UN General Assembly
1996

maintain a steady pace towards peace in these and other areas around the world. The United Nations played a key role in this task. It will have to play an even greater role in consolidating the progress towards peace. The end of the cold war did not, unfortunately, usher in the spring of collective peace and the blossoming of the flowers of international cooperation. The world is still divided — even if not on ideological lines — between those who are armed and those who are unarmed. Vast nuclear arsenals remain and their technological improvement continues unabated. The hopes for collective peace run the risk of being thwarted by the unilateralism of those who are armed with the most deadly weapons. My country is concerned about the vertical proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the unremitting desire of those who have them to rationalize their possession. This undermines peace. Since the coming into force two years ago of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, we have witnessed the establishment of the various institutions