UN General Assembly
1996

utmost to prevent them and, to this end, make full use of all means available to the international community. Finland believes in United Nations peacekeeping. We have participated for 40 years and stand ready to continue. The sheer complexity of modern-day conflicts has turned United Nations thinking towards comprehensive peace operations. Peacekeeping must be seen as a part of a comprehensive peace process. We welcome this approach. The civilian and military elements of a peace operation should operate in close cooperation. Artificial barriers separating the two should be eliminated right at the outset in devising the mandate for an operation. It is also important that peace operations be linked with longer-term peace-building efforts to promote stability and sustainable human development. Lessons have been learned the hard way in the past few years. United Nations peacekeepers are not suited for peace enforcement. That job should and can be entrusted by the Security Council to others — whether regional organizations or other outside ad hoc coalitions — if necessary. But these are exceptional cases. For the vast