SPEAKERS CAUTION AGAINST POST-SEPTEMBER 11TH STEREOTYPING, LINKING ISLAM

27/09/2004
Press ReleaseGA/10263

Fifty-ninth General Assembly
Plenary
11th & 12th Meetings (AM & PM)
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CHIRAU ALI MWAKWERE, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Kenya, welcomed the ongoing efforts to reorganize and revitalize the United Nations. Those efforts must reaffirm the status of the General Assembly as the pre-eminent policy-making body, and should result in a Security Council that was enlarged, democratized, and more representative of the Organization’s membership in the twenty-first century. Thanking the Secretary-General for his efforts to enhance the capacity of the United Nations Office in Nairobi, the only United Nations headquarters in a developing country, he also requested a significant increase in the regular budget component of funding for the Nairobi Office, to bring it into line with the administrative and financial arrangements of similar United Nations offices at Geneva and Vienna.

Among other international issues he highlighted the problems caused by the production, stockpiling, transfer, and use of anti-personnel landmines, and urged countries to send high-level delegations to the upcoming “Nairobi Summit 2004 on a Mine-Free World” (the first review conference of the Ottawa Convention), to be held from 29 November to 3 December. Kenya had also been at the forefront of regional initiatives to address the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, and welcomed the convening of the International Conference for the Great Lakes Region on Conflict and Development, scheduled for 17-20 November in the United Republic of Tanzania.

He noted Kenya’s role in working for peaceful solutions to conflict in the region, as chair of the Southern Sudan Peace Process and the Somali Reconciliation Process. Regarding the southern Sudan, he said that prospects for a final peace agreement were within reach, and that he hoped recent events in the western region of Darfur would not subsume positive developments in resolving the two-decades–long conflict. Progress in Somalia could be seen in last month’s inauguration of a Transitional Federal Parliament, he said, adding that Kenya hoped to witness the installation of the Federal Government of Somalia by the end of the year. He appealed to the international community, and the United Nations in particular, to provide necessary support for infrastructure, security, and capacity-building for the new Government. Kenya, which had long been a major troop-contributing country in peacekeeping operations, called on the international community to assist the African Union in establishing a standby African force that could be a key tool for ensuring peace and stability on the continent.

Turning to the issues of poverty and development, he said that current trends indicated that countries in sub-Saharan Africa would fall short of the Millennium Development Goals. The attainment of those Goals would depend, in part, on how effectively countries in the region deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other related communicable diseases. He added that while Kenya received international assistance to contain a severe famine caused by drought this year, additional aid was needed.
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Other dignitaries who spoke in this session are:

ABDULLAH AHMAD BADAWI, Prime Minister of Malaysia,

FAROUK AL-SHARA, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Syria,

LI ZHAOXING, Minister for Foreign Affairs of China,

N. HASSAN WIRAJUDA, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia,

ALBERTO ROMULO, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines,

NIZAR OBAID MADANI, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia,

YOUSEF BIN ALAWI BIN ABDULLAH, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Oman,

SODYQ SAFAEV, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uzbekistan,

KEITH DESMOND KNIGHT, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Jamaica,

CHOE SU HON, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,

RADNAABAZARYN ALTANGEREL, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs of Mongolia,

SOMSAVAT LENGSAVAD, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic,

HOR NAMHONG, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Cambodia,

RASHID MEREDOV, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan,

BILLIE A. MILLER, Senior Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade of Barbados,

MARWAN MUASHER, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Jordan,

KOSTYANTYN GRYSHCHENKO, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine,

MAMADY CONDE, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Guinea,

SURAKIART SATHIRATHAI, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Thailand,

BAMBA MAMADOU, Minister of State and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Côte d’Ivoire,

LE CONG PHUNG, First Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam,