recently in Angola, the results of which we note with satisfaction. Hence the appeal which I am renewing here, before this Assembly, for sincere dialogue in Rwanda, Somalia, the Sudan, Sierra Leone, the Middle East — in a word, wherever passions continue at the end of the twentieth century to cloud reason and block the genuine struggle for development and democracy. Everyone agrees that peace, if it is to be genuine and lasting, must be based on general and complete disarmament under international control. Here, I should like to say how gratified Benin is at the signature of the Pelindaba Treaty for the establishment of an African nuclear-weapon-free zone. The Review and Extension Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), held from 17 April to 12 May 1995, decided to renew the Treaty indefinitely, thus opening the way to better prospects in the area of nuclear disarmament. Benin, which has worked for this, believes