Discorso Presidente del Venezuela Chavez 15-9-2005 all’ONU

17 set 2005, 01:01:48

[laconscience] discours du président Chavez aux Nations Unies


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