JNITED NATIONS General Assembly PROVISIONAL A/47/PV.7 I9C2 30 September 1992 ENGLISH Forty-seventh session GENERAL ASSEMBLY PROVISIONAL VERBATIM RECORD OF THE 7th MEETING Held at Headguarters, New York, on Tuesday, 22 September 1992, at 3 p.m. President: Mr. GANEV (Bulgaria) later: Mr. PHOOFOLO (Lesotho) (Vice-President) later: Mr. GANEV (Bulgaria) (President) later: Mr. PHOOFOLO (Lesotho) (Vice-President) later: Mr. GANEV (Bulgaria) (President) /... This record contains the original text of speeches delivered in English and interpretations of speeches in the other languages. The final text will be printed in the Official Records of the General Assembly. Corrections should be submitted to original speeches only. They should be sent under the signature of a member of the delegation concerned, within 9ne week, to the Chief, Official Records Editing Section, Office of Conference Services, room DC2-750, 2 United Nations Plaza, and incorporated in a copy of the record. 52-61203 1246-47V (E) A/47/PV.7 Ka-z) Address by Mr. Franjo Tudjman, President of the Republic of Croatia Address by Mr. George Vassiliou, President of the Republic of Cyprus General debate [9] (continued) Statements made by Mr. Kanju (Pakistan) Mr. Watanabe (Japan) Mr. Skubiszewski (Poland) Mrs. af Ugglas (Sweden) Mr. Silva Cimma (Chile) Scale of assessments for the apportionment of the expenses of the United Nations [111] (continued) General debate [9] (continued) Statements made by Mr. Pinheiro (Portugal) Mrs. Bongo (Gabon) Adoption of the agenda and organization of work [8] (continued) A/47/PV.7 2 The meeting was called to order at 3.30 p.m. ADDRESS BY MR. FRANJO TUPJMAN, PRESIPENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA The PRESIDENT: The Assembly will first hear an address by the President of the Republic of Croatia. Mr. Franio Tudiman. President of the Republic of Croatia, was escorted into the General Assembly Hall. The PRESIDENT: On behalf of the General Assembly I have the honour to welcome to the United Nations the President of the Republic of Croatia, His Excellency Mr. Franjo Tudjman, and to invite him to address the Assembly. President TUDJMAN (spoke in Croatian; English text furnished by the delegation): It was exactly four months ago that for the first time I had the honour of addressing you, the representatives of sovereign States members of the global community, in our common House, the General Assembly of the United Nations. Membership in the United Nations is the crowning international confirmation of the sovereign statehood of a State, (sooke in English) To the Republic of Croatia it meant the final realization of the just aspiration of the Croatian people to self-determinatioV and freedom, which that people although one of the oldest European nations succeeded in regaining only after nine centuries of life in multinational state communities in which, to be sure, they preserved their national identity and the identity of their state but did not enjoy internationally recognized sovereignty. The creation of our independent State was the outcome of the indestructible moral strength of the Croatian people, based on a firm national awareness that has burned for centuries as an eternal fire in our hearts. A A/47/PV.7 3 (President Tudiman) nation may have existed from time immemorial, but if it lacks the moral strength and an awareness of its unique individual being, of its nationhood and statehood, it will disappear from the stage of world history. The Croatian people yearned for their State and rallied to achieve it. In their relatively long history from the seventh century to this very day the Croatian people have taken pride in authentic testimony in stone and in the written word to their existence and to their unguenchable yearning for freedom and for their own place among the nations of the world. It was in that very spirit that the great seventeenth-century Croatian poet Ivan Gundulid wrote in his city of Dubrovnik, that jewel of the heritage of Croatia and the world which in our time has suffered barbaric destruction his ode to freedom, which starts with the following lines: "0 liiepa, o draoa. o slatka slobodo,. Par u kom sva blaga vis'n-ii nam Bog je do ..." Those verses express the eternal faith in freedom that has been granted us as a supreme gift by the Almighty, a gift man has cherished, lived for and died for since time immemorial, as an independent, cultured and civilized being not only as an individual, but also as a member of his people and of mankind as a whole. Just as the individual wants to live as a free, rational and unique being, a people can be recognized and appreciated only if it is aware of itself and of its uniqueness in the world. The Croatian people had their own independent kingdom in the Middle Ages. Today they have again achieved full State sovereignty, demonstrating to the world their deep faith in and allegiance to freedom, their respect for justice, and their wish for peace and the development of their State within the international community of peace-loving, equal and independent States. A/47/PV.7 4 (President Tudiman) When it joined the United Nations the Republic of Croatia solemnly committed itself to respect the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations and the system of values and undertakings on which the global community is based. On this occasion, let me once again solemnly reiterate our profound allegiance to the principles of the United Nations. We are faced with the historical responsibility to establish a new international order, an order of eguality and the protection of the rights of all States and nations, national minorities and individuals. At the same time, this poses the challenge of building a world without war, a world with a healthy environment, a world of progress for all the inhabitants of the Earth. For the first time in the history of mankind, the conditions have been created for achieving those noble goals. After the disintegration of the colonial empires following the Second World War, and after the appearance of new nations capable of forming States but also of so-called ahistorical nations on the global scene, we have finally seen the end of division into blocs and the collapse of numerous despotic regimes throughout the world. Obviously and by no means accidentally the collapse of such regimes has been associated and has coincided with the collapse of some multinational States in which nations were held together through repression by totalitarian regimes or through domination by single nations. Human society has entered a period in its historical development of the overall integration of civilizations, but also of national individualization. In other words, the world has become immeasurably interdependent in terms of A/47/PV.7 5 (President Tudjman) development, technology, transport, ecology, culture and the exchange of information, but the number of independent international entities has been increasing continuously. Reconciling this contradiction imposes the necessity to seek mediation, and even the firm involvement of the entire international community, to resolve outstanding and new local and regional crises. A/47/PV.7 6 (President Tudjman) Over the past two-year period, in which Croatia gained its sovereignty, the United Nations has reaffirmed its fundamental principles and tenets: peace and democracy as the foundations of international relations. This Organization has resolutely and efficiently opposed attempts to resolve international disputes by force or to infringe, through aggressive wars and the provocation of regional crises, on the right of nations to self-determination and on the territorial integrity of sovereign members of the international community. The determined military action in the Gulf war and the peace operations in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cambodia are effective proof that the United Nations, with its active role, is becoming increasingly capable of countering aggression and of bringing about peace. However, the experience acquired by the United Nations through peacemaking and peace-keeping operations and in controlling aggression indicates that the process of international agreement and the achievement of consensus in the initiation of peace operations is still slow and is not efficient enough. The Republic of Croatia welcomes and fully supports the activities so far undertaken by the United Nations to extinguish crises throughout the world, aware of the fact that a passive attitude or compromise towards the exponents of aggression and a new deterioration in international relations would be much more costly and involve substantially greater loss of human life and suffering. Nevertheless, it is the view of the Republic of Croatia that the future international peace-keeping activity of the United Nations will have to be expanded to include adequate preventive diplomacy, peacemaking efforts and post-war confidence building, precisely in order to keep human suffering and the danger of the spread of aggression to a minimum. A/47/PV.7 7 (President Tudjman) Moreover, the Republic of Croatia perceives the need to channel the immediate future involvement of the international community, and thereby the programmes of the United Nations, along the following main lines of activity. First, the global economy must pull itself out of the deepening recession, and then an accelerated development cycle should be promoted, involving a higher degree of coordination and economic cooperation between the developed North and the developing countries. Our generation and the global community would bear a heavy responsibility to posterity if they permitted the recently ended opposition of East and West to be replaced by new barriers and a lack of trust between the industrially developed West and North and the third world. Secondly, an equally important task of the United Nations concerns the persistent and firm promotion of democratic freedoms and human rights throughout the world.