[Peace-discuss] Chavez at the UN

[Morton K. Brussel]

Chavez at the UN
by Hugo Chavez
September 18, 2005

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Your Excellency and Friends

The original intention of this meeting has been totally weakened. We  
have been prevailed upon, as center of our debate, to consider some  
badly named "reforms". These reforms relegate as unimportant all that  
the world's people are urgently crying out for. This includes the  
adoption of measures to confront the real problems that impede  
development in our countries.

Five years after the Millennium Summit it is still crude reality that  
the great majority of its already modest goals will not be reached.  
We wanted to reduce the world's hungry population to half, from an  
original figure of 842 million people, by the year 2015. At the  
present rate this goal would not be achieved until the year 2215. How  
many of us we will be there then to celebrate this achievement? Such  
a celebration would depend in any case course on humanity's capacity  
to survive environmental destruction until that date.

We had proclaimed our aspiration for universal primary education by  
2015. At the present rate, the goal will only be reached after year  
2100. Let's get ready for that great celebration, too.

This, my friends of the world, leads us to an irreversible and bitter  
conclusion: The United Nations have exhausted their model. It is not  
simply a case of getting on with a reform. The XXI Century demands  
deep changes that are only possible with a re-founding of this  
organization. The present one is not working; it is necessary to say  
it; this is the pure truth.

Those transformations, from our Venezuelan point of view, must happen  
in two time-frames: the immediate one, and utopian one. The first one  
is weighed down by the old scheme. We did not try to avoid it, and we  
even brought proposals to make short term changes in that model. But  
the dream of world-wide peace, is the dream of a collective "we" who  
are not ashamed to face the goals of eliminating hunger, disease,  
illiteracy, and extreme need. The solution to these problems  
requires, in addition to roots, wings to fly. We need wings to fly.

We know that there is a frightful, neoliberal globalización, but  
there also exists an interconnected world which we must face, not as  
a problem, but as a challenge. Based on our own national realities,  
we can interchange knowledge, harmonize with each other, and  
integrate markets. But at the same time we must understand that there  
are problems that no longer have national solutions: problems such as  
a radioactive cloud, international pricing practices, a pandemic  
illness, the over heating of the planet, and the hole of the ozone  
layer are not national problems.

As we advance towards a new model for the United Nations that affirms  
and recognizes this collective "we" there are urgent reforms we  
recommend for this assembly that cannot be postponed:

First, the expansion of the Security Council, both in its permanent  
and transitory areas, thus giving new developed and developing  
countries the status of permanent members.

Second, it is necessary to improve operational methods, to increase  
and not diminish transparency, to increase and not diminish mutual  
respect, and to increase inclusion.

Third, we demand the immediate suppression, as we have been saying  
already for six years in Venezuela, the immediate suppression of the  
veto in the Security Council. That elitist relic is incompatible with  
democracy, incompatible with the very idea of equality and democracy.

And in fourth place, we propose the strengthening the Secretary  
General's role. His political functions within the framework of the  
preventive diplomacy must be consolidated.

The gravity of the problems requires deep transformations. Token  
reforms are not enough to recover our sense of "we". What are the  
world's peoples waiting for? Beyond the reforms, we Venezuelans  
demand the re-founding of the United Nations. As we well know in  
Venezuela, and in the words of Simón Rodriguez, Caracas' Robinson,  
either we create or we go astray.

Last January, of this year 2005, we were in World Social Forum in  
Porto Alegre. There, several personalities requested that the seat of  
United Nations be taken from the United States if that country  
continues to violate international legal norms. Today we know that  
there never were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The  
American people has always been very scrupulous in their demand that  
their rulers be truthful with them. The other peoples have also made  
this demand. Even though there never were weapons of mass  
destruction, in spite of the United Nations' objections, Iraq was  
bombed, occupied, and continues to be occupied. For that reason we  
propose to this assembly that the United Nations should leave a  
country that does not respect the resolutions of its own assembly.

Some proposals have included converting Jerusalem into an  
international city. Perhaps this idea has the generosity of offering  
an answer to the conflict that Palestine is living through, but such  
a proposal would be difficult to carry out. For that reason we have  
brought another one here, based on Simón Bolívar's "Letter of  
Jamaica", written in Jamaica, in 1815, 190 years ago. He suggested  
the creation of an international city that would represent the idea  
of international unity. Bolivar was a dreamer that dreamed today's  
world. We believe that it is time to create an international city  
that is not associated with a particular State's sovereignty. Such a  
city would have sufficient moral force to represent the nations of  
the world. But this international city must redress five centuries of  
imbalance. The new seat of United Nations must be in the South. The  
South also exists, said Mario Bennedetti. It could be an existing  
city, or we can invent it.  It could be located at a point where  
several territorial borders meet or on land that symbolizes the  
world. Our continent is ready to offer such a soil on which the  
balance of the Universe could be constructed, as Bolívar recommended  
in 1825.

Ladies, gentlemen: we today face an unprecedented world power crisis.  
Inexorable power consumption growth is dangerously combined with both  
the incapacity to increase the supply of hydrocarbons, and the  
perspective of a decline in the proven reserves of fossil fuels.  
Petroleum is beginning to run out  In 2020, the daily demand of  
petroleum will be 120 million barrels. Even without taking future  
growth into account, in 20 years a quantity of petroleum will be  
consumed that will be equal to all that humanity has used until the  
now. This will inevitably lead to an increase in the emissions of  
carbon dioxide that, as it is known, contribute every day to  
increasing the temperature of our planet.

Katrina has been a painful example of the consequences of ignoring  
these realities. The heating of the oceans is the fundamental factor  
behind the dangerous increase of hurricane violence that we have seen  
in recent years. This is a good occasion to once again transmit our  
pain and our sadness to the people of the United States. The towns of  
America are our towns, and are also the world's towns.

It is practically and ethically inadmissible to sacrifice the human  
species, madly invoking the use of a socioeconomic model of careening  
destructive capacity. It is suicidal to insist on spreading this  
model as if it were an infallible remedy for the evils which it has,  
indeed, caused. Recently the President of the United States attended  
a meeting of the Organization of American States in which he proposed  
increasing market policies, the opening of markets, that is,  
neoliberalism for Latin America and the Caribbean. These policies are  
indeed the fundamental cause of great tragedies and evils that our  
people endure. Neoliberal Capitalism is the "Consensus" of  
Washington. It has generated greater misery, inequality and an  
infinite tragedy for the peoples of this continent.

Now more than ever we need, Mr. President, a new international order.  
Let us remember the General Assembly of the United Nations, in its  
sixth extraordinary period of sessions, celebrated in 1974 in Breton  
Woods (some of those who are here had not been born yet, or were very  
small). In 1974, 31 years ago, the Assembly adopted the Declaration  
and the Program of Action of a new international economic order. That  
14th of December of 1974, along with the action plan, the General  
Assembly adopted the Bill of Rights and Economic Duties of the States  
that the new international economic order made specific. It was  
approved by an overwhelming majority of 120 votes in favor, 6 against  
and 10 abstentions. In those days the delegates voted in the United  
Nations, because now they do not do that anymore. These days  
documents are approved here that I denounce, on Venezuela's behalf,  
as null and illegal. It was approved violating the norm of the United  
Nations. This document is not valid. It should be discussed. The  
government of Venezuela is going repeat this all over the world. We  
cannot accept an open and shameless dictatorship in the United  
Nations. Because of this I call very respectfully on my colleagues,  
the Chiefs of State and Governments. Recently I met with President  
Néstor Kirchner and I showed him the document. This document was  
given to our delegates five minutes before this general discussion,  
only in English, and it was approved with a dictatorial hammer blow  
that I have denounced as being illegal, irksome, null and illegitimate.

Hear me well, Mr. President. If we are going to accept this we are  
lost. Let us turn off the light, close the doors, and close the  
windows. It would be terrible that we accept a dictatorship here in  
this hall. We need to rediscover what was lost along the way like the  
proposal approved in this assembly in 1974 of a new international  
economic order. Particularly we might remember Article 2 of the text  
of that resolution which confirms the State's right to nationalize  
natural properties and resources that had fallen into the hands of  
foreign investors. The proposition also proposed the creation of  
cartels for the producers of raw materials. We might remember the  
May, 1974 Resolution 3201. It expressed the urgent determination to  
establish a new international economic order based on fairness,  
sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest and equality  
between all the States without reference to their economic and social  
systems.

The objective of the new international economic order was to modify  
the old one. (I believe that the president of the United States spoke  
yesterday for 20 minutes. I request permission, Your Excellence, to  
finish my speech, too.) The objective of the new international  
economic order was to modify the old one that was conceived in 1944.  
This order still was in use in 1971 during the collapse of the  
international monetary system. The motivations to change were only  
good intentions; there was no will to advance along that road. We  
think that that was and continues to be the right way. Today in  
Venezuela we demand  a new international economic order. But also  
essential is a new international political order. We cannot allow a  
handful of countries to  unconstrainedly reinterpret the principles  
of international law, giving legitimacy to doctrines like preventive  
war. And do they ever threaten us with preventive war! They now call  
it the responsibility to protect us, but we have to ask who will be  
doing this protecting? How they are going to protect us?

I believe that the United States needs protection, as has been so  
painfully demonstrated now by the tragedy of Katrina. This country  
does not have government to protect it from predictable natural  
disasters, as long as we are talking about protecting each other.  
These are very dangerous concepts that imperialism is drawing up.  
They are mark out intervensionism and are trying to legalize the lack  
of respect for people's sovereignty. They ignore respect for the  
principles of international law and the Letter of the United Nations.  
This should constitute, Mr. President the keystone of international  
relations in today's world, and the basis of the new order that we  
advocate.

Permit me, in conclusion, to mention how our liberator, Simon Bolivar  
spoke of world integration, of a world-wide parliament, a congress of  
parliamentarians. It is necessary to again take up proposals like  
this. As I mentioned earlier, In Jamaica in 1815 Bolivar said, and I  
quote, "How beautiful it would be for us that the isthmus of Panama  
were to become what Corinth was for the Greeks. Hopefully someday we  
will have a noble congress of representatives of the Republic of the  
Kingdoms. There we could deal with and discuss the high interests of  
peace and war among nations that belong to the other three parts of  
the world ". This kind of unitary corporation may happen, some happy  
renaissance. It is certainly urgent to find an effective way of  
dealing with international terrorism, but this danger should not  
become a pretext to let loose unjustified and violent military  
antagonism posing as doctrine after the 11th of September. Only close  
and real cooperation, and the end of double discourse on the subject  
of terrorism, used by some countries of the North, will be able to  
end this horrible calamity.

Mr. President: in only seven years the Bolivarian Revolution, the  
Venezuelan people, can show important social and economic conquests.  
1,406,000 Venezuelans learned to read and to write in one and a half  
years, and our population only consists of 25 million people. In a  
few weeks, the country will be able to declare itself to be a  
territory free of illiteracy. Three million Venezuelans have  
incorporated to the primary, secondary and university education that  
before were excluded because of poverty. 17.000.000 Venezuelans,  
almost 70% of the population, receive for the first time in history  
free medical attention, including medicines. And in a few years, all  
Venezuelans will have access to excellent medical attention. More  
than 1,700,000 tons of food were distributed at reasonable prices to  
12.000.000 people, almost half of the Venezuelans. 1.000.000 million  
of them are temporarily receiving this food for free. These measures  
have generated a high level of nutritional security for the most  
needy. Mr. President, 700,000 jobs have been created, reducing  
unemployment by 9 percentage points. All this has occurred in the  
middle of internal and external aggression that included a military  
coup, supported by Washington, and an oil strike, also supported by  
Washington. In spite of these conspiracies, and the lies that have  
appeared in the media and the permanent threats of the Empire and its  
allies. These threats have included the incitation to magnicide. The  
only country where a person has the luxury to request assassination  
of a Chief of State is the United States. This just happened when the  
Reverend Pat Robertson, a very good friend of the White House  
publicly requested my murder, and then walked free. This is an  
international crime, international terrorism.

We will fight for Venezuela, for Latin American integration and the  
world. We reaffirm here in this hall our infinite faith in man, who  
today thirsts for peace and justice, and to survive as a species.  
Simón Bolivar, father of our country and our revolutionary guide,  
swore not to give his arm any rest, or repose to his soul, until  
America was free. We also will not rest our arms or give repose to  
our souls until we have contributed to saving humanity.



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