[News] President Chavez at UN General Assembly

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Speech by President Chavez at UN General Assembly, Thursday September 15, 2005

Your Excellencies, friends, good afternoon:

The original purpose of this meeting has been completely distorted. The 
imposed center of debate has been a so-called reform process that 
overshadows the most urgent issues, what the peoples of the world claim 
with urgency: the adoption of measures that deal with the real problems 
that block and sabotage the efforts made by our countries for real 
development and life.

Translated by Néstor Sánchez

Five years after the Millennium Summit, the harsh reality is that the great 
majority of estimated goals- which were very modest indeed- will not be met.

We pretended reducing by half the 842 million hungry people by the year 
2015. At the current rate that goal will be achieved by the year 2215. Who 
in this audience will be there to celebrate it? That is only if the human 
race is able to survive the destruction that threats our natural environment.

We had claimed the aspiration of achieving universal primary education by 
the year 2015. At the current rate that goal will be reached after the year 
2100. Let us prepare, then, to celebrate it.

Friends of the world, this takes us to a sad conclusion: The United Nations 
has exhausted its model, and it is not all about reform. The XXI century 
claims deep changes that will only be possible if a new organization is 
founded. This UN does not work. We have to say it. It is the truth. These 
transformations – the ones Venezuela is referring to- have, according to 
us, two phases: The immediate phase and the aspiration phase, a utopia. The 
first is framed by the agreements that were signed in the old system. We do 
not run away from them. We even bring concrete proposals in that model for 
the short term. But the dream of an ever-lasting world peace, the dream of 
a world not ashamed by hunger, disease, illiteracy, extreme necessity, 
needs-apart from roots- to spread its wings to fly. We need to spread our 
wings and fly. We are aware of a frightening neoliberal globalization, but 
there is also the reality of an interconnected world that we have to face 
not as a problem but as a challenge. We could, on the basis of national 
realities, exchange knowledge, integrate markets, interconnect, but at the 
same time we must understand that there are problems that do not have a 
national solution: radioactive clouds, world oil prices, diseases, warming 
of the planet or the hole in the ozone layer. These are not domestic 
problems. As we stride toward a new United Nations model that includes all 
of us when they talk about the people, we are bringing four indispensable 
and urgent reform proposals to this Assembly: the first; the expansion of 
the Security Council in its permanent categories as well as the non 
permanent categories, thus allowing new developed and developing countries 
as new permanent and non permanent categories. The second; we need to 
assure the necessary improvement of the work methodology in order to 
increase transparency, not to diminish it. The third; we need to 
immediately suppress- we have said this repeatedly in Venezuela for the 
past six years- the veto in the decisions taken by the Security Council, 
that elitist trace is incompatible with democracy, incompatible with the 
principles of equality and democracy.

And the fourth; we need to strengthen the role of the Secretary General; 
his/her political functions regarding preventive diplomacy, that role must 
be consolidated. The seriousness of all problems calls for deep 
transformations. Mere reforms are not enough to recover that “we” all the 
peoples of the world are waiting for. More than just reforms we in 
Venezuela call for the foundation of a new United Nations, or as the 
teacher of Simón Bolívar, Simón Rodríguez said: “Either we invent or we err.”

At the Porto Alegre World Social Forum last January different personalities 
asked for the United Nations to move outside the United States if the 
repeated violations to international rule of law continue. Today we know 
that there were never any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The people 
of the United States have always been very rigorous in demanding the truth 
to their leaders; the people of the world demand the same thing. There were 
never any weapons of mass destruction; however, Iraq was bombed, occupied 
and it is still occupied. All this happened over the United Nations. That 
is why we propose this Assembly that the United Nations should leave a 
country that does not respect the resolutions taken by this same Assembly. 
Some proposals have pointed out to Jerusalem as an international city as an 
alternative. The proposal is generous enough to propose an answer to the 
current conflict affecting Palestine. Nonetheless, it may have some 
characteristics that could make it very difficult to become a reality. That 
is why we are bringing a proposal made by Simón Bolívar, the great 
Liberator of the South, in 1815. Bolívar proposed then the creation of an 
international city that would host the idea of unity.

We believe it is time to think about the creation of an international city 
with its own sovereignty, with its own strength and morality to represent 
all nations of the world. Such international city has to balance five 
centuries of unbalance. The headquarters of the United Nations must be in 
the South.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are facing an unprecedented energy crisis in which 
an unstoppable increase of energy is perilously reaching record highs, as 
well as the incapacity of increase oil supply and the perspective of a 
decline in the proven reserves of fuel worldwide. Oil is starting to become 
exhausted.

For the year 2020 the daily demand for oil will be 120 million barrels. 
Such demand, even without counting future increments- would consume in 20 
years what humanity has used up to now. This means that more carbon dioxide 
will inevitably be increased, thus warming our planet even more.

Hurricane Katrina has been a painful example of the cost of ignoring such 
realities. The warming of the oceans is the fundamental factor behind the 
demolishing increase in the strength of the hurricanes we have witnessed in 
the last years. Let this occasion be an outlet to send our deepest 
condolences to the people of the United States. Their people are brothers 
and sisters of all of us in the Americas and the rest of the world.

It is unpractical and unethical to sacrifice the human race by appealing in 
an insane manner the validity of a socioeconomic model that has a galloping 
destructive capacity. It would be suicidal to spread it and impose it as an 
infallible remedy for the evils which are caused precisely by them.

Not too long ago the President of the United States went to an Organization 
of American States’ meeting to propose Latin America and the Caribbean to 
increase market-oriented policies, open market policies-that is 
neoliberalism- when it is precisely the fundamental cause of the great 
evils and the great tragedies currently suffered by our people. : The 
neoliberal capitalism, the Washington Consensus. All this has generated is 
a high degree of misery, inequality and infinite tragedy for all the 
peoples on his continent.

What we need now more than ever Mr. President is a new international order. 
Let us recall the United Nations General assembly in its sixth 
extraordinary session period in 1974, 31 years ago, where a new 
International Economic Order action plan was adopted, as well as the States 
Economic Rights and Duties Charter by an overwhelming majority, 120 votes 
for the motion, 6 against and 10 abstentions. This was the period when 
voting was possible at the United Nations. Now it is impossible to vote. 
Now they approve documents such as this one which I denounce on behalf of 
Venezuela as null, void and illegitimate. This document was approved 
violating the current laws of the United Nations. This document is invalid! 
This document should be discussed; the Venezuelan government will make it 
public. We cannot accept an open and shameless dictatorship in the United 
Nations. These matters should be discussed and that is why I petition my 
colleagues, heads of states and heads of governments, to discuss it.

I just came from a meeting with President Néstor Kirchner and well, I was 
pulling this document out; this document was handed out five minutes 
before- and only in English- to our delegation. This document was approved 
by a dictatorial hammer which I am here denouncing as illegal, null, void 
and illegitimate.

Hear this, Mr. President: if we accept this, we are indeed lost. Let us 
turn off the lights, close all doors and windows! That would be 
unbelievable: us accepting a dictatorship here in this hall.

Now more than ever- we were saying- we need to retake ideas that were left 
on the road such as the proposal approved at this Assembly in 1974 
regarding a New Economic International Order. Article 2 of that text 
confirms the right of states to nationalizing the property and natural 
resources that belonged to foreign investors. It also proposed to create 
cartels of raw material producers. In the Resolution 3021, May, 1974, the 
Assembly expressed its will to work with utmost urgency in the creation of 
a New Economic International Order based on- listen carefully, please- “the 
equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest and 
cooperation among all states regardless of their economic and social 
systems, correcting the inequalities and repairing the injustices among 
developed and developing countries, thus assuring present and future 
generations, peace, justice and a social and economic development that 
grows at a sustainable rate.”

The main goal of the New Economic International Order was to modify the old 
economic order conceived at Breton Woods.

We the people now claim- this is the case of Venezuela- a new international 
economic order. But it is also urgent a new international political order. 
Let us not permit that a few countries try to reinterpret the principles of 
International Law in order to impose new doctrines such as “pre-emptive 
warfare.” Oh do they threaten us with that pre-emptive war! And what about 
the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine? We need to ask ourselves. Who is 
going to protect us? How are they going to protect us?

I believe one of the countries that require protection is precisely the 
United States. That was shown painfully with the tragedy caused by 
Hurricane Katrina; they do not have a government that protects them from 
the announced nature disasters, if we are going to talk about protecting 
each other; these are very dangerous concepts that shape imperialism, 
interventionism as they try to legalize the violation of the national 
sovereignty. The full respect towards the principles of International Law 
and the United Nations Charter must be, Mr. President, the keystone for 
international relations in today’s world and the base for the new order we 
are currently proposing.

It is urgent to fight, in an efficient manner, international terrorism. 
Nonetheless, we must not use it as an excuse to launch unjustified military 
aggressions which violate international law. Such has been the doctrine 
following September 11. Only a true and close cooperation and the end of 
the double discourse that some countries of the North apply regarding 
terrorism, could end this terrible calamity.

In just seven years of Bolivarian Revolution, the people of Venezuela can 
claim important social and economic advances.

One million four hundred and six thousand Venezuelans learned to read and 
write. We are 25 million total. And the country will-in a few days- be 
declared illiteracy-free territory. And three million Venezuelans, who had 
always been excluded because of poverty, are now part of primary, secondary 
and higher studies.

Seventeen million Venezuelans-almost 70% of the population- are receiving, 
and for the first time, universal healthcare, including the medicine, and 
in a few years, all Venezuelans will have free access to an excellent 
healthcare service. More thatn a million seven hundred tons of food are 
channeled to over 12 million people at subsidized prices, almost half the 
population. One million gets them completely free, as they are in a 
transition period. More than 700 thousand new jobs have been created, thus 
reducing unemployment by 9 points. All of this amid internal and external 
aggressions, including a coup d’etat and an oil industry shutdown organized 
by Washington. Regardless of the conspiracies, the lies spread by powerful 
media outlets, and the permanent threat of the empire and its allies, they 
even call for the assassination of a president. The only country where a 
person is able to call for the assassination of a head of state is the 
United States. Such was the case of a Reverend called Pat Robertson, very 
close to the White House: He called for my assassination and he is a free 
person. That is international terrorism!

We will fight for Venezuela, for Latin American integration and the world. 
We reaffirm our infinite faith in humankind. We are thirsty for peace and 
justice in order to survive as species. Simón Bolívar, founding father of 
our country and guide of our revolution swore to never allow his hands to 
be idle or his soul to rest until he had broken the shackles which bound us 
to the empire. Now is the time to not allow our hands to be idle or our 
souls to rest until we save humanity.

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