Renewed attempts to divide the world into zones of influence or privileged interests are unacceptable for the international community of the 21st century

Tuesday, September 23, New York – President Valdas Adamkus delivered a speech at the 63rd Session of the United Nations general Assembly.

President Adamkus recalled that when he was standing at this podium ten years ago, the list of issues to be urgently addressed was about the same. Yet the mood was different, Mr. Adamkus said. The Kyoto Protocol had just been signed and preparations for the Millennium Summit, including the drafting of the Millennium Development Goals, were underway. The international community guided by the principles and the leadership of the United Nations showed the will and the ambition to resolve global issues.

“I have to admit that many nations, big and small, today have many more concerns than a decade ago. Today we feel less secure. The very structure of the international system seems to be fracturing, depriving us from the protection provided by international law and international institutions,” Mr. Adamkus said.

He pointed out that in Eastern Europe and in the EU eastern neighborhood,  this was more obvious than anywhere else. Singling out energy issues, Mr. Adamkus emphasized that oil supplies to Lithuania have been cut off without warning and that we did not stand a chance of conducting a normal civilized dialogue on how to fix this problem.

On the eve of closing down Lithuania’s only independent power generator, Mr. Adamkus said, we have a very serious reason to worry about the possible risks for the future of our economy. He stressed that such situation threatened the stability of the entire region.

President Adamkus underlined that the United Nations could not be a mere passive observer. He spoke about Georgia and UN failure to react to an act of aggression against a small nation, member of the UN since 1992.

He suggested that the failure to react might have occurred because our faith in the United Nations had weakened: “It is the very essence of this organization to protect human life and human rights, but too often voting on human rights receives less and less support from the member states. Today we still have about 26 million IDPs in the world, including Sudan, Somalia, the South Caucasus nations of Georgia and Azerbaijan, and others. Last year alone, we faced serious crises in different corners of our planet, including Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe”. The world needed UN leadership, Mr. Adamkus said, but the organization did not act accordingly because some states hide behind the technicalities or behind the shield of national sovereignty, thus paralyzing the UN.

According to Mr. Adamkus, it was evident that the UN could not continue with ‘business as usual.’ It needed reform and greater role in areas that would determine the future of the 21st century, such as energy, information security, anti-terrorism, fight against fundamentalism, and the like. “How long will we continue with the cold-war era security definitions, closing the eyes to the less visible but no less dangerous risks of the 21st century?” Mr. Adamkus asked.

He pointed out that based on the experience of the European nations after the end of World War II and after the end of the Cold War, we needed to strengthen democracy at home in order to have good governance and a responsible leadership.

“It is only through integration that a truly indivisible security can be achieved,” Mr. Adamkus said, emphasizing that indivisible security had a special meaning and importance for smaller nations who had all too often fallen victims to the redrawing of maps.

He expressed his conviction that interaction of and cooperation among different organizations, like the OSCE, the EU, NATO, and the Council of Europe, had always been and should remain the foundation of security and stability in Europe.
“It has its difficulties and deficiencies. But it has no alternatives and new alternatives are not needed here. Therefore, I am deeply worried by new calls to revise the institutional structure of European security rather than follow the commitments taken before the whole international community,” Mr. Adamkus said.

In his opinion, it did not matter if the world was unipolar, bipolar or multipolar, because human life and human rights remained at the heart of our world. Only such a world could create a truly viable architecture among the states – an architecture based on trust, openness and respect for human rights. “But did we see efforts to create such an architecture in the Georgia-Russia conflict? What we saw instead were renewed attempts to divide the world into zones of influence or privileged interests. And this should be unacceptable for the international community of the 21st century. Division and exclusion are bad remedies for conflict resolution. Therefore, conflict resolutions in South Ossetia, Abkhazia or elsewhere should be the responsibility of the international community and international institutions, not of one participating side, which hardly remains impartial,” Mr. Adamkus said.

He emphasized that we had to learn these lessons well so that in another ten years time we would celebrate not only the fulfilled promise of the Millennium Development Goals, but also the fulfilled promise to create lasting peace and an area of progress, prosperity and human dignity.

“It is because the United Nations primarily consists not of the sum total of the votes, but of universal principles, and these principles shall be the guiding light to us for the years to come,” said Mr. Adamkus, stressing that he still believed that this was the core mission for the United Nations.