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PERMANENT MISSION OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA TO THE UNITED NATIONS
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STATEMENT DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY MR. FELIPE P�REZ ROQUE,
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA,
AT THE GENERAL DEBATE OF THE 56TH SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
OF THE UNITED NATIONS
NEW YORK, 13 NOVEMBER 2001
Mr. President:
Before delivering my statement, I would like to express our
condolences to the United States, the Dominican Republic and other
countries represented here that have lost citizens among the many
passengers and crew members who perished in yesterday's tragedy of
American Airlines Flight 587 - and I hereby pass on these condolences
to their families.
Mr. President:
The war in Afghanistan must be stopped. The Government of the United
States must acknowledge that it has made a mistake - and must halt
its ineffective, unjustifiable bombing campaign against that people.
As to its results, it would seem that this war has targeted children,
the civilian population and the International Red Cross hospitals and
facilities as enemies. As to its methods, no honest voice would rise
in this hall to defend an endless slaughter - with the most
sophisticated weaponry - of a dispossessed, starving, helpless
people. As to its doubtful purposes, this war will never be justified
from the point of view of ethics and International Law. Those
responsible for it will one day be judged by history.
Cuba has opposed this war from the very beginning as an absurd,
inefficient method to eradicate terrorism - and reiterates that it
can only bring more hatred and ever-increasing dangers of new
terrorist actions. No one has the right to continue murdering
children, aggravating the humanitarian crisis, visiting
impoverishment and death on millions of refugees.
If the United States obtained a military victory by eliminating all
regular and irregular Afghan resistance - something that is not at
all easy in practice and extremely costly at the moral level, for it
would represent a real genocide without attaining the objective that
we must pursue - the world would be farther away than ever from
achieving peace, security and the eradication of terrorism.
Cuba's discourse is not founded on ill feelings against who has been
our most embittered adversary for over forty years. It is inspired by
a sincere constructive spirit and a sense of respect for and sympathy
towards the people of the United States, which sustained the
unjustifiable and atrocious terrorist attack. It is also based on the
aspiration of peace and justice for all the peoples of the world.
What Cuba expresses in this hall - with full openness - may not be to
the liking of those who run the United States today, but it will be
understood one day by the American people, whose generosity and sense
of justice were proven to the Cuban people when it had the support of
80% of the public opinion in this country in our struggle to prevent
a kidnapped Cuban child from being uprooted from his family and
subjected to ludicrous political manipulations and cruel
psychological tortures.
What Cuba says from this rostrum, we know it well, is what many
people rumor in the corridors of this building.
What international coalition are we talking about? What is its
legitimacy based on - if it has started by stridently disregarding
the General Assembly of the United Nations? The United States has not
fostered international cooperation. It has rather imposed its war on
a unilateral basis and unwontedly stated that whoever does not second
them is with terrorism. How long will the precarious support obtained
last - not resulting from harmonized objectives and voluntary
agreement, but from imposition through threats and pressures?
One can be the strongest, but not necessarily right. One can cause
dread, but not sympathy and respect. Only from genuine international
cooperation - in which all countries, big and small, participate with
a full understanding of everyone's positions; with broadmindedness
and tolerance in the methods used; in the framework of the United
Nations Organization and unflinchingly abiding by the principles
enshrined in its Charter - can a truly effective and lasting alliance
emerge to fight terrorism.
The world was surprised to learn of the official announcement of the
United States to the Security Council that it reserved the right to
decide on an attack against other countries in the future. What is
left of the United Nations Charter after this? Can this unprecedented
threat by any chance be interpreted as an exercise of the right to
legitimate defense, enshrined in the Charter as the right of a State
to deal with acts of aggression until the Council adopts the
necessary measures and not as a vulgar excuse to unleash attacks
against other countries? Is or is it not this announcement the
proclamation of the right of a superpower to trample upon the already
wobbly and incomplete standards governing sovereignty, security and
the rights of the peoples?
Cuba rejects that language with poise and steadfastness. We have not
done so out of concern for our own security - because there is no
power in the world that can subdue our spirit of independence,
freedom, social justice and the courage to defend it at any cost. We
did so because we believe that it is still possible to halt the
escalation of a useless, brutal war that threatens to further plunge
the poor peoples of the planet into hopelessness, insecurity and
death - who are by no means responsible for any act of terrorism, but
will be - and already are - the main victims of this senselessness.
Only under the leadership of the United Nations will we be able to
defeat terrorism. Cooperation and not war is the way. The
coordination of actions and not imposition is the method. Our
objective must be to obliterate terrorism by removing its root causes
- and not the hegemonic assertion of the strength of a superpower,
thus turning us into accomplices to its haughtiness and
highhandedness.
Therefore, Cuba - that has already responded to the
Secretary-General's appeal by deciding to immediately ratify all of
the international legal instruments on terrorism - determinedly
supports the adoption of a general convention on international
terrorism. Of course, this would only be possible in the context of
this General Assembly - now absolutely ignored by the promoters of
the new campaign, but which in the last ten years, with the silence
and apathy of the Security Council, has seen the effective adoption
of the main resolutions and declarations calling for an outright
fight against terrorism.
That will finally allow us to define terrorism with accuracy. We have
to prevent a few people with vested interests from trying to label as
such the right of nations to fight for their self-determination or
against foreign aggression. It must be clearly established that the
support, abetment, financing or concealment of terrorist actions by a
State is also an act of terrorism.
Cuba, while working to have its own anti-terrorism law in a short
period of time, unreservedly endorses the announcement of an
international conference on terrorism, under the aegis of the United
Nations. This has been an old aspiration of the Non-Aligned Movement
- and must enable us, as a result of open discussions, collective
actions, respectful and non-discriminatory agreement; and not threat,
terror and force, to find the way to fully eliminate terrorism and
its causes; not only if committed against the United States, but also
if undertaken against another country, even from the territory of the
United States or with the leniency or complicity of its authorities,
as has been Cuba's painful experience for over four decades.
Mr. President:
Only four days ago, the Pakistani media attributed to a rather well-
known, very familiar character in the United States, a statement
supposedly made from Afghan territory saying that he is in possession
of chemical and nuclear weapons and threatening to use them against
the United States if similar weapons are used by that country against
Afghanistan.
Everybody knows that Afghanistan does not have the slightest
possibility to produce and launch nuclear or chemical weapons. Only a
terrorist organization or leader could come up with the idea of
executing an action of this kind with nuclear or chemical weapons.
That is theoretically possible as it is also one of the consequences
of the irresponsible behavior of major nuclear powers and of the arms
trade, corruption and illegal traffic in all sorts of military
technology. Several of these powers have acted as accomplices to and
taken part in the traffic in fissionable material and the transfer of
nuclear technology, as it suits their interests. However, under the
concrete conditions of the war in Afghanistan, it would be ridiculous
to resort to those threats and whoever did that would be signaling an
enormous political and military ignorance. Lacking such means would
make it a dangerous bluff, and having them would be an absolute
madness to threaten to use them.
If such statements published by two Pakistani newspapers were true,
they would deserve the strongest condemnation, even if such weapons
were eventually used against Afghanistan. It would be a stupid
reaction since in that scenario that suffering, impoverished country
would only have the possibility to count on the universal rejection
of the use of such weaponry. Such threats only serve the interests of
the extremist and warmongering forces within the United States, which
favor the use of the most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction
against the Afghan people. The best weapon for a country under
aggression is to earn and preserve the sympathy of the world, and not
to allow anyone to violate the ethical principle that no one has any
right to kill children, not even when others do it. There is no
justice in killing innocent people to avenge the death of other
innocents.
Cuba has stated, unhesitatingly, that it is opposed to terrorism and
that it is opposed to war. Cuba, that is not under obligation to
anyone, will continue to be consistent with its positions. Truth and
ethics should prevail above all else.
The unfolding of events, and the multiplication of hatred, passions
and potential dangers have come to show that it was absolutely right
to assert that the war was not, is not and will never be the way to
eradicate terrorism.
Mr. President:
The most critical socio-economic crisis that our planet has
undergone, created halfway through the last decade by the strident
and irreversible failure of neoliberalism and neoliberal
globalization, has been dramatically aggravated by this war imposed
by one, but whose consequences we all have to bear.
This war must be stopped not only for its consequences to the Afghan
civilian population, but also for the dangers of destabilization in
that region; not only to save thousands of Americans - particularly
the young - Afghans and other nationals from a pointless death; not
only to preserve an atmosphere of international peace and stability,
but because this conflagration renders entirely impossible an
objective proclaimed by the United Nations fifteen years ago: the
right to development for all and the equality of opportunities to
attain it. Because it renders obsolete the decision made only a year
ago to work together in order to eliminate poverty from the face of
the Earth.
Will we be willing to organize a coalition against poverty, famine,
ignorance, diseases, the scourge of AIDS that is currently decimating
the African continent; a coalition in favor of sustainable
development, in favor of the preservation of the environment and
against the destruction of the planet?
A coalition has been summoned to avenge the grievous death of over
4,000 innocent people in the United States. Let us come together to
seek justice against this major crime - and let us do so without a
war; let us come together to save from death the hundreds of
thousands of poor women who every year die at childbirth; let us come
together to save from death the 12 million children who die of
preventable diseases every year in the Third World before the age of
5; let us come together to take medications against AIDS to the 25
million Africans who are hopelessly awaiting death; let us come
together to invest in development at least a portion of the billions
already spent to carpet-bomb a country where almost nothing has been
left standing.
Cuba demands that this General Assembly, the Security Council and the
United Nations Organization as a whole deal once again, as top
priorities, with the debate of these problems - which are crucial to
the 4.5 billion inhabitants of the Third World, whose rights and
hopes have also been buried under the rubble of the Twin Towers.
Mr. President:
Cuba reiterates its outright condemnation of the terrorist action
committed last 11 September. Cuba reiterates its condemnation of
terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Cuba reiterates that
it will not allow its territory to be ever used for terrorist actions
against the people of the United States or of any other country.
Cuba has the morality to do it - because for over forty years it has
suffered from terrorist actions; because in Cuba there are still
relatives of the nearly 3,500 Cubans killed as a result of
aggressions and terrorist acts; because justice is still demanded by
over 2,000 Cubans rendered disabled by aggressions and terrorist
acts. Some of its sons and daughters, who have fought terrorism, have
been victims of cruel persecutions, relentless treatment and unjust
and slanderous proceedings.
The people of the United States is a victim not only of terrorism and
panic, but also of the lack of truthful information, manipulation and
the questionable limitation of their freedoms. Cuba does not nurture
any hatred towards the American people - which does not hold
accountable for our terrorism-related suffering, the aggressions and
the unfair economic war that we have been compelled to withstand
almost a lifetime; and with which it shares the aspiration of one day
having relations based on respect and cooperation.
Mr. President:
If anyone here takes offense at these words, uttered on behalf of a
small generous, courageous people, I apologize. We speak in a
straightforward manner. Words exist to uphold the truth, not to
conceal it. We are rebellious against injustice and oppression. We
have morality; we defend our ideas at the price of our lives. Our
support for any fair cause can be obtained, but we cannot be subdued
by force or through the imposition of absurd formulas or embarrassing
adventures.
For many years now we have proclaimed that for us - Cubans - the
historical dilemma is: "Motherland or Death!" Thence our confidence
and security that we are and will continue to be a worthy, sovereign
and fair people.
Thank you very much.
Official Translation - Nov 13, 2001
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