General Assembly Session 49 meeting 95

The President

Members will recall that the General Assembly concluded its debate on item 22 at the 45th plenary meeting, on 26 October last.

The Assembly now has before it a revised draft resolution contained in document A/49/L.8/Rev.1, and amendments thereto contained in documents A/49/L.11/Rev.2, A/49/L.12 and A/49/L.13.

I now call on the representative of Germany to introduce the revised draft resolution contained in document A/49/L.8/Rev.1.

Mr. Rudolph (Germany)

I am speaking on behalf of the European Union and its acceding States, Austria, Finland and Sweden.

I have the honour to introduce the revised draft resolution on assistance in mine clearance, contained in document A/49/L.8/Rev.1, on behalf of the sponsors. I am pleased to announce at this juncture that Congo has joined the group of sponsors.

When we introduced the original draft resolution on 25 October 1994, we spoke about the tremendous humanitarian problem caused by the presence of mines and other unexploded devices and their serious and lasting consequences for the populations of affected countries. We expressed our conviction that the draft resolution reflected the international community's high degree of concern at the devastating effects of mines and other unexploded devices in countries emerging from armed conflict. We therefore felt that it was appropriate for this draft resolution to be adopted without a vote.

Now, almost two months later, after intensive consultations, we have finally reached solutions for all the concerns raised. In order to do so, we have inserted new language into the draft resolution as follows:

In the fifth preambular paragraph and operative paragraph 9, respectively, the General Assembly would recognize the importance of recording the location of mines and would call upon States, especially those that have the capacity to do so, to provide information and technical and material assistance.

Operative paragraph 8 now contains a more specific enumeration of mine-clearance activities that are to be coordinated by the United Nations.

Operative paragraph 10 speaks of promoting scientific research aimed at the rapid advancement of mine detecting and clearance technology.

In the new operative paragraph 11, the General Assembly would request the Secretary-General to consider the convening, as early as possible, of an international meeting on mine clearance, to include a meeting of experts and a meeting of potential donors, in order to promote the work of the United Nations and international cooperation in this field.

In the new tenth preambular paragraph, the General Assembly would bear in mind that significant progress needs to be achieved regarding the revision and amendment of the United Nations inhumane weapons Convention and the adoption of an export moratorium.

In the new twelfth preambular paragraph, the General Assembly would welcome the efforts made by the United Nations to foster the establishment of national mine-clearance capacities in countries where mines constitute a serious threat to the safety, health and lives of the local population.

On behalf of the sponsors, I should like to express the hope that in the light of these changes it will indeed be possible to adopt the revised draft resolution today without a vote.

Before concluding, I should like to express our gratitude to all the delegations that have contributed constructively and with a great deal of flexibility to the drafting of this revised text.

The President

I now call on the representative of Ecuador to introduce the amendments contained in document A/49/L.13.

Mr. Ponce (Ecuador)

The report of the Secretary-General contained in document A/49/357 and Add.1 graphically describes the tragic effects of the existence of 110 million mines in various parts of the planet on millions of people and on the economy of many countries, whose basic rights, including the right of development, are thereby restricted. The elimination of this problem will require, in addition to the actions to be taken in the area of disarmament and arms control, an expenditure of between $300 and $1,000 per mine -- in other words, the international community will have to allocate between $33 billion and $110 billion to the task of mine clearance.

The delegation of Ecuador believes it would be absolutely impossible to obtain a sum equivalent to between 6 and 20 times the annual budget of the United Nations through voluntary contributions alone. We should remember that after the industrialized countries failed to fulfil the target figure of 1 per cent of their gross national product for cooperation for development, it was reduced to 0.7 per cent -- and even that target has been met by only four States. Official development aid decreased by $6 billion between 1992 and 1993, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been forced to reduce its programmes by 30 per cent. The defects of the voluntary-contributions mechanism have once again become clear in the failure to attain the very modest goals set at the Rio Summit -- indeed they now seem unattainable. Furthermore, the Global Environmental Facility Fund has not received even a third of the money it requires. Therefore, it seems impossible that the agreement set forth in Agenda 21 to allocate $129 billion annually for sustainable development will ever be implemented.

My country feels, however, that all States do not have an equal responsibility for solving the problem. Ecuador is one of the few States that have carried out their obligations under the 1980 Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, and its Protocols, which clearly set forth the responsibility of the States that lay the mines. We thus support the extension, strengthening and universal application of this Convention.

From a strictly economic point of view -- on which we must focus in creating a trust fund to finance international-cooperation activities for mine clearance -- we must point out that the export of land mines has generated huge profits in past decades. In the near future, many of the firms that have made these profits will even increase them because they will gain the technology and human resources needed for mine clearance. That is why my Government believes that the fund should be financed mainly from the resources of the mine exporters, whose moral responsibility should be made clear by the Assembly.

Document A/49/L.13, submitted by my delegation, contains amendments to draft resolution A/49/L.8 that are designed to establish the responsibility of the mine-exporting States for the financing of the trust fund.

Ecuador's proposal was inspired by the statements made by the delegations of the Andean countries -- Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela and my own country, Ecuador -- regarding the opinion transmitted to the Secretariat on resolution 48/7; that opinion is contained on page 10 of document A/49/357/Add.l. Three months ago we initiated contacts with the sponsors of draft resolution A/49/L.8 in order to achieve a single text. During those contacts my delegation showed the greatest flexibility. Unfortunately, the resistance of some delegations to recognizing the special responsibility of the mine-exporting States and to referring to them in the draft resolution as being among the possible contributors to the trust fund made it impossible to achieve the consensus on the establishment of the appropriate mechanisms that Ecuador would have wished to see achieved in order to solve this serious humanitarian problem.

A conference of possible donors to the fund is being organized for June 1995. In order to obtain the maximum contributions -- and no one can allege that the introduction of political criteria in the draft resolution we are going to adopt today could affect the results -- the Government of Ecuador has decided not to ask for a vote on document A/49/L.13. We shall wait to hear the pledges of contributions that States, especially the mine-exporting States, will make at the conference. If they are not commensurate with the dimension of the problem, my delegation will continue to work with other members of the Assembly to find mechanisms that will make possible the adequate financing of mine-clearance activities without affecting the funds allocated for the promotion of development.

In conclusion, my Government thanks the many delegations -- both from the developing and from the industrialized countries -- that have expressed their support for the ideas contained in document A/49/L.13, including their offer to co-sponsor the amendments. We commit ourselves to continuing to cooperate with them in the quest for the best way to achieve the effective implementation of those ideas.