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PRESS RELEASE
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia
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Minister Oskanian Speaks for Small Nations at UN General Assembly
STATEMENT BY
H.E. VARTAN OSKANIAN
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF
THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA
At the 62nd Session of the UN General Assembly
October 3, 2007
New York
Mr. President,
Each opportunity to speak from this podium is a humbling experience, knowing
that every country in the world is listening to the other, trying to discern
where common approaches and interests lie.
Those of us representing small countries have a sense that this is the forum
where large states address the ills of the world, and we, smaller ones,
ought to adhere to topics that are specific to us, to our regions. As if,
addressing overarching, global issues would be pretentious, and they are
best left to those with the power to do something about them.
This is my 10th year here, and I will risk breaking that unwritten rule.
This year, as financial calamities have compounded political and natural
disasters, it is so evident that although our common problems and challenges
threaten us all equally, they affect us unevenly. Small countries, with less
of everything – diversity, resources, maneuverabilitiy, options and means –
are at greater peril, greater risk, greater vulnerability than those with
bigger territory, larger population, greater potential.
At the same time, the major political, social and environmental issues on
this Assembly¹s agenda — peace and security, economic growth and
sustainable development, human rights, disarmament, drugs, crime,
international terrorism – know no borders. None of us can tackle them
individually if we expect to resolve them effectively. Their solutions are
in our common interest. The problems are vast and touch all of humanity.
Because they cannot be solved within our borders alone, does not mean anyone
has the right, or the luxury, to abdicate responsibility for their
consequences.
When the speculative market drives the price of a barrel of oil to $80,
those too small to have significant reserves are more quickly affected. And
just as large countries with huge appetites for fuel make deals sometimes
inconsistent with their politics, so do we. For us, energy security is much
more than a matter of global arithmetic; it¹s a matter of life and death.
When climate change causes significant environmental transformation, it
doesn¹t take much for prolonged droughts and excessive rains to harm our
agriculture and damage our economy, or for rising shorelines to reach our
cities. But we lack the diversity and the space to adapt and cope.
When it is news that there are no explosions in Iraq, and when large scale
destruction is a daily occurrence, we in small countries become more keenly
aware of our vulnerability and susceptibility to the will and capacity of
the international community, to their tolerance for distant violence and
humiliation.
When development depends on an absence of bad weather, disease and war, and
when the capacity to ward off at least two of those three ills lies in the
hands of those with huge ability to heal and to make peace, small countries
are at risk and helpless.
When disarmament and arms control cease to be the means to world peace, and
instead become the means to score political dividends, small countries
resort to their own means of self-protection. In other words, we become part
of the problem, because the solution is neither straightforward, nor within
reach.
When Darfur becomes shorthand for hopelessness, we in the small corners of
the world realize that power has become a substitute for responsibility. The
ubiquitous language of human rights cannot compensate for political will.
Genocide must be prevented, not commemorated. Generation after generation,
we find new names for man¹s appalling tolerance for what we think are
inhuman machinations, new names for the places of horror, slaughter,
massacre, indiscriminate killing of all those who have belonged to a
segment, a category, an ethnic group, a race or a religion. Nearly 100 years
ago, for Armenians it was Deir-El-Zor. For the next generation, it was
Auschwitz, then the killing fields of the Cambodians. And most recently
Rwanda. If in each of those cases, together with genocide, these names
evoked ignorance, helplessness, wartime cover, today Darfur is synonymous
with expediency, evasion and simple inconvenience. Darfur is synonymous with
shame.
My appeal, on behalf of small countries, is that the international community
tackle each of these problems in their own right, for their own sake, and
not as pieces in a global power puzzle. When tensions among the world¹s
great powers grow, there is an increase in polarization and a decrease in
the effectiveness of the hard-earned — and costly — policies of
complementarity and balance of small countries. Our own room to maneuver, to
participate in global solutions, diminishes.
But Mr. President and colleagues, let me say the obvious. We rely on the
ability of global powers to put aside their own short-term conflicts and
divergences and to recognize that their power and influence does not make
them immune to the range of problems that afflict us. It also does not make
them immune from the impact of the failure of appropriately using that power
and influence – for the good of humanity.
Mr. President,
Last year we celebrated 16 years of Armenia¹s independence. We have
weathered sea changes, and been swept up in regional and global developments
which daily affect our lives.
We can only be proud of what we¹ve accomplished — an open, diversified
economy, high growth, strong financial systems; also, improved elections,
stronger public institutions, a population increasingly aware of its rights.
This makes us more determined to solve the remaining economic ills – uneven
growth, rural poverty and low wages – and further empower people and deepen
the exercise of democracy.
We¹ve done all this despite a still unresolved conflict and artificial
restrictions, and in the absence of regional cooperation.
The Nagorno Karabakh conflict is included on the agenda of this General
Assembly session under the topic of protracted conflicts. But Mr. President
any resolution that places all conflicts in one pot is necessarily flawed.
Each of these conflicts is different. The Nagorno Karabakh conflict doesn¹t
belong there. This isssue should not be discussed at the UN, because it is
being negotiated in the OSCE.
First, the Nagorno Karabakh conflict is not frozen. We continue to negotiate
and we are inching towards resolution. Second, there is a well-developed
negotiating document on the table, based not on wishful thinking, but on the
core issue and the consequential issues. Together, they add up to a balanced
solution. Third, at the core of the process lies the issue of the right of
the people of Nagorno Karabakh to determine their own future. Indeed, the
people of Nagorno Karabakh don¹t want anything that is not theirs – they
want a right to live in peace and security and to determine their own
future, they want to exercise the right that every people here has exercised
at some point in their history.
Mr. President, we follow very closely developments on Kosovo. We hear the
international community loud and clear, that Kosovo cannot be a precedent
for other conflicts. While we have no intention to use Kosovo as a prececent
for our conflict, since that would contradict our own position that all
conflicts are different. But at the same time, we won¹t understand or accept
the reverse logic – that if Kosovo is given independence, no other people
can achieve self-determination. No one should tell us that there is a quota
on liberty and security.
Mr. President, at the end of the day, small countries¹ awareness of and
place in global processes cannot, will not, substitute for those with
extensive resources and the political will and ability to act. In this age
of openness and inclusion, there is no room for the the old instruments of
coercion and exclusion. Instead, the new instruments of compromise and
consensus are necessary to reach humanity¹s enduring goals of peace and
prosperity.
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