General Assembly Session 50 meeting 73

Mr. Park (Republic of Korea)

I would like to express my thanks to Ambassador Al-Khussaiby, President of the Security Council, for his excellent presentation of the Council's report covering the period from 16 June 1994 to 15 June 1995. My delegation welcomes the President's personal introduction of the report as a positive development and hopes that this practice will continue in the future. My thanks also go to the Secretariat for its hard work in preparing the report.

My delegation, like others, considers this report to be an essential link between the Council and the General Assembly, in keeping with Articles 15 and 24 of the Charter. The keen interest shown in the report by the Member States is fully understandable in the light of the pivotal role the Security Council has been playing in recent times.

The report confirms the dramatically increased role and activities of the Council. The sheer volume of the report and the figures, set forth in Ambassador Al-Khussaiby's introduction, of the formal and informal meetings held, the various reports and communications considered, the resolutions adopted and the statements made by the President clearly demonstrate the heavy workload of the Council and illustrate the growing importance of the Security Council in world security issues.

The agenda item under discussion provides an important opportunity for interaction between the Security Council and the General Assembly and between the members of the Council and the general membership. In order for these two principal organs of the United Nations effectively to discharge their shared responsibility in the maintenance of international peace and security, it is indispensable that the Council's relationship with the General Assembly be strengthened.

Therefore, the General Assembly's review of the report of the Security Council should serve as an opportunity for Member States to have a meaningful exchange of views on the Council's handling of major issues relating to international peace and security in the previous year. It should provide an occasion for collective assessment of the Council's achievements as well as a moment for reflection on its shortcomings and limitations.

It is in this context that the question arises whether the current format of the report is appropriate for a body that is fulfilling a central role in the maintenance of international peace and security. An overwhelming majority of Member States, including the Republic of Korea, have called for the report to be a more analytical and substantive account of the activities undertaken by the Council rather than a simple compilation of resolutions, statements and various communications which have already been made available to them.

It should be recalled that Article 24 of the Charter, by stipulating that the Council is acting on behalf of the entire membership, entitles the general membership to be fully informed not only about the actions the Council has taken but also about the underlying motives and reasoning that have led to such actions. Unfortunately, this year's report, in following a pattern similar to that of previous years, again fails to meet the hope and expectations of the general membership in that respect.

Equally if not more disappointing is the fact that, despite the volume's bulk, the report does not include any description of the Council's informal consultations. This is particularly noteworthy in view of the fact that these days the Council relies increasingly on such informal consultations and that it is in those consultations that most of the substantive discussions are conducted.

We do not deny the importance of maintaining a certain degree of confidentiality and informality in the deliberations of the Council to encourage constructive discussions and facilitate the proceedings so that it can reach decisions promptly by consensus. However, the need for such a working style does not justify the report's complete omission of information about those consultations. Although the Journal provides a modest amount of information, such as the date and the topic at hand, my delegation believes that if the report also contained some basic information, including, if possible, a brief summary of the discussion, it would greatly help Member States to keep track of all the informal consultations in the previous year.

Member States have continuously called for the improvement of the working methods of the Council. The report highlights a number of procedural improvements introduced into the working methods of the Council in recent years. We are pleased to note that during the period under consideration some further improvements were put in place. Particularly noteworthy in this connection are the presidential statement of 16 December last year regarding increased recourse to open meetings and the two Notes by the President dated, respectively, 29 March and 31 May of this year concerning the work of sanctions Committees.

While welcoming these innovations as a positive step in the right direction, we believe that much more could be done. We encourage the Council, and particularly its Working Group on documentation and other procedural matters, to continue its endeavour to make further improvements and transform the Council into a more open, transparent and democratic body.

Although the issue is currently under discussion in the Open-Ended Working Group on the Question of Equitable Representation on and Increase in the Membership of the Security Council, my delegation would like to indicate just a few areas of concern in which the Council and its Working Group on documentation and other procedural matters could make further improvements.

First, since their introduction in 1994, consultations with troop-contributing countries have proved extremely useful. While we are grateful to the delegations of Argentina and New Zealand for their contribution in this respect, we believe that these consultations should be further intensified and that similar consultations should be devised for the sanctions Committees to enable the countries affected or likely to be affected by the sanctions to voice their concerns in a more systematic way.

Secondly, thanks to the initiative of the United Kingdom delegation, briefings have been regularly held by the presidency since last year. But the information we get from these briefings, held once or twice a week, is often too little. Many delegations still find themselves waiting outside the consultation room to get timely information. It is for this reason that my delegation, while appreciating the existing informal briefings, still hopes that the Council will devise a more effective post-consultation briefing system to give a short account of the consultations to the non-members at the end of informal meetings.

Thirdly, it is disappointing that despite the presidential statement of 16 December 1994 the orientation debate proposed by the French delegation has rarely been utilized. We strongly urge the Security Council to make this orientation debate a regular feature of the working methods of the Security Council by convening such meetings as often as possible, in accordance with the intention expressed in the presidential statement.

Fourthly, my delegation wonders if the time has come to develop a practice of keeping a record of informal consultations and making a summary of them available to the general membership under certain conditions.

Let me conclude by saying that the Council and the General Assembly should work together to make the Council more transparent, more accessible to the general membership and, thereby, more accountable to the General Assembly. I am convinced that an enhanced partnership between the Security Council and the General Assembly would better serve the cause of global peace and stability.

Finally, may I take this occasion to express the profound gratitude of the Republic of Korea for the overwhelming support it enjoyed in its election on 8 November to non-permanent membership in the Security Council. On behalf of the Government of the Republic of Korea, our delegation wishes to confirm its readiness and willingness to cooperate closely with all members in their efforts to promote global peace and security.

Mr. Macedo (Mexico)

Mexico attaches particular importance to the report that the Security Council submits annually to the General Assembly, in accordance with its obligations under Articles 15 and 24 of our Organization's Charter. This report is the essential communication link between the Security Council and the most universal body of the United Nations with regard to the fundamental question of the maintenance of international peace and security.

We are thankful to the Permanent Representative of Oman, Ambassador Al-Khussaiby, President of the Security Council for this month, for his introduction to the General Assembly of the report covering the period from 16 June 1994 to 15 June 1995. We are pleased that this important practice, which was started by the Permanent Representative of Brazil at the forty-eighth session of the General Assembly, is thus being continued. We are also pleased that efforts to improve the introduction of the report are being sustained.

We should first like to refer to chapter 31 of the report, on documentation and working methods. We feel that the statement made by the President of the Security Council last December, in which the Security Council expressed its readiness to hold more frequent open meetings, especially during the initial phase of consideration of an item, should be applied more often. We share the view, expressed last November by the Permanent Representative of France, that in the work of the Security Council greater and greater importance should be attached to public debate and that a balance should be sought between formal and closed meetings. Undoubtedly, that was the intention of the authors of the Charter. The Security Council must not become a body whose decisions, which affect all of us, are adopted behind closed doors, in almost clandestine deliberations.

However, we find that in the period covered by the report, the Security Council held 274 closed meetings -- 22 more than in the corresponding period of 1993 and 1994. We hope that this unfortunate trend will be corrected and that the Security Council will hold more frequent public debates.

Our desire for greater transparency is not motivated by inquisitiveness; it is directly linked to the need for the rest of the States Members of the Organization to make a constructive contribution to the work of the body entrusted with the maintenance of international peace and security. Mexico has no doubt that greater support from all those who make up the United Nations for the decisions of the Security Council would strengthen the capacity, legitimacy, efficiency and effectiveness of that body.

We deem very positive, as an example of the contribution the other Members of the United Nations make to the work in the Security Council, through public debate, was the consideration of the Secretary-General's "Supplement to An Agenda for Peace", referred to in chapter 10 of the report. We are convinced that the open meetings held on that occasion, in which many countries non-members of the Security Council took part, were very useful in clarifying the international community's perception of that very important document. The meetings also provided orientation for the statement made by the President of the Security Council at the end of the exercise and sent a very healthy message of openness. We feel that this working method should be strengthened.

We appreciate the measures adopted by the Security Council to rationalize its agenda and enhance transparency in the sanctions Committees. We welcome the fact that the introduction of the report under consideration contains more information on the work carried out in those Committees, since their mandates affect economic interests that are in some cases very sensitive. We hope that the report that each Committee must submit annually to the Security Council can be distributed in timely fashion so that Member States will have more information on the activities of those subsidiary bodies of the Security Council.

We know that the side-effects of the sanction regimes are a reason for concern. The debate on this issue has been held not only in the Open-ended Working Group on An Agenda for Peace, but also in the Sixth Committee. We hope that the work of the Working Group on Article 50 of the Charter will be strengthened. We also feel it necessary in the closed meetings of the sanctions Committees, to strengthen the practice of listening to the comments of interested States and organizations regarding questions that arise in connection with the implementation of the measures adopted. We consider that improved communication in this area can only lead to an improvement in the activities of the Committees and greater support for the overall work of the Security Council.

We are convinced that it is time for the mechanism of special reports provided for in the Charter to be used. For example, it would be very useful, in the case of operations that have been concluded, for the Security Council to submit a special report to the General Assembly. We have in mind the cases of Somalia and Mozambique, in which there was an important need for a precise assessment from the Security Council on the achievements reached and the problems faced in the course of the endeavours carried out on behalf of all of us, the United Nations.

In addition, we feel that the submission of quarterly reports would help strengthen communication between the Security Council and the General Assembly. We wish to point out again that we think a special rapporteur of the Security Council, entrusted with the task of informing the Member States, would further enrich cooperation.

Another area of particular importance that calls for strengthening is the mechanism of consultations between the Security Council and the troop-contributing States. We must not forget that those who provide personnel and material to peace-keeping operations have a very legitimate interest in participating in decisions that could put the lives of their young soldiers at risk. Resolutions of this type directly affect those who are working and making sacrifices for the cause of peace.

Last year we welcomed the initiative on this point submitted by Argentina and New Zealand. We feel that the time has now come to formalize this mechanism and to give it an institutional character. This would contribute to transparency, to the openness we all desire.

The Security Council does not have autonomous authority. The Members of the Organization have entrusted it with the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It acts on behalf of all of us, not simply on behalf of its own members -- hence the Council's responsibilities to the General Assembly. We sincerely hope that the steps taken by the Security Council in terms of public meetings, sanctions committees and consultations with the troop-contributing countries will be consolidated and expanded.

We hope that there will be new and better channels of communication between the Council and the General Assembly and between the Member States and the Security Council. The maintenance of international peace and security is, after all, a common goal of all the Members of this Organization.

Mr. Muntasser (Libya)

The United Nations Charter, and specifically Article 24 thereof, stipulates that the Members of the United Nations agree that the Security Council, in carrying out its duties, acts on their behalf. Thus the Council is responsible and accountable to the Membership of the Organization and should take into consideration their directives in implementation of the principle that there is no conferment of powers without accountability. It is on this basis that my delegation participates in the debate on this item. Our aim in so doing is to review the work of the Security Council, to evaluate its activities and to ascertain whether or not it has responded to our requests, and heeded our suggestions, indeed whether or not its methods of work and procedures have been inspired by our advice.

However, before I do that, allow me to express on behalf of my country's delegation our profound appreciation to Ambassador Al-Khussaiby, the Permanent Representative of Oman, who, in his capacity as President of the Security Council for the month of November 1995, has introduced the Council's report to this session of the General Assembly.

The report of the Security Council, contained in document A/50/2 comes at a time when the Council has embarked on taking measures aimed at ensuring more transparency in its work. The publishing of its daily and monthly agendas has become an established practice and the periodic briefings by the President of the Council have provided Member States with more information on the Council's meetings and consultations. My delegation welcomes these improvements in the Council's methods of work. However, we must emphasize, at the same time, that the measures adopted so far do not respond to the basic points that have been raised, namely, that the comments that have been made on the Council's annual report and its methods of work have not been sufficiently taken into consideration.

The Security Council's report now before us contains, in its introduction, brief accounts of the work of the sanctions committees. This is a positive development. But the remainder of the report has remained as it was before: a mere statistical narrative of a whole year of the Council's work. To describe the report in these terms is not to belittle its importance. The report may be useful academically, but as a basis for evaluating the work of the Security Council, it is still lacking in many respects. The report presents the Council's resolutions and statements in abstract terms, without any background information on the different phases they passed through before being adopted or on the reasons that justified their adoption.

It appears that the Council has not taken into consideration the much repeated appeals for the holding of more formal meetings and for limiting informal consultations to the absolute minimum. It is indeed cause for concern that the Council has done the exact opposite. Its record shows that it has held 152 formal meetings in which it adopted 70 resolutions and issued 82 presidential statements whose texts appear in the report. While the report mentions that the Council also held 274 consultation meetings, the document now under consideration does not contain any information on what actually took place in those consultations: it only mentions that, in total, they lasted for 420 hours. The only explanation for this is that the Security Council does not pay sufficient heed to our opinions and proposals in this respect, or that it considers that what took place in those consultations was so secret that it should not be divulged to the Members of the United Nations on whose behalf the Security Council is supposed to act.

My country's delegation welcomes the fact that the Security Council has begun to consult with countries that contribute troops to the United Nations peace-keeping operations. Yet, we cannot but express our concern over the fact that the Council is still hesitant about putting into practice the procedure provided for in the Charter which calls for the Council to consult with other countries, especially those that are parties to a dispute under consideration by the Security Council. Furthermore, the relationship between the General Assembly and the Security Council remains limited to the presentation by the Council of its annual report to the General Assembly. This by itself does not meet all the requirements of the Charter and, specifically, the contents of paragraph 1 of Article 15 which stipulates that beside the annual report, the Council shall submit to the General Assembly special reports on questions that threaten international peace and security. Had the Security Council provided the General Assembly with such reports, it might have been able, in cooperation with this Assembly, to devise the means of resolving many of the crises and violent situations that have been witnessed by many parts of the world.

The past few years have witnessed actions by the Security Council which could be described as very unusual. The Council has acted in a manner that fully contravenes the Charter when it authorized one of its members to act on its behalf in extremely grave matters, such as military intervention. At the same time, the Council did not act properly to avert the immense tragedy that unfolded in Rwanda. In certain cases, the Council has applied double standards. While, it did not act as it should have when the Israelis shot down the Libyan civilian aircraft in 1973, and adopted the same position when the Americans downed the Iranian civilian aircraft in 1988, it has dealt in a completely different manner with the incident of the American Pan Am flight which crashed in 1988. It is regrettable that, in dealing with that incident, the Council did not afford the opportunity for the question to be dealt with in accordance with the Convention that deals with such matters -- namely, the 1971 Montreal Convention on the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation.

This has clearly shown that the purpose of raising the issue was not to get to the truth, but to punish. If this was not the case, why were all other solutions provided for under Chapter VI of the Charter excluded? Is the mere suspicion that two Libyan nationals were involved in the incident a sufficient justification for dealing with it under Chapter VII of the Charter, which is not applicable to it in the first place, since the problem is a legal one that should have been dealt with by specialized bodies such as the International Court of Justice?

The fact that we raise this question now does not mean that we are trying to make use of the occasion of the discussion of the present item, as some may think. We are doing this in order to prove to the Council that in dealing with certain cases, it did not act in accordance with the provisions of the Charter. The case to which I have just referred adds another dimension: namely, that the Council, in dealing with a number of cases, acts according to the wishes of certain countries and not on the basis of the authorization given to it by the Charter.

It is well known that the League of Arab States has put forward a proposal for solving what has become known now as the Lockerbie problem. This proposal calls for the trial of the two Libyan suspects before a Scottish court by Scottish judges, at the seat of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Libya has accepted this proposal and many of the families of the victims of the incident have accepted it. It has been supported also by regional international organizations such as the Organization of African Unity and the Non-Aligned Movement, whose representatives have clearly confirmed this support to the Security Council.

The Security Council does not act on behalf of States Members of the United Nations. If it were really acting on their behalf, the views of the members of the organizations I have mentioned, who account for over two thirds of the members of this Assembly, should have been taken into consideration. But the painful fact is that the Council has fallen under the control of one of its permanent members. If this is not the case, why then does the Council not accept the Arab proposal, which provides the best solution for this longstanding problem? And why does it yield to the wishes of a powerful Member State that does not want a solution to be found for the problem? All that Member State wants is to keep the Libyan people suffering under the sanctions for the longest time possible, under the pretext that Libya refuses to allow the two suspects to appear before a court of law. This is utterly false. Libya has not refused the trial, but, as I have explained, the two suspects and their Western lawyers have rejected the idea of their appearing before British or American courts because they will not receive a fair trial, since they have already been convicted by the mass media and even by officials at the highest levels in those two countries.

This regrettable situation makes it necessary to carry out a comprehensive review of the Security Council's methods of work and procedures with a view to improving them and ensuring their increased transparency. There is also a need to seek the necessary means whereby this important body may be made immune to any attempt at dominating it or using it to achieve objectives that serve special interests. In our view, the following proposals are extremely important:

First, the annual report of the Security Council should be improved further. Future reports should include the background of the resolutions and statements adopted by the Council. It should include also a summary of the discussions that take place during the informal consultations held by the Council, and should include also more transparent and more comprehensive reports on the work of the subsidiary committees established by the Security Council and in particular the sanctions committees.

Secondly, the Security Council should revert to the sound practice that used to guide its work so that it may afford all Member States the opportunity of expressing their views on items under discussion and of contributing to the decision-making process in the Council. This would correct the current situation, wherein those Member States find themselves faced by matters that have been decided beforehand, in many cases, as a result of initiatives taken by a number of its permanent members.

Thirdly, the Council should expand its consultations with States that are non-members of the Council and in particular those States that are concerned with questions under consideration by the Council. The Council must also strengthen its relationship with the General Assembly and thus make it possible for the General Assembly to ensure the Council's accountability in order to guarantee the democratization of its resolutions, the avoidance of double standards in its work and the consonance of its activities with the stipulations of the Charter. This requirement acquires special importance from the fact that a number of permanent members of the Council tend to foist upon it questions that are far removed from the areas of competence mandated to it by the Charter.

Fourthly, the working methods of the Council's sanctions committees should be reconsidered in order to allow the States concerned to attend the meetings of those committees and to voice their views on the matters under consideration. It is highly important that the guidelines of these committees be reviewed in order to allow for the application of democratic principles to their decision-making process. No restrictions should be imposed on the manner in which the fate of the requests submitted to those committees is decided, as is the case now, since every single committee member has a right of veto that can be used against any request considered by the Committee.

In conclusion, my delegation hopes that the Security Council will not take lightly the great interest shown in its report and the proposals that have been put forward with a view to improving its working methods and those of its subsidiary committees. We expect the Council to take serious action to guarantee transparency and democracy in its work, and that it will submit its future reports in a manner that would be consistent with the provisions of the Charter and that would respond to the demands of all Member States, on whose behalf the Council acts.

Mr. Fowler (Canada)

This year, once again, Canada wishes to take advantage of the General Assembly's examination of the Security Council's report in order to make some observations on the work done by the Council since our debate on this subject on 31 October 1994.

I should like to thank the Permanent Representative of Oman, in his capacity as President of the Security Council, for having introduced the report of the Security Council to the General Assembly.

The beginning of 1995 was marked, on the one hand, by the withdrawal of the United Nations from Somalia and, on the other hand, by the launching of two major operations -- in Haiti and Angola. In spite of the difficulties encountered by the United Nations in Somalia, in Rwanda and in Bosnia, which have led to some disillusionment with peace-keeping, the States Members of our Organization have demonstrated the firmness of their commitment to the United Nations by generously contributing forces to these two operations. The Security Council, for its part, has established more clearly than in the past the conditions governing the operations. Further, the United Nations has engaged in detailed planning, which in the case of Haiti brought about an effective transition from the multinational coalition to the United Nations Mission in Haiti (UNMIH).

Mr. Fowler (Canada)

There is no doubt that, as indicated by the Secretary-General in his "Supplement to an Agenda for Peace" (A/50/60), the Security Council finds itself in a period of transition, conscious of the limitations on its actions. To these limitations are now added the financial crisis of the Organization, the effect of which is felt primarily in its peace-keeping operations. Peace-keeping arrears were US$ 2 billion as of 15 November. The situation led the Secretary-General to suspend reimbursements to troop-contributing countries last June and also to give instructions to the heads of peace-keeping operations to explore ways to effect immediate savings, including possible troop reductions. Moreover, in his letter of 18 September to the President of the Security Council, the Secretary-General stated that, in his opinion, the aggravation of the financial crisis made it simply unrealistic to envisage the enlargement of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) to perform the tasks required.

This crisis is serious. Peace-keeping is a complex undertaking that presents challenges which are quite serious enough for the United Nations without the additional grave problem of inadequate financing. In these circumstances, we can only repeat once again the call to all Member States to make their peace-keeping contributions on time, in full, and without conditions. It is critically important that the Organization be in a position to resume reimbursements to troop-contributing nations as soon as possible.

Canada and other Member States have presented to the General Assembly proposals aimed at improving the rapid reaction capability of the United Nations. Many of these proposals contain a number of practical recommendations. We attach particular importance to the establishment of a standing, deployable headquarters, which, in combination with a strengthening of the standby arrangements system, would permit the rapid deployment on the ground of a vanguard force. If these recommendations were put into effect, they could give the United Nations a more efficient instrument for dealing with crises that demand an immediate response from the international community.

Often, peace agreements between parties place a premium on the timely deployment of a United Nations mission. Even in the more predictable cases, such deployments have in the past suffered frequently from unacceptable delays. We look forward to the support of the Security Council members in the implementation of these recommendations, and hope that they will work with those Member States interested in improving the United Nations rapid reaction capability.

The Security Council must continue to improve the instruments at its disposal in order to carry out its difficult task of maintaining international peace and security. It could take decisions that are more fully and carefully considered, and develop mission objectives and mandates to which members of the Council are fully committed. To do so, however, the Council must have a realistic assessment of the situation on the ground from the political as much as from the military point of view; the Council needs to have more precise information about the resources it will have at its disposal, and it must be confident that the parties are ready to offer sufficient cooperation to assure the success of the operation.

The Council can count, as in the past, on the cooperation of Canada in this crucial endeavour.

Mr. Gambari (Nigeria)

Let me begin by associating my delegation with the statement made by the President of the Security Council for this month, Ambassador Salim Al-Khussaiby of Oman, in introducing the annual report (A/50/2) of the Council for the period from 16 June 1994 to 15 June 1995.

The recent practice whereby the Council's President introduces the report to the General Assembly serves a number of purposes. First, it strengthens the relationship between the Security Council and the General Assembly. Secondly, the General Assembly has an opportunity to further inform itself about the activities of the Security Council and the future direction of its work. Thirdly, it also underscores the importance of accountability. The Security Council acts on behalf of the entire membership of the United Nations, and therefore the Council should report on its activities to the General Assembly as a deliberative body and thereby ensure the support of the General Assembly for its activities and for the decisions taken on Members' behalf.

Since the establishment by the Security Council in June 1993 of an informal Working Group on documentation and other procedural matters, a series of steps has been taken by its members to provide for enhanced transparency, enhanced interaction and enhanced consultation between Council members and non-members. Some of the latest steps include regular briefings by the presidency of the Council for non-members, which has now become an established practice. There is also briefing for Chairmen of regional groups. Furthermore, there is an agreement among Council members to have increased recourse to open meetings -- in particular, at an early stage of their consideration of an agenda item.

Another important decision that was taken in November of last year, following an initiative of Argentina and New Zealand, was the establishment of a more effective and institutionalized system of consultations between Security Council members and troop-contributing countries. Although there is room for improvement, this development has been particularly welcomed, given the increasing complexities and demands of United Nations peace-keeping operations. As a major troop-contributing country, Nigeria takes the view that consultations between troop-contributors, on the one hand, and the Security Council, on the other, are not only desirable, but necessary for the full discharge of our Charter obligations.

My delegation thanks the Secretariat for the efforts that went into the preparation of the present report. We are aware that a lot of time and many resources have gone into its production. None the less, the report basically remains a compilation of the various communications received by the Council and the decisions adopted by it during the reporting period. We believe that the report should in the future provide an analysis of the activities of the Security Council, analysis of the decisions that have been taken, and how far those decisions have evolved over time, particularly at the implementation phase. It would be very useful, in our opinion, to know whether a particular decision has helped to move the process towards resolution of the problem concerned and perhaps what lessons, if any, could be learned. While we realize that this will involve a lot of time, a lot of work and enormous resources, it is the only way to have a user-friendly and reader-friendly report on the Council's activities.

The workload of the Security Council in the discharge of its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security continues to be heavy. It has increased not only in volume, but in scope. As the report indicates, during the period under consideration the Council held 152 formal meetings and adopted 70 resolutions and 82 presidential statements. In addition, the Council members held 274 consultations of the whole, totalling some 420 hours. This represents an increase in the figure for the preceding 12-month period. No doubt, this scope of work reflects the changed circumstances of the post-cold-war environment. This change in circumstances has enabled our Organization to begin to play the role and fulfil the expectations envisaged for it at its founding.

This new political environment has, unfortunately, witnessed an increase in conflicts, many of which are intra-State but with serious implications for regional as well as international peace and security. Peace-keeping has become the critical concern of our time. The majority of the peace-keeping operations currently being undertaken by the United Nations are located in third world countries, many of them in my own continent, Africa. The underlying causes of these conflicts are social and economic, and they further underscore the intrinsic linkages between peace and development and the need for a renewed global commitment to both.

In this regard, my delegation believes that conflicts in any part of the world should be addressed on a basis of equality, and that the impression should not be created by certain members of the Security Council that conflicts in some parts of the world are more important than conflicts in others. After all, international peace and stability are indivisible -- and that, in our opinion, is the very essence of collective security.

In conclusion, my delegation wishes to reiterate its belief that the Council is in urgent need of revitalization and structural reform, not only in its working methods and procedures, but also in its composition and size. The Security Council can maintain and enhance its credibility, its legitimacy and its effectiveness and respond adequately to existing realities and the daunting challenges it faces only through an increase in its membership in both of the two categories of membership, permanent and non-permanent, on the basis of equitable geographical distribution. We therefore call for renewed commitment of the part of the General Assembly in addressing this question.

Mr. Reyn (Belgium)

As it does every year, the General Assembly is considering the report of the Security Council. The report before us today covers the Council's activities from June 1994 to June 1995. This voluminous report attests to the intensity of the activities of the Security Council and will prove useful for tracking the way in which items before the Council have been handled. In this connection, our thanks go to the Secretary-General.

The General Assembly's consideration of the report gives me the opportunity to speak of the question of transparency in the activities of the Council, and I shall limit myself to that subject. To my mind, this transparency has certainly improved in recent years. I can only praise the efforts to improve access by States not members of the Security Council to the Council's work. The advance publication of the Council's provisional agenda and its monthly programme of work, the regular oral reports by the President of the Council, the possibility of open debate, and proposals for improving the transparency of the work of the various sanctions committees are all measures that can only be a source of satisfaction.

With respect to sanctions, we consider that there could be further efforts to achieve transparency. For example, last week the Security Council adopted a resolution establishing a regime for the suspension of sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. But since then we have had no information on the implementation of the suspension regime. This is but one example of the progress yet to be achieved in this area.

Among measures for transparency, we want to reiterate the special importance we attach to consultations with troop-contributing countries. Because they provide contingents, thus making it possible to implement Security Council decisions, troop contributors have a legitimate right to have their voices heard during the decision-making process. We feel that this would also be in the interests of the effectiveness of Security Council decisions. The process of consultation can only strengthen the commitment of contributors in the implementation of the mandates adopted by the Security Council. Moreover, the experience of contributors can help the Council in formulating mandates and adapting them to developments in the situations for which they are established. While emphasizing the need to continue and improve consultation with troop contributors, we remain fully aware that the final political decisions lie with the Council. Without wishing to challenge its sphere of competence, we feel none the less that it is important for all to have the opportunity to share their concerns. They do so now, but the process could still perhaps be improved.

Measures to improve transparency in the work of the Council are positive developments, and we welcome them. These measures must be continued and improved, and, if possible, must achieve a proper degree of formalization. In this connection we are convinced that realism and experience are our best guides. We see something of a risk in seeking to institutionalize these measures before they have had time to develop to maturity. It is more important for us to retain a tool that could be ruined by excessive formalism.

Mr. Sychou (Belarus)

In recent years, Member States have focused on improving the work of the principal organs of the United Nations with a view to strengthening the authority of the United Nations in the world, and enhancing its role and influence in shaping the processes that orient the main trends in international politics and multilateral diplomacy.

Looking at the work of the Security Council during the year under review, we find that the Council has been busy indeed with events connected with crisis situations. All of this is clear from the report of the Security Council to the General Assembly. It is obvious that, increasingly, the tasks before the United Nations are qualitatively new and involve conflicts between States, which have grown in number in recent years. The growing number of conflicts and their regional origins indicates the deep roots of the political problems faced in the regions in question and reflect the depth of the crises shaping events in many such regions.

In this connection, we note that while some measures have been successful, old approaches to the settlement of conflicts have proven ineffective. Unfortunately, this is gradually becoming true also of the delivery of humanitarian assistance, which is one of the important ways in which the international community has traditionally reacted to migrations and crises. Many feel that the United Nations in its present form is inadequately prepared to carry out military operations; Member States do not often hold a positive view of peace-keeping operations.

It is time to rethink the Security Council's approach to such situations, to review the nature and methods of its participation in conflict resolution, to prepare well-founded criteria by which to analyze conflict situations, and to consider ways for the Council to harmonize its action with that of the General Assembly, the body most fully reflecting the balance of interests of all States. We cannot ignore the fact that many States view the Security Council's frequent wish to act independently as a serious danger, in the light of the Council's power to impose sanctions and take the decision to use force.

That is the explanation for the many proposals by which the Security Council would conduct more public, formal meetings in place of closed-door meetings, would provide timely information to States not members of the Council on decisions under preparation and would provide Member States with copies of its draft resolutions before the Council meets to consider them.

There are undoubted advantages to the practice of distributing Council material freely to all Member States at the stage when issues are being prepared for consideration, not after the fact, at some later time, when the decision has already been taken and when the world uses it to judge the effectiveness of the work of the Organization as a whole -- and thus to judge the positions of States that are not on the Council and therefore have taken no part in the drafting and adoption of its decisions.

The unanimous emphasis placed by all those who spoke during the Special Commemorative Meeting marking the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations on the need to increase the transparency of the work of the Security Council as a whole requires that the Security Council take the next logical step in reforming its working methods. Above all, reform must allow increased access by all States to the full range of information available on the activities of the Organization and the Security Council. Belarus is not a member of the Council and only once, in 1974-1975, had a chance to participate in its work. Therefore, public opinion in my country judges the effectiveness of the United Nations first and foremost on the basis of the Organization's major activities, including decisions of the Security Council and, of course, on the basis of information brought to the attention of Member States. It is quite clear that to avoid any distortions, and to be fully reliable, such information should be first-hand, not passed on by word of mouth or interpretation, no matter how detailed and brilliant those interpretations might be.

Therefore the question of the timeliness and accessibility of all information used to prepare the corresponding decisions of the Security Council is far from minor for us. This is a political, not a technical issue. The possibility of participating in the drafting of recommendations that are considered by the Security Council is significant for us in terms of strengthening emphasis on the establishment of an international security system that would reflect the national interests of our State against the backdrop of the voluntary renunciation of its nuclear weapons capability and, consequently, the fulfilment of its international obligations on disarmament.

Unfortunately, the Council's report still does not enable us to judge the complexity of the situations it deals with and the correctness of the decisions it takes. Furthermore, there have been a number of instances where not even all the members of the Council have seen the documents that are used as the basis for subsequent action decided on by the Security Council, including the use of military force. In our opinion, the report lacks the necessary analytical character and, as in the past, is no more than a straightforward statement of what has been done and what is already common knowledge. In the future, we hope to have a firmer basis for a positive assessment.

Allow me to touch upon one more problem, namely the question of the imposition of sanctions. Because the sanctions regime, in practical terms, upsets the normal and balanced functioning of the economy of whole adjoining regions, undermining their entire economic infrastructure and rupturing external economic links, we need a mechanism for the careful consideration, before any decision is taken on imposing sanctions against any country, of the potential consequences of such a step both for the country targeted by the sanctions and for third countries.

We share the view that sanctions should always be imposed with a specific goal in mind. Then, from the very outset, ways and criteria for lifting the sanctions regime should be provided for and the terms of application of the regime regularly reviewed.

These are the views of our delegation on this item.

Mr. Elaraby (Egypt)

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