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(~L General Assembly Official Records .,Sixty -Eighth Session ~ 8 0 Th Plenary Meeting Thursday, 27 March 2014, 10 A.M

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(~L General Assembly Official Records .,Sixty -Eighth Session ~ 8 0 Th Plenary Meeting Thursday, 27 March 2014, 10 A.M United Nations A /68/ PV.80 (~l General Assembly Official Records .,Sixty -eighth session ~ 8 0 th plenary meeting Thursday, 27 March 2014, 10 a.m. New York President: Mr. Ashe . (Antigua and Barbuda) The meeting was called to order at JO.JO a.m. great honour and privilege for me to address the General Assembly. What has brought us here today is an issue Agenda item 138 (continued) of paramount importance. It is of crucial importance to my nation, of vital importance to every United Nations Scale of assessments for· the apportionment of the State Member and of even greater importance to the expenses of the United Nations United Nations and the world order it embodies. Note by the Secretuy-General (A/681716/Add.7) It has now been a month during which all The President: Before proceeding to the item on possible and impossible boundaries of international our agenda, I should like to inform members that, since law that had been so laboriously nourished by the issuance of document A/68/716/Add.6, Dominica humankind - especially under this institution - have has made the payment necessary to reduce its arrears been ruthlessly trampled. What has happened in my below the amount specified in Article 19 of the Charter. country is a direct violation of the Charter of the United That information will be reflected in document Nations. Many still struggle to grasp the reality that it A/68/716/Add.7 to be issued at a later date. happened in Ukraine, in the very heart of Europe. It happened in the twenty-first century. May I take it that the General Assembly duly takes note of that information? Over the past month, we have witnessed the most flagrant violations of international law since It was so decided. the inception of the United Nations. After two weeks of military occupation, an integral part of Ukraine Agenda item 33 was forcibly annexed by a State that had previously Prevention of armed conflict committed itself to guaranteeing the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of my country in (b) Strengthening the role of mediation in the accordance with the Budapest Memorandum, by a State peaceful settlement of disputes, conflict that happens to be one of the permanent members of prevention and 1·esolution the Security Council, entrusted by the membership of Draft resolution (A/68/L.39) the United Nations with the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. The President: I now give the floor to His Excellency Mr. Andrii Deshchytsia, Acting Minister That act of aggression was meticulously calibrated for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, to introduce draft to strike at a time when Ukraine was forming an resolution A/68/L.39. inclusive Government. Now, despite all odds, such a Government is up and running. The act was aimed Mr. Deshchytsia (Ukraine): Thank you, at - and continues to be aimed at - undermining the Mr. President. for convening today's meeting. It is a This record contains the text of speeches delivered in English and of the interpretation of speeches delivered in the other languages. Corrections should be submitted to the original languages only. They should be incorporated in a copy of the record and sent under the signature of a member of the delegation concemed to the Chief of the Verbatim Reporting Service, room U-506. Con·ections will be issued after the end of the session in a consolidated con"igendum. 14-27868 (E) ® Accessible dorument Please recyde A IUIU~~ nu~ ~-U~UUU~IU T·~ UA-467 A /68/PV.80 27/03/2014 presidential elections in my country. Let me assure the the supremacy of international law, mainly of the General Assembly that Ukraine is determined to carry United Nations Charter”. out its elections as scheduled on 25 May. Mr. President, you may think that the foregoing are Eight rounds of urgent discussions on the Russian my words. They are not. They are in fact an excerpt military intervention in Ukraine held by the Security from the statement of position of the Russian Federation Council clearly demonstrated how isolated Russia is before the opening of the sixty-eighth session of the on the issue. The mixture of false justifications, half- General Assembly. truths, deliberate distortions, insults and naked lies “Recently a common argument has been offered by the Russian side have failed to impress the increasingly made to the effect that the threat or Council. use of force, directly prohibited by the Charter Just a few days ago, at the opening session of the of the United Nations, is virtually the most third Nuclear Security Summit, Secretary-General Ban effective method of addressing international Ki-moon stressed the need to build a culture of nuclear problems, including the settlement of domestic security. He rightly emphasized that the time had come conflicts ... despite the fact that recent experience to strengthen the rule of law in both disarmament and with such interventions has proved that they are non-proliferation. Speaking about efforts by the United ineffective, meaningless and destructive. That is Nations to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, an extremely dangerous path leading to the erosion the Secretary-General pointed out that the assurances of the foundations of today’s world order and the provided to non-nuclear-weapon States by nuclear- subversion of the weapons of mass destruction weapon States must be honoured: non-proliferation regimes.” (A/68/PV.15, p. 34) “In the case of Ukraine, security assurances were That paragraph is also not Ukraine’s, although we an essential condition for its accession to the fully agree with its thrust. It is taken from a statement Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. However, the made by my colleague, Russian Minister for Foreign credibility of the assurances given to Ukraine in the Affairs, Mr. Sergey Lavrov, at the general debate last Budapest Memorandum of 1994 has been seriously September. There are volumes of such statements made undermined by recent events. The implications by representatives of the Russian Federation at the are profound, both for regional security and the United Nations. integrity of the nuclear non-proliferation regime.” “Practice what you preach”, one might think. We We cannot agree more. Two years ago, when we in Ukraine do. As does the African Union, whose proposed to the Russian side to sign a bilateral agreement Constitutive Act, of 2001, calls in Article 4 for, inter on security and confidence-building measures, it alia, sovereign equality and interdependence among refused, saying that the idea of an attack on Ukraine Member States of the Union, respect for borders was absurd. Six months ago, we were preparing to have and the prohibition of the use of force or threat to a trilateral meeting in The Hague among the leaders use force among Member States of the Union, and of Ukraine, the United States of America and Russia non-interference by any Member State in the internal to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Ukraine’s affairs of another. nuclear-free success story. Yet that plan was crushed As does the Organization of American States, whose almost overnight by the Russian aggression against Charter clearly states that no territorial acquisitions or Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea. special advantages obtained either by force or by other “We have consistently called for the recognition means of coercion shall be recognized. of a polycentric world order, equal and indivisible As does the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, security in full conformity with the United Nations with its Charter renouncing aggression or other actions Charter’s basic principles of sovereign equality, in any manner inconsistent with international law. territorial integrity of any State, inadmissibility of intervention in the domestic affairs ... A just As does the European Union. and democratic world order cannot be achieved As does the Organization for Security and without a strict observance of the principles of Cooperation in Europe, with its 1975 Helsinki Final Act. 2/27 14-27868 UA-467 27/03/2014 A /68/PV.80 The list goes on and on. natural state of affairs upset. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, it became clear that Crimea was cut off Despite all the wrongs that have been inflicted from Russia. In 1992, the people of Crimea adopted a on my country over the past month, draft resolution Constitution that established that Crimea would be an A/68/L.39, before the Assembly today, was drafted independent State within Ukraine. However, soon after with the sole and strict goal of upholding the that, the Constitution was changed by Kyiv without principles of the Charter of the United Nations. The consulting the people of Crimea, and the status of the purpose of the draft resolution is to reinforce core peninsula was reduced to an autonomous republic as United Nations principles at a moment when they are part of a unitary Ukrainian State. experiencing a major challenge. The text addresses respect for territorial integrity and the non-use of force The Crimeans never accepted that state of affairs. to settle disputes. It does not break any new legal or They openly demonstrated their sympathy for Russia. normative ground. Yet it sends a crucial message that Their patience snapped against the background of a deep the international community will not allow what has political crisis that occurred in Ukraine. The crisis was happened in Crimea to set a precedent for further to a large extent provoked by the adventurous actions challenges to our rules-based international framework. of the current political forces, which sought to break It clearly serves a de-escalatory purpose and explicitly the centuries-old ties of Russia and Ukraine, by giving welcomes international efforts, including those by the Kyiv a false choice between either the European Union Secretary-General, in support of a peaceful settlement and the West or Russia.
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