On 24 October 1985, the community of nations celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the United Nations. In a world suffering from countless problems and frustrations, that event gave rise to comfort and hope because it served as an occasion for sil of our countries, through their representatives ci the highest levels, to reaffirm unequivocally their commitment to the principles and ideals of the United Nations Charter and to renew their commitment to usher in a new era in which today's serious and complex problems can be faced collectively in a new spirit and with a new awareness of our interdependence and ^m: shared responsibility.
That furnished us  with a just assessment of the challenges we must face, challenges that, by their very nature, make isolated approaches inoperative and suicidal. In particular, I am thinking of the crucial questions of peace and development. Present and future generations will judge our actions on the basis of what we do today and will do tomorrow, and especially at this forty-first session of the General Assembly, to preserve peace in the world and to find answers to the pressing questions of hunger, poverty and underdevelopment.
I wish to stress the importance of the task the Assembly has unanimously entrusted to you its President. His talents as a skillful and experienced diplomat, a representative of a country, Bangladesh, whose commitment to the ideals of our Organization is well known, will certainly contribute to the success of our work. I should like, therefore, to convey to him the pleasure felt by my country, which shares with him a community of Islamic culture and destiny, at his election to the presidency of the forty-first session of the United Nations General Assembly. My delegation will fully support him in the accomplishment of his task.
His predecessor. Ambassador Jaime de Pinies of Spain, was a deserving President of our Assembly. To him, we extend the compliments and highest esteem of the delegation of the Niger for the important contribution he made to the work of our Organization.
Our preceding session laid the groundwork for a solid platform of collective action for the common good, thereby arousing hopes with regard to man's determination to face adversity, to master and control his own baser nature and to work resolutely towards the building of the safer and more united world for which we all long.
The proclamation of 1986 as the International Year of Peace is a further mark of our Organization's determination to harmonize the efforts of the international community in establishing an atmosphere that can ensure the maintenance of universal peace. More than 40 years after the end of the last world conflict, that universal peace continues to exist, notwithstanding the breaches and threatened breaches that still occur in many places in the world.
If we truly want to succeed in this work of peace for the benefit of the whole of the world community, we must ensure the strict implementation of the fundamental principles of our Organization. In this connection, refraining from the use or threat of the use of force, the peaceful settlement of disputes, respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of States, respect for the right of peoples to self-determination and independence, are moral and cultural values to which each of our nations is committed. At the same time, they are imperative norms of international law to which our Governments have fully subscribed. As the lasting expression of the deep and legitimate aspirations of mankind, such values and norms embody our common fate. More than a code of conduct, they are a solid foundation upon which relations between peoples and nations must be based.
It would appear that all the conflicts and dangerous situations in the world today arise from deliberate violations of those principles, but also from the serious and dangerous decline in the duty to co-operate and work together for the establishment of a new international economic order that would guarantee every people more harmonious and lasting development, as set forth in the United Nations Charter.
We must therefore work together to adopt the measures needed to deal with the many situations the persistence of which seriously threatens international peace and security and reflects badly upon the credibility of our Organization.
The policy of apartheid of the minority regime in Pretoria, its illegal occupation of Namibia and its repeated acts of aggression against the front-line States have created an explosive environment in the southern part of the African continent thus endangering peace and security not only in the region but in the world as well.
In occupied Namibia, we see a continuation of delaying tactics intended to thwart the implementation of Security Council resolution 435 (1978) on the independence of that Territory. This allows for the continuation, among other things, of the systematic plundering of that country's vast natural resources, which are then sold cheaply on the world market by the South African regime.
In regard to its neighbors. South Africa is also pursuing, and has long done so, a policy of aggression, destabilization and intimidation. Never before have arrests, torture, mass murder and systematic violations of the law and morality that govern the external conduct of States been practiced with such cynicism and on such a vast scale as has been done by the South African regime.
In the face of the infernal cycle of violence that today characterizes the situation in that part of the African continent and in the face of the serious dangers this poses to international peace and security, the time has come to go
beyond the usual jeremiads, verbal condemnations and resolutions that are not in fact resolutions.
The minority racist regime of Pretoria has today finally provided the community of nations with proof of its blindness, its intransigence and its total disregard for law and universal morality.
More effective means of pressure must necessarily be adopted urgently to support the struggle of the oppressed peoples of South Africa and Namibia, as well as the front-line States. Niger's position is perfectly clear on this matter. His Excellency General Seyni Kountche, President of the Supreme Military Council and Head of State of Niger, reaffirmed this at the last summit meeting of the Organization of African unity (OAU):
"We must lend effective, appropriate and constant assistance to the liberation movements, as well as to the front-line States, in their struggle against oppression and aggression. Indeed, the time has come for the adoption of concrete and immediate measures to make the apartheid regime consider the situation and give way. These measures must undoubtedly include economic sanctions, which the international community and, particularly, the industrialized countries, must issue and apply in order finally to isolate those men who would deny man."
The immediate and effective application of the recommendations of the World Conference on Sanctions against Racist South Africa held in Paris in June 1986 and of the International Conference for the Immediate Independence to Namibia held in Vienna the following month, as well as those of the eighth Summit Conference of the Non-Aligned Countries in Harare in September and the recent special session of the General Assembly on the question of Namibia, would no doubt compel the Pretoria regime to respect the decisions and resolutions of our Organization and finally to grant independence to Namibia and to promote within South Africa a democratic
multiracial society there the freedom, equality, dignity and well-being of all would be recognized and guaranteed.
The great tragedy of our time that is taking plaoe in southern Africa has not,
however, made us forget other situations of conflict that still prevail on our con tin ait.
As neighbors of Chad, a country with which we have ties of all sorts, we cannot remain indifferent to the situation of prolonged war and instability that has affected that country for several years now. As neighbors, we have come to know Chad, its people and its problems. The people of Chad has deep aspirations to peace. Like all other African peoples, it hopes to build a viable State and to set down the basis for its economic and social development. Rich in history, proud of its past, it is today fighting with the strength of despair against the demons of disunity and dislocation. These are legitimate aspirations. From its neighbors, with which it has cultivated friendship, from Africa, to which it firmly belongs, and from the international community, usually so ready to help, Chad expects understanding, support and assistance. It expects to be understood in its fierce will to remain itself and to be supported and assisted in its fervent hope to live in peace and to advance its development.
Peace and development are also relevant matters in North-West Africa and, more generally, in the Maghreb, that rich and promising part of our continent, the natural evolution, course towards unity and progress of which have been slowed down, impeded and even handicapped by the conflict arising from the decolonization of the former Spanish Sahara.
Closely tied to the peoples of the Maghreb by history, geography and culture, Niger cherishes the profound hope that the joint efforts of the Secretary-General of the United Nations and of the current President of the Organization of African unity to organize a referendum on the question of self-determination will succeed in the near future.
Africa, already facing the challenge of racism and besieged by so many problems inherent in its level of development, can only hope for the establishment of a climate of peace in its midst and of an atmosphere of confidence, tolerance and good neighborliness among all - a condition without which it cannot victoriously confront the pressing needs of building a better future.
Other hotbeds of tension are giving rise to anguish and distress elsewhere and are also rightly of concern to the Assembly. The Middle East, that region near the African continent whose stability undeniably has a strong effect on world peace, has for several decades been the theater of ceaseless confrontation arising from a situation of injustice that has been created and maintained and for which the United Nations has a responsibility to which it remains fully committed.
In this region of the world, so already battered by several conflicts, Israel has established a permanent climate of instability by developing a sustained policy of expansion, the major objective of which is to prevent the realization of the fundamental and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and to finalize the illegal annexation of the Golan and the occupation of Al Quds Al Sharif.
Loyal to its consistent policy in that regard, Niger for its part will continue to support the just cause of the Palestinian people and to militate for the total withdrawal of Israel from all of the occupied Palestinian and Arab territories, including Jerusalem. In that connection, Niger is pleased to see that chances for the convening of an international conference on the Middle East are beginning to appear and are increasing.
The continuation of the fratricidal conflict that has set Iran and Iraq against each other for six years now is a source of serious concern. The United Nations, through its Secretary-General, has repeatedly taken action to end that devastating and deadly conflict. Those efforts deserve to be continued and supported by us all.
The brutal intrusion of foreign forces into Democratic Kampuchea and Afghanistan and the continued occupation of the territories of those two non-aligned countries have consistently been found reprehensible and condemned by the General Assembly as serious challenges to the principles governing friendly relations between States.
We continue to support that point of view, to call for the total evacuation of occupation troops from the territories of those two countries and to call for scrupulous respect for their sovereignty, territorial integrity and status as non-aligned states.
We similarly remain vigilant with regard to the tension in the Korean peninsula. We encourage continued efforts to bring about the reunification of this prestigious nation through peaceful means.
Whether it be in Africa, Asia or Latin America - that other region of the world subject to serious upheavals - the true peace that we seek cannot be fully attained as long as division and discord exist among nations and as long as the profound aspirations of peoples to justice and to social progress continue to be disregarded and flouted.
In addition to these numerous conflicts which bring suffering and grief all over the world, there are other challenges to the future of mankind. If we do not decisively meet those challenges there can be no genuine lasting peace on earth.
Among those challenges is the serious, deep-seated and long-standing crisis in the world economy. Its root causes lie in the persistence of an unjust and inequitable international economic system marked by a continuous fall in commodity prices, by protectionism and restrictive trading practices, by monetary and financial instability and by the growing indebtedness of third-world countries.
The situation is particularly critical for the African countries whose economies, already structurally fragile and vulnerable, have been further shaken and dislocated. In recent years some of these countries have experienced considerable slowing of their already low growth rates. The critical economic situation in Africa reflects both the scope and the effects of the crisis: the inability of the continent which was the cradle of mankind to achieve self-sufficiency in feeding its peoples, a situation inherent in the difficulty of rebuilding our agriculture; to build the infrastructure needed to irrigate our dry regions; to make our regions more accessible in order to permit a better flow of products; and to establish a true African policy of complementarity and co-operation among States in such areas as the fight against desertification and the important field of water management. To all those difficulties we add others no less burdensome, concerning the education, health and housing of our peoples, whom we wish to enable to lead healthy lives in order to participate more actively and with greater honour in the development of our continent and of the world.
Africa is in the pitiless clutches of a drought, which has greatly reduced available water and arable land, destroying plant and animal life in vast areas, and killing thousands of men, women and children by hunger and thirst.
In connection with agriculture, the roost recent report on Africa of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) states that pet capita production has fallen nearly 20 per cent since 1960, while the rate of growth of the population has increased by 3 per cent per year. That report states also that if things remain as they are, per capita production will fall another 30 per cent in the coming 25 years. The report further predicts that eventually the African States will, with few exceptions, will be forever condemned to dependency in satisfying their food requirements.
That situation is of grave concern to African Governments, which have attempted to deal with the situation at the national, sub-regional and continental levels. At the national level, African leaders are redefining agricultural strategies and are working to maintain, diversity and rebuild vegetation, to protect the soil, to develop water resources, and to provide security in crop by promoting and developing crop production and animal husbandry.
Considerable efforts to co-ordinate these national initiatives are being undertaken at the sub-regional and continental levels. In the Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel, nine countries have formulated a concerted rehabilitation program which gives priority to water management, to the campaign against desertification by means of reforestation, to the development of agriculture and livestock raising, and to building up of buffer stocks of grain.
At the continental level, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) has devoted much consideration to ways and means of dealing.with the situation. This has led to the establishment of the Special Emergency Assistance Fund for the Struggle against Drought and Famine in Africa, which is in operation now, and to the adoption of the Priority program for Economic Recovery in Africa.
Clearly, Africa should not rely solely on outside assistance, but must make use of its own resources and intelligence, which will be its weapons in a victorious war to secure freedom from hunger. Only a pragmatic strategy based on basic requirements and the political will to undertake the needed reorientation of social and economic systems through revised agrarian methods and policies can lead to a solution to the problem of food.
But Africa, which contains the majority of the world's poorest countries, cannot by itself meet this enormous, serious challenge posed by Nature. In that connection, Niger welcomes the great step forward taken at the special session of the General Assembly on the critical economic situation in Africa. It was possible at that special session to formulate and adopt a program of Action giving high priority to agriculture and related sectors. Its implementation will promote the rapid recovery of the African economy. Africa has conveyed its great appreciation for that initiative and for the solidarity of the international community in committing itself to stand by Africa and support it in its search for development by Africans and for Africans.
As an expression of our joint political will, the United Nations program of Action for the Economic Recovery of Africa, 1986-1990, is a contract of solidarity. Meeting the terms of that contract requires the same political will, fostered by a clear awareness that the future of Africa is indissolubly linked with the progress of the world.
I wish now to pay a tribute to the Secretary-General, Mr. Javier Perez de Cuellar, for his effective and diligent work towards the success of that special session and towards its positive result. His interest in Africa and its problems and the attention he has devoted to them are nothing new, We of the Sahel know of his commitment, because on his own initiative he
undertook a campaign to mobilize the assistance of the international community during the terrible drought of 1984. We are grateful to him for having always worked in favor of a just and peaceful world, and for his vision of a future based on mutual assistance and interdependence.
We must pursue this action for Africa and broaden it to encompass other priority areas. I think here especially of the worrying problem of indebtedness. Niger joins the many other anguished voices calling for a joint solution to this problem, the ruinous effects of which are jeopardizing economic and social achievement in many countries.
Through his intelligence and thanks to extraordinary scientific and technological progress, mankind has moved somewhat further into areas of the universe. But we must recognize today that there is one technology the development of which can only lead to the downfall of mankind: the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, which become more sophisticated every year.
We cannot but be shocked that the two super-Powers alone possess a nuclear arsenal sufficient to destroy our world several times over. Even more inadmissible is the fact that every year colossal sums are devoted to the development of nuclear weapons. Once that sum was $800 billion; today more than $1 trillion is devoted to the production of these deadly machines, at a time when so many people languish in horrific poverty and destitution.
It cannot be over-emphasized that the arms race can never serve the interests of stability, peace and security. On the contrary, it is a source of tension between the super-Powers and even of confrontation which would be fatal for mankind.
The nuclear-weapon Powers, especially the two super-Powers, therefore bear an important responsibility in this regard, and must do everything possible to avert the risk of nuclear confrontation. The only way to do this is to engage in sincere
dialog with a view to formulating urgent disarmament measures leading to a gradual reduction in nuclear weapons until their complete elimination.
In this connection, the Government and the people of Niger welcome the initiation in March 1985 of negotiations between the two super-Powers on intermediate-range and strategic nuclear and space weapons. A seal of approval was affixed to that dialog at the meeting between the leaders of the two countries, held at Geneva in November 1985. We hope that dialog will continue shortly at Reykjavik, and that it will lead to effective agreements aimed at general and complete disarmament.
Those, in our view, are the major challenges of our time, daunting challenges in view of their nature and scope, but their solutions are vital for the future of mankind, and for international peace and security. The United Nations must deal with those challenges if it is not to founder and bring the whole world down with it. This is a categorical imperative.
Millions of people throughout the world are increasingly expressing their firm opposition to the arms race and their unfailing abhorrence of: apartheid and racial discrimination. Millions of voices are continuously heard denouncing the continuation of sources of tension aid calling for a more stable and fraternal worId.
In view of all those situations, and in view of the tidal wave of the brutal, savage and vile force of terrorism, the noble attitude of millions of men and women who voice every day their love of peace, justice and freedom, constitutes for our Governments and for our Organization, a source of inspiration and an encouraging reassurance of the value of our work here.
We are convinced that we must not resign ourselves to the -many serious difficulties that are endangering universal peace. This is our world and we, together, bear the responsibility to preserve and improve it, for present and future generations.


 Mr. President, let me first congratulate you most warmly on your assumption of this high and distinguished office. This honor which has been bestowed on you is a tribute by the international community to your excellent personal qualities as well as your extensive diplomatic skills and experience. We are therefore confident that you will guide our deliberations during this session wisely and successfully.
I also wish to thank your predecessor, Ambassador Jaime de Pinies, who presided over the General Assembly during an important year for the United Nations. We are grateful for his valuable contributions to all the deliberations on issues of vital importance to the Organization.
Finally, our gratitude also goes to the Secretary-General, who during the past year has continued to demonstrate his solid commitment to the pursuit of multilateralism and the goals of the United Nations.We also thank him for his continuing concern for, and his leading role in, the work of the Organization on issues which are at the very top of the agenda of the African continent.
Last year during the fortieth anniversary session the international community, in an unusual display of unanimity, reaffirmed the continuing validity of the principles of the united Nations Charter. Created primarily to maintain international peace and security, the United Nations has adapted itself to cope with emerging problems and to deal with unforeseen challenges and emergencies. As an organization it has been at the centre of discussions on many of the central issues of our time, including the problems of racism, religious intolerance and the denial of human rights to a substantial number of people throughout the world. It has been instrumental in assisting many of the Members of the United Nations towards independence and in organizing the training and research needed for the development of a number of newly independent countries. It has encouraged negotiations towards the establishment of a more ecru i table international economic order and for the promotion of development and trade. It has been in the forefront of discussions on disarmament and the reduction of military budgets, and has pointed out the organic link between expenditure on armaments and the underdevelopment to which the majority of nations seem to be currently condemned.
It has focused attention on the acute problems of hunger, malnutrition and famine in some countries while others are beset by problems of surpluses and overproduction. It has initiated action to respond to the aspirations of children, youth and women, to tlte needs of the aged and the disabled and to the plight of millions of refugees uprooted from their countries and scattered throughout the world. It has pointed out that indiscriminate and selfish exploitation of finite resources threatens future generations and that there is an imperative need to agree on the protection of our environment. The sea-bed and outer space have been designated for peaceful uses, free from military competition.
In the light of the successes achieved in spite of the constraints under which we know the United nations to be operating, we are deeply concerned by what seems to be a concerted assault on the principles of internationalism and multilateralism. The public perception of the United Nations as an institution is conditioned by the indifference, not to say contempt, with which its resolutions are treated in certain quarters. The failure of sane States to meet obligations arising under the Charter threatens the solvency and therefore the viability of the united Nations as an Organization. The division among the permanent members of the Security Council makes it impossible for it to carry out its mandate of maintaining international peace and security as defined in the Charter.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in spite of resolutions adopted by overwhelming majorities in the General Assembly it has nevertheless not been possible to achieve a breakthrough on a number of vitally important issues. Notwithstanding the considerable efforts expended by the Secretary-General over a number of years, the problems of dismembered Cyprus, of Afghanistan and of Kampuchea still remain as unresolved issues on the agenda. The conflict in Central America, given an ideological coloring, continues to escalate, threatening a potentially catastrophic confrontation. The war between Iran and Iraq, which has already, according to certain reports, claimed over a million victims, may at any moment expand to the surrounding region and quite possibly beyond.
The international community is understandably concerned at the dangerous situation created by these unresolved crises. We sees in addition to be confronted by a deliberate conspiracy to make the environment we live in less secure, both for our States and for individuals. Bow else art. we to describe the alarming increase in drug abuse and drug trafficking, the escalation in terrorist violence, the denial of human rights and the proliferation of torture and other degrading punishments in many parts of the world? Dirug abuse in some countries may be merely a social disease, even if a tragically costly one. In many developing countries, however, it represents a powerful, destabilizing factor, undermining both our social and our political institutions. He therefore welcome the convening of the International Conference on Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, scheduled to be held in Vienna in June 1987.
We are also encouraged by the emphatic condemnation of terrorism in all its forms, both by the Security Council and by the General Assembly. We are sadly forced to recognize, however, that consensus on the issue at the United Nations has nevertheless failed to restrain the spread of acts of terrorism both by groups and by States.
On the African continent the regime in Pretoria continues its illegal occupation of Namibia in defiance of the stated will of the international community, expressed in the Security Council, in the General Assembly and more recently by the International Conference for the Immediate Independence of Namibia and by the General Assembly at its fourteenth special session, which preceded our deliberations. In the place of the carefully worked out Security Council plan for
the independence of Namibia under resolution 435 (1978) it has installed its own puppet regime in Windhoek and proposes to link the freedom of the people of Namibia with issues which are both extraneous and irrelevant to the question. It is clear that the regime in Pretoria has never been, and is not, interested in negotiating the independence of Namibia. All the means available to the Namibian people, under the leadership of the South West Africa People's Organization (SW&PO) to repel Pretoria's aggression are therefore wholly legitimate and justifiable.
The ideologies of the Pretoria regime, basing themselves on discredited racial theories, have spawned the rationale for the mutilation and dismemberment of South Africa into so-called bantustans. The fact that the concept of apartheid and bantustans cannot withstand the inexorable economic realities of a modern industrial State has not deterred the regime from its stubborn pursuit of so-called separate development to entrench white supremacy. The policy has within the last two years alone led to more than two thousand deaths, coupled with thousands of detentions and wrongful arrests, accompanied by massive use oi! police violence and military force.
The international community, including the influential economic partners of the Pretoria regime, professes revulsion at the policy of apartheid and the repression which it has engendered. In spite of recent steps in the right direction we still feel that the influential economic partners of the regime have not yet been able to bring themselves to exert the decisive economic pressure which alone may influence a change of mind in Pretoria. The failure of the policy of constructive engagement has once more demonstrated that apartheid cannot be reformed: it will have to be dismantled. Provided the necessary conditions are created by the release of political prisoners and the establishment of political freedom, allowing all parties to operate legally, apartheid may still be dismantled peacefully.
However, the heightened sense of grievance and the seeding hopelessness of the black majority in South Africa in the face of the actions of the regime are making a violent and tragic conflagration in the subregion a more imminent possibility every day that decisive action by the international community is further postponed. The recent World Conference on Sanctions against Racist South Africa, echoing the increasing international consensus not only among Governments but also among ordinary people and reflecting the sentiments of such leaders as the Commonwealth group of eminent persons on the most effective means of dealing with the threats posed by apartheid, concluded that such means should include especially the application of comprehensive mandatory sanctions under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. Those measures are probably the last recourse open to the international community to prevent a bad situation from becoming worse. We remain convinced that the key to peaceful change in South Africa rests with its major economic partners, which by taking concrete and effective measures could ensure the avoidance of general civil strife and unnecessary loss of human life.
Another issue high on the African agenda is the prevailing economic crisis in Africa. That this crisis is also of great relevance to the whole community of the United Nations was demonstrated by the convening of a special session of the General Assembly earlier this year, the first special session ever devoted to the economic problems of one single region. We welcome the mutual commitments of both the African States and the international community to work together on reforms in a spirit of genuine partnership. It is important to note that while the African States have recognized that some of their economic policies needed to be reformed, the international community has also accorded due importance to the improvement of the external environment, which has not favored Africa's economic performance prospects. He wish to stress here that in our view one of the most significant results of the special session was that both sides committed themselves to co-operate in a spirit of genuine and equal partnership. Too often in the past Africa has had solutions imposed on it, on the implicit assumption that those that offer aid somehow know better. Such attitudes, as we now realize, have led to great waste of efforts and resources on both sides, and in a way have even retarded development. Still, those attitudes were not altogether absent from the deliberations at the special session as rival economic recipes inspired by antagonistic ideologies were proposed each as being more effective than the other in dealing with Africa's problems. Africa has already shown that it can work out its own solutions, based on a realistic appraisal of the critical situation and its causes, by adopting the Priority Program at the Organization of African Unit summit in July 1985.
We therefore regret that unfortunately the implications of the Priority Program's content could not be accepted in their entirety by Africa's partners. The international community was unable or unwilling to announce a firm commitment to meeting Africa's request for additional resources in aid and debt relief for implementation of the Program.
Underdevelopment in Africa or elsewhere in the third world, with the attendant low prospects for economic growth, threats to food security and widespread unemployment, are increasingly being considered as growing non-military threats to international peace and security and stability in international relations. Relatively too little of the world's resources is spent to promote the development process as compared to expenditure devoted to armaments. Global military expenditures are now between four and five times the levels during the Second World War in real terms, which, staggeringly, represents 25 times the total amount of official development assistance to developing countries. While we have been calling for disarmament for several years, we must now place increasing emphasis on the nexus between disarmament and development, on the policies and co-operative efforts of the international community to ensure much resources freed through the disarmament process are properly appropriated for development purposes.
There are a number of other important policy measures which the international community, and in particular the industrialized countries, should consider to create a more favorable global environment that would help relieve the poor from external constraints that aggravate their situation. In the past several years protectionist sentiments and measures have intensified in industrial countries and non-tariff barriers have proliferated in markets that are of present or potential interest to developing countries, such as textiles and clothing, steel and agricultural products markets. The developing countries, which have endeavored to implement the policy of "trade not aid" to achieve maximum economic independence, find themselves thwarted by protectionist walls around those same countries as profess the policy of weaning developing countries from external assistance.
The next round of multilateral negotiations by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) must therefore focus on non-tariff barriers much more than in the past if it is to produce meaningful results, since those barriers have become the most important and pervasive obstacles to trade today. The GATT institutions should also be reformed in order to strengthen the international trading system and help reduce the arbitrary and discriminatory protectionist measures of developed countries against the exports of developing countries. Because the same developing countries are also debtors which need to run trade surpluses to service their debts, the growth of world trade volumes, unimpeded by protection practices, is essential for their development process. Many developing countries enter the second half of this decade faced with the proxies of restoring domestic growth within what is for some an unfavorable external environment. Lower interest rates and declining oil prices perhaps accorded some relief last year and in the earlier half of this year, but they have been counterbalanced by the slower growth of world trade, deteriorating terns of trade and higher trade barriers. In addition, net long-tern capital inflows have maintained their downward trend. In fact, developing countries were making a net transfer of financial resources to the developed countries in 1984. Last year total interest payments on external public and private long-tera debt exceeded net long-tern inflows by $22 billion.
Debt relief is therefore taking on a new urgency for developing countries, especially in Africa, in view of its critical economic situation, as debts constitute a severe and restrictive drag on their economic recovery. Intervention in financial markets has been necessary to avert a catastrophe, although the general approach has been on a case-by-case basis. However, such piecemeal solutions are inadequate as they are dependent on certain conditions which are not wholly guaranteed, such as rapid global economic growth. The industrialized countries are still reluctant to take measures to stimulate the growth necessary as a lever for stronger international revival. Unless a more systematic approach is implemented, the probability of a collapse will become more likely and debtors will continue to face slow or zero-growth consumption and investment, leading to political and economic dangers for both creditors and debtors.
Although, as we have stressed, the non-military threats resulting from political instability, which is itself the consequence of harsh and desperate living conditions, we must not forget that the first and foremost danger to international peace and security remains the massive amount of arms, particularly the nuclear arms stockpiles of the two super-Powers. The dangers of the nuclear-arms peace continue to be dominated by the absurd logic that more is better, when only a fraction of the present level of nuclear armament would be sufficient to wipe out all meaningful life as we know it. Outer space is quickly becoming the next major theater for super-Power rivalry in the achievement of military supremacy.
There is now almost unanimous agreement in this body and elsewhere that by far the most direct and understandable way of stopping and then reversing this trend is through a mutual pledge to freeze the development, production and deployment of further nuclear weapons as the prelude to negotiation on their reduction and, it is to be hoped, their eventual elimination.
At a lower level, though not less crucial to those directly concerned, are those dangers to international peace and security posed by regional tensions and conflicts, which are almost always the unfortunate result of the modern-day pursuit of rival imperial ambitions, which are often portrayed as the defense of purported national interests. The majority of countries so affected are developing countries, which have attempted to eliminate such rivalries in their neighborhood so as to be able to get on with their main task of peaceful economic development.
The countries of the Indian Ocean region, for example, have for more than 10 years now, in an attempt to diminish the dangers posed by super—Power rivalry, endeavored to establish a zone of peace in the region. Although the General Assembly's Declaration of the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace (resolution 2832 (XXVI)) is now 15 years old, its implementation still appears as remote as ever. The Colombo conference on the Indian Ocean, which will constitute a major step towards the early achievement of the objectives of the Declaration, has been repeatedly postponed by a long series of obstructionist maneuvers by certain States members of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Indian Ocean. He strongly support the call, made by the 101 leaders of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, who met recently at Harare, for the conference to be held not later than 1988, with the full and active participation of all the permanent members of the Security Council and the major maritime users.
In the same context of the objectives of the Declaration, we note with satisfaction the renewed unanimous support of the non-aligned Member states as well as the backing of other members of the Assembly for our claim to sovereignty ever the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia. The decolonization of Mauritius will not be complete and its territorial integrity restored in til the Chagos Archipelago is returned to Mauritius. Moreover, the continuous expansion of the military base on Diego Garcia has led to increased rival military activity in the Indian Ocean region, thus seriously compromising the objectives of the Declaration of th-a General Assembly.
The Middle East, a region that has not known peace for the past 40 years, remains one of the world's worst trouble-spots, having the potential for a ranch wider conflagration, with dire consequences world-wide. At the heart of the Middle East turmoil is, as the overwhelming majority of countries has recognized, the diaspora of the Palestinian people and the denial of justice to its cause.
The question of Palestine remains one of the most enduring and tragic anomalies of our times. It has remained on the agenda of the General Assembly since the founding of the United Nations, and a just and equitable solution still eludes it. Such a solution can be Sound only within the framework of a comprehensive settlement of the Middle East situation, based on Israel's total and unconditional withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967 and the restoration of all the rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to return to its homeland, the right to self-determination and the right to establish its own independent and sovereign State on its national territory. A major step towards such a solution would be the speedy convening of an international peace conference on the Middle East, with the participation ox all the parties concerned, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
The resolution of divisions within countries is as important as the settlement of conflicts between coin tries for the maintenance of global peace and security. The division of the Korean nation has long constituted an element of instability in the region. It is a question which should be resolved speedily by direct negotiations, without external interference. An even more compelling reason for resolving this protracted issue is the pain and suffering of thousands of families whose lives have been disrupted by separation.
In our search for solutions to the numerous regional and global problems of our times, the United Nations has, and should have, a primary role to play. To say that we must strengthen the provisions of the Charter to enable the United Nations better to attain its objectives is to state the obvious. Yet there are forces bent on manipulating the Organization for their own aids, to the detriment of the interests of the world co ran unity. States which do not favor certain Programs have been withholding their proportionate contributions for years, and now wholesale across-the-board withholding is envisaged. We should not accept any proposal which would attempt, indirectly or otherwise, to change the Charter objectives or weaken the role of the legislative organs. This Organization is the only world body whose membership represents practically the whole of mankind, based on the principle of sovereign equality. It is the only world body where weaker nations have a chance to voice their feelings and where they can find the moral checks and balances against encroachment on their hard-won independence and sovereign existence. It is our hope that as the Organization enters its fifth decade vigilance and determination will safeguard the integrity of its Charter. There is no better or more viable alternative for the protection of international peace and security.


I wish at the outset warmly to congratulate the President on his election to preside over the General Assembly at this forty-first session. I have every confidence that the depth of experience and range of skills he brings to his high office will contribute significantly to the Assembly's work at this session. We wish him every success in his endeavors.
I wish also to express my appreciation of the efficiency and the dedicated manner in which Ambassador Jaime de Piniis of Spain carried out the duties of President during the fortieth session.
Of course, like other representatives, I am also pleased to compliment the Secretary-General on his speedy recovery following his recent operation. I express to him our gratitude for his unflagging devotion and commitment to the Organization's ideals.
Last year we came to the Assembly to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the United Nations, founded, as the shadow of war was lifting from the planet, to renew the spirit of mankind, worn down by the turmoil of the previous upheavals. At this session we must begin the renewal of the Organization, so that in the decades ahead it can become, as it was conceived, the central instrument for the management of international relations.
 Our immediate priority is to take action, through a program of administrative and budgetary reform, to end the deepening crisis in the Organization's finances and to see to it that it is provided with the resources necessary to carry out all the responsibilities assigned to it under the Charter.
As we commit our Organization to a process of reform, we, the Member States, must also renew our commitment to the purposes and principles of the Charter. The weakening of that commitment has impaired the United Nations in the discharge of its historic mission and has diminished public confidence in our affairs; the financial difficulties we must now surmount are no more than a symptom of that weakening of commitment.
The circumstances of our world have greatly changed since the Charter was signed. The wartime alliances which brought the United Nations into being quickly fragmented under the pressure of the cold war, and the idealism which the Organization inspired at its foundation seemed to fade in the face of new rivalries and new priorities. The achievements of science, which have pushed out the frontiers of our knowledge, have forced us also to contemplate the nightmare of global destruction. A general war has been avoided in our time, but the cold calculations of deterrence which have helped to give us our uneasy peace have not brought with them any easy assurance of security. Peace and freedom remain the luxury of the few on the planet, where regional conflicts persist, where new tyrannies have arisen and where hunger, poverty and disease still thwart our best efforts to achieve a fairer world.
In the face of these great changes and of continuing adversity, the Charter's promise of a new order, free from the scourge of war, based on respect for the dignity and worth of the human person and the rights of all nations, great and small, has gone unfulfilled. That should not, however, lead us to doubt the worth of the Organization or to call into question the purposes for which it was designed. It is precisely because the play of chance and human error, of avarice and folly, continues to perplex our nuclear age, just as it did in earlier but arguably less dangerous eras, that we require an organization through which we can strive to impose order on our troubled world and dull the edge of competition between our nations.
As we debate in the Assembly how best the Organization can properly and more efficiently perform its role, we must not lose sight of what it has already achieved and may yet contribute in the service of mankind.
It has put at the center of the international system universal standards of law and conduct and has made respect for these the first obligation of membership.
It has provided a now almost universal forum where States can draw attention to their grievances and avail themselves of the mechanisms to hand for the conciliation of differences.
Though regional wars have continued, many crises have been defused and wider conflict avoided through the good-offices role of the Secretary-General and the contribution of peace-keeping operations.
It has nurtured the process of decolonization, which has seen over 100 States come to independence.
It has established universal standards for respect for human rights to which all Member States must aspire, and it has sharpened vigilance in the detection of abuses of those rights.
Through its specialized agencies it has pushed back the boundaries of famine, poverty, disease and underdevelopment, and it has housed and nourished those displaced by wars and other disasters.
Why, then, is it that there are doubts and hesitations about the value of the Organization, with its incontestable record of achievement, at a time when the need for such a body was never more apparent? The Secretary-General in his annual reports has drawn attention to a crisis of confidence in the multilateral approach to international relations. Within the Organization this crisis reflects itself in the tendency of Member States to accept a whole-hearted commitment to some but not all of their Charter undertakings or to pursue their interests outside the framework of collective security, which is at the center of the Charter. It reflects itself also in the tendency of States to look to this Assembly for the satisfaction of short-term advantage only and to disregard the opportunities it offers for the more arduous and more critical work of building that consensus which
is the basis of progress. It is evidenced not least in the withholding by s number of Member States of their due contributions so that our present financial difficulties came to a head even as the Organization celebrated its fortieth year.
This crisis of confidence in the multilateral approach has also been marked by growing criticism on the part of those who observe our affairs and who have become weary of what they see as a contradiction between promise and performance in our deliberations. Perhaps they ask of us hiyher standards than we are able to attain, but they remind us that the standards they expect are those which we have all accepted in subscribing to the Charter. Others point to the wasteful dissipation of our energy through duplication in our agenda, to a preoccupation with internal debates, to the neglect of practical solutions to the pressing problems of the outside world, to a tendency to single out for criticism a small number of countries while the misdeeds of others are seldom commented on. These criticisms may not do justice to the problems faced by a global institution made up of different peoples and regions which must seek a balance in the priority to be given to the issues of importance to each of its Members. However, since they are heard even from those who are in principle advocates of this Organization, they must give us cause for serious concern.
I wish to make it clear that in my own country there remains a fundamental confidence in the work of this Organization. Commitment to the principles of the Charter is at the heart of Irish foreign policy. As a small nation which has experienced more than its fair share of the problems of division and conflict, we have a particular interest in the propagation and universal acceptance of the Charter's central tenet: the settlement of disputes between nations by peaceful means. We are also acutely aware that in this nuclear age no nation is immune to the dangers inherent in regional conflict. For while these conflicts have involved an appalling toll in the destruction of innocent lives and in the despoliation of needed resources they have at times also threatened wider escalation and brought the nuclear Powers perilously close to confrontation.
If, as I believe, all Member States are agreed in the face of this overwhelming reality that we need the United Nations as the central instrument of order and co-operation in our nuclear age, we must be willing to take whatever steps are necessary to make it work and end the contradictions between promise and performance in our affairs. For, however we weigh the balances of success and failure of the United Nations, one thing is certain: the failings of this Organization are our own failings.
The States assembled here are the United Nations. The success of this Organization in carrying out the responsibilities for which it was brought into being can be no greater than the effort each of us is prepared to make to fulfill the obligations of membership.
Those obligations are real and substantive. They govern both the conduct of our relations with other States and our involvement in the structures of the Organization itself. Member States have a particular obligation to co-operate with the Security Council, which has been given primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. If the United Nations is to function at maximum effectiveness, the fullest possible support must also be given to the Secretary-General in accomplishing the many difficult but essential tasks which fall to him, not the least that of forging solutions to many of the regional conflicts that have been at the center of our deliberations.
The States represented in this Assembly must also exert a greater effort in the resolution of the issues which come before us year after year.
If I mention first East-West relations, it is because the relationship between the two great nuclear Powers is the overriding reality of international life that intrudes at every level in the work of the Organization. The Charter was conceived at a time when those great Powers had joined in common purpose. Today, long after the rupture of that coalition, competition between the super-Powers remains a central preoccupation of this Organization. Through its role in containing regional conflict, the United Nations has helped by acting as a regulator of the relationship between the two great nuclear Powers. But its contribution to crisis management can be effective only when both Powers are agreed on the scope and purpose of any action contemplated. Under the Charter, in virtue of their permanent membership of the Security Council, the Soviet Union and the United States have a special responsibility to promote international peace and security. It is therefore of the first importance that they meet that responsibility by availing themselves of every avenue for dialog and for the more effective management of their competition, so that tensions between them may be reduced.
The improved climate of East-West relations during the past year offers grounds for continued, if moderate, optimism that a new spirit of co-operation between the Soviet Union and the United States may yet emerge. In particular, the summit meeting between President Reagan and Secretary Gorbachev of last November brought agreement to maintain regular contacts at both the political and the official level on important issues of concern. In spite of the serious differences which they acknowledged, the two leaders were able to identify some significant common ground as regards the approach to bilateral negotiations on nuclear and space weapons.
We hope that the understandings then reached and the important meeting recently held between Secretary of State Shultz and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze will lead to substantial advances cm all aspects of their relations. If so, the positive effects will be felt within this Organization as well as in the East-West dialog and within the framework of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europa. As a means of highlighting the priority which arms control and disarmament must have in international affairs, the Assembly has designated the 1980s as the Second Disarmament Decade. looking back over the first half of this Decade, we cannot in truth conclude that it has led us any further away from the awesome threat of ever more sophisticated nuclear arsenals with their deadly potential to end life on this planet. I cite as just one example the fact that of the more than 1,000 nuclear explosions which have been detonated since the partial test ban Treaty came into effect in 1963, almost one quarter have taken place in the last five years alone.
By contrast, however, with the disappointing results of recent years, there are indications that an advance might even yet be possible in the period ahead because of the improved prospects for negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union to which I have already referred. I would urge the leaders of these two powerful nations to pursue every possibility for agreement on substantial reductions of nuclear weapons, with a view to their eventual elimination. They must also ensure that outer space will never become the arena for a new arms race.
There is unchallengeable evidence that chemical weapons are in use in contravention of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, and there are disturbing indications of growing interest in the acquisition of these weapons. The conclusion of an internationally binding and verifiable chemical weapons ban must therefore have the utmost priority, and I am happy to note encouraging signs of progress in the negotiations on a convention which are taking place at the Conference on Disarmament.
In the last few days, the Stockholm Conference en Confidence- and Security-Building Measures has concluded its negotiations with a major agreement which will contribute significantly to the creation of an improved climate of security in Europe.
I have used this podium previously to appeal to the nuclear-weapon States to undertake a commitment to halt the testing of nuclear weapons and to take steps to achieve a comprehensive test ban treaty. Such a prohibition will not eliminate nuclear weapons. But we are persuaded that it would constrain their further technical development and open the path to their reduction and elimination. As such it would be a credible demonstration of commitment by the nuclear-weapon States to their often-declared intention to eliminate nuclear weapons, and indeed a needed reassurance to the international community that its concerns have not gone unheeded.
The development of the concept and the practice of peace-keeping has been one of the most remarkable and valuable achievements of the united Nations. Ireland is particularly honored to have had over 30 years a close involvement in this response by the United Nations to the management of regional conflicts. Through participation in observer and peace-keeping missions, we have sought to give practical expression to our commitment to the peaceful settlement of disputes.
In agreeing to the dispatch of troops on peace-keeping missions Irish Governments have been concerned to ensure satisfaction of a number of basic conditions necessary for the effective operation and security of the force concerned*, first, it should operate under a clear mandate from the Security Council and with the full support of its members*, secondly, it should enjoy the co-operation of the various parties to the conflicts; thirdly, it should operate on the basis of satisfactory financial arrangements. Judged against those criteria, the present situation of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), on  which the Secretary General has in recent days reported to the Security Council
can only give grounds for serious concern.
Central to the problems confronting UNIFIL is its inability to implement the mandate given to it in Security Council resolution 425 (1978). The so-called security zone which Israel has insisted on maintaining has been the focus of resistance and confrontation which have led to dangerous escalation of violence on all sides. The loss of life and other casualties suffered by the Force in recent weeks bear testimony to the high price paid by the members of UN IF XL in the efforts to restore stability in that region and to carry out their duties impartially. Their current precarious position cannot be allowed to continue. It is imperative that murderous attacks on members of the United Nations Force should cease and that they should be allowed to discharge their mandate without further interference. Progress in this sense must be made immediately.
I strongly endorse the Secretary-General's recommendation to the members of the Security Council, both collectively and individually, to take urgent action to unblock the present impasse and make substantial progress towards implementation of the mandate. I note that the Security Council has again seized itself of the matter in the last two days. All the parties concerned have once again been asked to co-operate in having the Force deployed to the southern border of Lebanon. This call must be heeded. The Secretary-General has been asked to make the necessary arrangements. It is important that he be assured of the full support of all Members of this Organization in his efforts. A clear demonstration by all Member States of their willingness to give full political support to the United Nations peace-keeping effort and to pay their assessed contributions is more necessary than ever before.
Perhaps in no other area of United Nations activity is the gap between promise and performance more evident than in that of human rights. The United Nations has to its credit already accomplished much in this field by defining and codifying the common standards which all Governments must respect in virtue of their co-operation as Members of this Organization. The Universal Declaration, agreed only four years after the United Nations was founded, has been the basis for all that has subsequently been achieved. And yet if we look beyond these halls, beyond the debates we have held and the drafts we have argued over, sometimes for years until we have reached agreement, we find that the standards we have set and the protections we have envisaged are all too often spurned and that too many States still impose their authority in brutal disregard for the rights of the individual.
I would suggest, therefore, that in the period ahead, if this work is to have concrete and lasting value, the united Nations might with profit concentrate on how best to ensure the widest possible implementation of the various international human rights instruments now in force. Nothing would do more to enhance the reputation and popular perception of the United Nations than the knowledge that its decisions and resolutions had a significant impact on the possibility for ordinary men and women to live out their lives in dignity and in freedom. We must therefore work to ensure that the machinery for the correction of abuses and for the investigation of grievances is developed so that individuals everywhere can have the confidence of redress where that is now denied.
For a great part of mankind repression takes the form of hunger, disease and poverty. The human costs are immense. At the same time, the political consequences are becoming more evident as the stability of many developing countries is called into question by the mounting social and economic difficulties they have to face.
Economic problems cannot be contained within national boundaries. Few countries today can escape the impact of economic decline, even in distant regions of the world. Individual States do not have it in their power either to avoid those problems or to devise solutions to them. Common action is not an option; it is a necessity.
The focus for such efforts is provided by the multilateral framework of the United Nations, which thus has a key role to play in assisting the developing countries. The special session on Africa which took place earlier this year is an example of what can be achieved when Member States recognize the need for multilateral action and show the determination and pragmatism necessary to arrive at concrete and practical results.
A major event on next year's United Nations agenda, and one for which preparations are now under way, is the Seventh United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. We attach great importance to that meeting. It will have a heavy agenda covering the basic issues, including resources for development and commodities, and will take account of the problems facing the least developed countries.
One of the outstanding achievements of the fortieth session of the Assembly was the innovative and far-reaching agreement reached by Member States on measures to prevent international terrorism. Since that session, however, a number of European States, including some of our partner States in the Twelve, have suffered
from a barbarous onslaught of terrorist attacks. Other countries in other regions have also fallen victim to the terrorists' murderous intentions.
Ireland and its European partners are determined to confront this renewed terrorist threat. In condemning such acts of terrorism we have emphasized that States which support or harbor terrorists cannot expect to maintain normal relations with our countries. We have also asked for the co-operation of other States Members of the Organization in our efforts to defeat terrorism and to isolate those who carry out such outrages. International terrorism is an affront and a challenge to all that the Organization stands for. Building, therefore, on the consensus we achieved at last year's session, we must now strengthen our co-operation and vigilance so as to ensure the elimination of this great evil.
Progress in the priority areas that I have just identified - East-West relations, disarmament, peace-keeping, human rights, development and the prevention of international terrorism - would strengthen the role of the Organization and go some way towards achieving the goal of the founders of the United Nations. But it is also important that the United Nations should not lack the resources necessary to carry out its global responsibilities. A background of ever threatening financial crisis can only lead to the progressive paralysis of the Organization. The first requirement is that all Member States should pay their assessed contributions, which are obligatory under the Charter. This is central to any effort to place United Nations finances on a sound footing. It is also important that we make our Organization as efficient and as vigorous as possible. My delegation would like to congratulate the members of the High-Level Group on the report they have prepared, which represents a major contribution to the debate on the administrative and financial functioning of the United Nations. In seeking change, we must take care that we do not upset the balance which the Charter
strikes between the interests of all nations represented here, great and small alike, in exercise of their sovereign equality. If we exercise this care, I am confident that we can more effectively equip the Organization to play in the decades ahead the indispensable role in international life which falls to it in virtue of the Charter.
Most of the regional conflicts which we confront have persisted despite the efforts of the United Nations to point the way towards an agreed settlement and to offer its services to aid that outcome. All of them dramatize the futility of violence and all have brought intolerable hardship to the peoples involved. Through their co-operation the States members of the European Community have sought to lend their collective weight to the efforts of the Secretary-General and other interested parties to assist in the resolution of these conflicts, whether in Afghanistan, in Cyprus or in the Gulf. Yesterday my colleague, the British Foreign Secretary, reaffirmed the determination of the Twelve to continue their efforts to encourage a peaceful settlement of such conflicts. For my own part, I wish to address today the particular problems of three regions: the Middle East, southern Afr.ca and Central America.
In Ireland we remain deeply concerned at the continuing failure to bring an end to the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors, a conflict whose instabilities have radiated far beyond the immediate region. We were encouraged in the past year by the opportunities which then seemed to be emerging from the agreement reached in February 1985 between Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The impasse that has since developed has, unfortunately, disappointed the many hopes to which that agreement once gave rise. More recently, we have followed with particular interest the renewed efforts by Egypt and Israel to find a peaceful resolution of their bilateral differences.
A greater effort is now called for from the parties concerned and from the wider world community to ensure for the region as a whole a comprehensive and enduring peace. Our own approach to a settlement of that conflict is based on the Venice Declaration adopted by the States members of the European Community. Justice must be secured for the Palestinian people in accord with their right to self-determination. Israel also must be given the reassurance of security behind recognized frontiers.
Lebanon has been the victim of the instabilities caused by the failure to find a settlement of the wide- conflict in the Middle East. The past year has involved further suffering and bloodshed for the divided communities of that land. We appeal to the Lebanese Government and to others in the country to continue in the vital task of bringing about national reconciliation. In so doing, we again recall the equally pressing need for restraint by forces outside the country. The territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon must be respected if peace is to be secured.
The continued worsening of the situation in South Africa over the past year j,s a source of great dismay to the international community. Despite the drastic measures taken by the South African Administration to prevent the media reporting on events there, the attention of the world is focused as never before on the disastrous consequences of apartheid in all its manifestations. It is idle for the South African Government to claim, as it does, that it has embarked on a process of reform. Tinkering with the system is valueless if the basic structure of apartheid is left intact. That evil practice must be eradicated root and branch. The declaration of a state of emergency and the wholesale arrests and repressive measures taken under it clearly indicate that the South African Administration is not yet seriously intent on genuine reform or on commenting a meaningful political dialog with the authentic leaders of the black community.
Progress requires that certain basic pre-conditions be met. These include the lifting of the state of emergency, the immediate and unconditional release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners, the ending of the ban cm the African National Congress, the Pan African Congress and other political parties, and an end to detention without trial and forced relocation. It should be clear to all by now that only collective action by the international community will eventually persuade those holding power in South Africa to make a real commitment to abandon apartheid. For this reason Ireland favors the imposition by the Security Council of a set of mandatory sanctions against South Africa to be fully implemented by all. As a member of the European Community, we have consistently supported the introduction of joint measures to pressure South Africa to accept change and we shall continue to act with our partners in the Community in the interest of a further strengthening of its sanctions until real change is brought about.
South Africa continues to defy international law and opinion elsewhere in the region. Its efforts to destabilize its neighbors have been condemned by Ireland and by the international community. The maneuvering of the South African Government in establishing the so-called transitional government of national unity in Namibia do not deceive world opinion and should be recognized for what they are: further obstacles in the way of independence for Namibia. The oily way forward is the immediate implementation by South Africa of Security Council resolution 435 (1978).
It is dispiriting to note that in Central America the reflex of violence as a solution to the area's problems is still far too prevalent. Violence will not provide a solution to economic and social injustice. Only a firmer democracy will bring with it a greater assurance of justice to the people of the region, leading to a lessening of the burden of poverty and oppression which has affected too many of them for too long. A basic requirement of this development is peace. The
countries of the area need peace, externally and internally. The best hope remains the efforts of the Central American States themselves. They have a right to look to others for their goodwill and encouragement. The Contadora process seemed to us a good augury. We are disappointed that that initiative has not resulted in the agreement which would be the foundation for lasting progress. We urge the Contadora States to renew their efforts, with the co-operation of the Support Group, to construct the framework for the enduring peace which the region so desperately needs. Ireland, as one of the Twelve, looks forward to the opportunity of providing active support to this process within the context of the Twelve's political dialog with Central America.
For 18 years Ministers for Foreign Affairs of successive Irish Governments have informed the General Assembly each year in this debate of the situation in Northern Ireland. We have described the historic background to the instability of that part of Ireland and the underlying causes. We have stressed our sincere desire to find, with the British Government, a peaceful resolution of this issue. The present troubled phase goes bade to 1969, but this is only one phase of a  and difficult problem which involves the relationship of two Member States - Britain and Ireland - and the existence of two major traditions - unionist and nationalist - in the island of Ireland. We have reported to the General Assembly - and I do so once again today - not only because this is our single most important national problem but because the United Nations has a paramount role in the maintenance of world peace and security.
Since I last addressed the Assembly a year ago there has been a major constructive development. On 15 November last at Hillsborough,, in Northern Ireland, the Irish and British Governments signed a solemn, binding Agreement - the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, Our Parliaments in Dublin and London debated and approved the Agreement, which entered into force on 29 November. Under Article 102 of the Charter, the representatives of our two Governments registered the Agreement on 20 December 1985 at the United Nations.
The Agreement results from the commitment of two Members of this Organization to seek solutions to an issue of great common concern through negotiations. It results equally from a common rejection of any attempt to promote political objectives by violence or the threat of violence. It is particularly fitting that I should inform the Assembly about the Agreement in this the United Nations International Year of Peace.
The Agreement was preceded by a long period of reflection and consultation on both sides. For our part, representatives of the constitutional nationalist parties in the whole of Ireland met formally in Dublin to consider the manner in which lasting peace and stability could be achieved. The New Ireland Forum Report of May 1984 contains the agreed result-, it was the basis for the position of my Government in the ensuing negotiations with the British Government.
Both Governments entered into negotiations in the knowledge that it was in their joint interest to reach agreement. We had before us four main objectives. We wanted, through concerted action, to promote peace and stability in Northern Ireland. We wanted to help to reconcile the two major traditions - nationalist and unionist - in Ireland. We wanted to create a new climate of friendship between the peoples of Britain and Ireland. And we wanted to put an end to violence and terror.
We set out to provide a framework for achieving peace, stability and reconciliation. We did not intend that the Agreement should produce ready-made solutions to a problem which dates back to the Anglo-Irish settlement of over 65 years ago, with origins deep in the past. But we were convinced that, if we could establish the right framework, solutions would come progressively and in time. The Anglo-Irish Agreement is the result.
In its important first article the Agreement declares that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would cone about only with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland. The present wish of a majority of the people there is for no change, but if in the future a majority of the people of Northern Ireland clearly wish for and formally consent to the establishment of a united Ireland both Governments will introduce and support in their respective Parliaments legislation to give effect to that wish.
For the first time an international agreement sets out plainly the legitimacy of the nationalist aspiration to a sovereign united Ireland achieved by peaceful means and through consent. At the same time the concerns of unionists are fully met by the assurance that there will be no change in the present status unless a majority in Northern Ireland so wishes.
The Agreement provides for an Intergovernmental Conference as the means through which the Irish and British Governments have committed themselves to work together for specific objectives: accommodation of the rights and identities of the two traditions which exist in Northern Ireland and peace, stability and prosperity throughout the island of Ireland.
For the first time in an international agreement the rights of the Irish Government to speak for the nationalists in the North has been recognized and provided for on a formal and continuing basis. For Northern nationalists, this gives new hope. The Irish Government in the Conference is their advocate.
We will support the rights of nationalists in Northern Ireland and ensure, through the Conference, that those rights are fully acknowledged and accommodated. We want to see a society in which nationalists as well as unionists can live in peace, free from discrimination and intolerance and with the opportunity for both communities to participate in the structures and processes of Government. We also want to see - as soon as possible and through the co-operation of the constitutional political representatives in Northern Ireland - a devolved Government established there on a basis which has widespread support from both unionists and nationalists alike.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement is an initiative by two Governments aimed at producing new positive political movement through joint action. It was carefully designed to meet a particular situation. Its form and implementing machinery are new and have no exact precedent in international affairs. Its architects, the two Governments, are committed to its success because it is in their vital interests to ensure that it does succeed.
The Charter lays down as one of its purposes the development of friendly relations among nations. Between the Irish and British nations there is a unique relationship which derives from historical, cultural and ethnic links over many centuries and from close geographical proximity. We also share strong common beliefs in democratic principles and institutions, and today there is the common bond of our partnership in the European Community. The major unresolved issue between us has best Northern Ireland.
I am confident that in the Anglo-Irish Agreement we have laid a sound foundation for progress towards reconciliation, peace and stability on the island of Ireland and for the closer development of relations, as friendly neighbors, between the British and the Irish peoples.


Sir, allow me, once again, to offer ray felicitations on your assumption of the presidency of the General Assembly. Under your wise and able guidance, this forty-first session of the General Assembly will surely achieve important and far-reaching results.
May I also take this occasion to pay a special tribute to Mr. Perez de Cuellar for his unceasing efforts to promote international peace and harmony and to uphold the principles of the Charter of the United Nations. The lucid presentation in the Secretary-General's report on the work of the Organization reflects the awesome challenges, as also the unprecedented opportunities, facing the United Nations and its Member States. The Pakistan delegation expresses the hope that, at this critical juncture, the Secretary-General will continue at the helm of the world Organization.
Even 41 years after the declaration of the purposes and principles which inspired the collective will of mankind to establish the United Nations to usher in an era of inter-State conduct governed by the rule of law, justice and equity, the world is still convulsed by strife and turmoil.
The problems confronting mankind still remain acute, polarization between the East and the West persists; the nuclear race threatens the very survival of humanity; the gap between the rich and the poor has widened; and resort to the use of force and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign States have increased.
In our neighborhood, the principles of the Charter have been most flagrantly violated by the military intervention in Afghanistan. For nearly seven years, undaunted by the presence of 120,000 Soviet troops, the Afghan people, true to their historic traditions and character, have waged a heroic national resistance against the might of a super-Power. They have proved indomitable in courage, steadfast in resolve and defiant in adversity. Inside Afghanistan a sinister design is being pursued through genocide and large-scale uprooting of the population. Such policies have served only to intensify the Afghan struggle. A million Afghans are estimated to have laid down their lives. Five million, a third of the country's population, have been obliged to seek shelter in Pakistan and Iran. The three million Afghans in Pakistan constitute the largest concentration of refugees anywhere in the world. We continue to provide them with basic sustenance as our Islamic and humanitarian duty. We are grateful to those friendly States and international agencies which have assisted us in discharging this humanitarian responsibility.
Apart from this immense burden, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan seriously threatens Pakistan's own security. There are almost daily violations of our border, which have caused serious loss of life and property. There has also been a sharp increase in acts of sabotage and subversion in our territory, accompanied by threats and pressures.
Pakistan desires an early end to the conflict in Afghanistan, which does not admit of a military solution. We are committed to seeking a just and an equitable political settlement on the basis of the principles endorsed by the General Assembly. Pakistan has worked sincerely and constructively to evolve such a solution through the proximity talks in Geneva, under the auspices of the United Nations Secretary-General and his Personal Representative, to both of whom I wish to pay high tribute.
The fate of a political settlement now depends on the acceptance of a time-frame for the early withdrawal of Soviet troops. That time-frame must be of short duration, to conform to the repeated demands of this Assembly for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan. Such a settlement would also be in conformity with the wishes of the Afghan people and would enable the Afghan refugees to return to their homes in safety and honor. The token withdrawal of six Soviet battalions is a welcome first step, but what is required is not a token disengagement but the total and early withdrawal of all Soviet forces from Afghanistan.
Pakistan will continue to extend its fullest co-operation to the United Nations Secretary-General and his Personal Representative, Mr. Diego Cordovez, in the search for an equitable political solution of the situation in Afghanistan. The Geneva negotiations have readied a critical juncture. We hope this General Assembly will once again take a decision to reflect the wishes of the international community and the conscience of the world at large for the early termination of the foreign military intervention in Afghanistan, the restoration of that country's independent, sovereign and non-aligned status and the return of the Afghan refugees to their homes in safety and honor.The same principles govern our policy on the question of foreign Intervention in Kampuchea. Pakistan supports the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea under the leadership of Prince Norodon Sihanouk and its struggle for national independence. The imposition of a regime by force of foreign arras on the pretext of rectifying earlier violations of human rights in that country is totally unacceptable. We fully endorse the repeated calls of the General Assembly for the withdrawal of all foreign forces, thus enabling the Kampuchean people to choose their own system without coercion and outside interference.
The tragic conflict between Iran and Iraq has injected another dangerous element into an area already embattled and inflamed. The war remains a cause for profound anguish and dismay. Not only has it consumed precious human and material resources of the two countries but it also threatens our region with incalculable consequences for international peace and security^ We have been unrelenting in our efforts to bring that conflict to a speedy end. In the forums of the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization of the Islamic Conference we have endeavored to explore all possibilities for a just and equitable settlement. We earnestly hope for an early cessation of hostilities and a settlement that reconciles the demands of justice with the imperatives of peace.
The situation in southern Africa poses a serious threat to regional and international peace. The brazen attempts of the Pretoria regime to perpetuate the abhorrent system of apartheid, its savage and mounting repression of the majority of the South African people, its aggressive policies of intimidation and coercion, both military and economic, against the front-line States, are a challenge to the international conscience, an insult to mankind and a crime against humanity. There can be no peace, no stability, no security in southern Africa until this abhorrent system has been totally eradicated.Namibia's struggle for liberation from Pretoria's illegal colonial occupation is another front in southern Africa's relentless crusade for dignity and freedom. The heroic struggle of the South West African People's Organization (SWAFO), the sole and authentic voice of the Namibian people, must be supported morally end materially by the international community. The recently concluded special session of the General Assembly has reaffirmed  the United Nations plan, as endorsed by Security Council resolution 435 (1978), as the only basis for Namibia's independence. It cannot be linked to any extraneous issue, such as the presence of Cuban troops in Angola. The members of the Western Contact Group carry a clear responsibility for ensuring the early implementation of the United Nations plan.
In particular, we hope that all the permanent members of the Security Council will support the call for effective sanctions against South Africa. The argument that sanctions will hurt the majority population of South Africa and the front-line African States lacks validity, since the African population has declared its readiness to accept any hardship in preference to racist oppression.
The Middle East continues - be a source of grave danger to regional and world peace. Israel has repeatedly frustrated all peace initiatives. Its obduracy can only escalate violence and lead to another conflict, with grave consequences for world peace. Pakistan deplores Israel's intransigence, as also its policy of annexation of the occupied Arab territories and the establishment of Jewish settlements on usurped land, we are appalled by the repeated desecration of the Holy Places under Israel's occupation, especially the violation of the sanctity of the Holy Al Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam's best sacred shrines.
Pakistan supports the convening of an international conference to evolve a just and comprehensive settlement in the Middle East, with the participation of all the par tip = concerned, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. A just and comprehensive settlement must contain two fundamental elements: first, Israel's total withdrawal from all the occupied territories, including Holy Jerusalem, and, secondly, the fulfillment of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and nationhood in their homeland.
At present world peace and humanity's survival are balanced on the razor's edge of nuclear deterrence. The survival of human civilization depends on our ability to achieve general and complete disarmament.
The world was heartened when the two super-Powers agreed, in 1985, to negotiate the reduction of their nuclear arsenals and to prevent their ^reading to outer space. The agreement in Geneva between the leaders of the two countries that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought" (A/40/1070, p. 3) is cause for hope that the use of nuclear weapons can ultimately be prohibited. He are pleased to see the positive outcome of the Stockholm Conference cm Confidence and Security Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe.
It is equally essential to pursue multilateral disarmament negotiations. We hope that negotiations on a comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty will commence without further delay at the Geneva Conference on Disarmament. Meanwhile, a moratorium should be observed on nuclear testing, as called for by the recent submit meeting of members of the Non-Aligned Movement. The Conference on Disarmament must also conclude as soon as possible a convention prohibiting chemical weapons, reinforce the existing restraints on an arms race in outer space, evolve agreed security assurances for non-nuclear-weapon States and endeavor to finalize a comprehensive program for disarmament.
The tragic incident at Chernobyl has highlighted the grave danger inherent in damage to or destruction of nuclear facilities by accident or by design. It is important to reach international agreements on nuclear safety and on the norms of proscribing attacks against nuclear facilities. The Chernobyl incident has also underlined the need for a rational and equitable regime for co-operation in this field, we hope that the forthcoming Conference for the Promotion of International Co-operation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy will address itself to this issue, keeping in mind the particular needs of the developing countries, which face an acute shortage of conventional fuels and energy resources. The industrialized countries have a responsibility to assist the developing countries in the proper maintenance of the reactors they export and to refrain from prohibition of the supply of vital spare parts. Pakistan is committed to the goal of nuclear non-proliferation. In order to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in our region, Pakistan proposed in 1974, immediately after a nuclear explosion was conducted by India, the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in South Asia. Since then, we have offered a number of other proposals to promote denuclearization in South Asia. We have repeatedly enumerated those proposals, which include simultaneous accession by India and Pakistan to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of t&iclear weapons.
Pakistan desires to promote mutual confidence and beneficial co-operation in South Asia. We have joined six other countries of the region to establish the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC). SAARC offers hope for the acceleration of the development process and the promise of peace and progress to the 1 billion people of South Asia.
Pakistan has continued its endeavors to foster good-neighborly relations with India. The understanding reached last December between the leaders of Pakistan and India not to attack each other's nuclear facilities was a welcome development in this context. We believe that, with mutual goodwill, a bilateral treaty an the non-use of force could also be speedily concluded. This process, we hope, will also lead to the achievement of a peaceful settlement of the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir, on the basis of the relevant resolutions of the United Nations and in the spirit of the Simla Agreement.
Today, international peace and security are threatened not only by wars and disputes but also by poverty and deprivation. Living standards in many poor nations are declining, spreading hunger, disease and death. The economic gap between developed and developing countries is widening. The recent volatile shifts in economic trends confirm the structural imbalance in the world economy. Unless this is corrected, we may witness a global economic decline without precedent, spreading suffering aid chaos and severely straining international order and stability.
An immediate revival of North-South dialog is essential for orderly growth of the world economy. So far, the enormous problems created by the indebtedness of the developing countries have not been addressed in a comprehensive and integrated manner. The recent agreement on the launching of a new round of trade negotiations is a welcome development. It signals a standstill on protectionism and the initiation of the process of dismantling trade barriers imposed unjustly and indiscriminately against developing countries. It also demonstrates the flexibility and political will necessary for solving complex problems of the world economy.
We hope that a more flexible and global approach, which seeks to resolve the debt cr is is through economic growth, will be possible in the context of a renewed dialog between the developed and developing countries and in particular through the holding of the international conference on money, finance and trade for development. In the meantime, it is necessary substantially to increase financial flows to the developing countries.
Pakistan condemns terrorism in all its forms. The perpetration of acts of terrorism against the innocent can have no justification whatsoever and must merit the severest punishment. We have accepted all international measures to counter this scourge, including the three conventions relating to aerial hijacking. We share the view that special measures, including security measures, should be adopted to counter terrorism.
The curse of narcotics is becoming a global problem with grave portents for the well-being of peoples everywhere. It is a problem that transcends all national boundaries. The Government of Pakistan is committed to the eradication of drug abuse, not only within our own country, but indeed everywhere in the world. It is our earnest hope that the first global conference, to be held next year, to deal with all aspects of drug abuse and illicit trafficking will initiate and adopt measures which the international community could apply collectively to eliminate this evil.
It is ironic that so soon after our leaders renewed their dedication to the United Nations at its fortieth anniversary, and at a moment when global recognition of its achievements is growing, the world Organization has been plunged into the most serious financial crisis in its history. We shall give serious consideration to the report of the Group of High-Level Intergovernmental Experts to examine the corrective measures the situation demands. It must be emphasized, however, that the payment of assessed contributions to the United Nations is an obligation under the Charter and must be met faithfully. This difficulty could perhaps have been averted if the persistent practice by some States of withholding part of their contributions, especially for the United Nations peace-keeping operations, had not been tolerated in the past. Pakistan will work constructively to promote a long-term solution to this financial crisis.
If human civilization is to survive, the States represented here must strengthen, not erode, the concept of international partnership for peace and progress to which they have pledged themselves under the United Nations Charter. In this age of nuclear weapons, the security of each individual State is the concern of all. At a time when the exploration of mankind's common heritage of space and oceans holds out such vast promise of progress and well-being, global partnership has become an imperative instead of an option. Such partnership, and the broad international co-operation which it entails, can be nurtured and promoted only within the United Nations. At this session, Meirber States must display the political will to transform the present crisis into a renewed and genuine commitment to this world Organization and to the hopes and aspirations of humanity which it embodies.