General Assembly Session 60 meeting 92

The President

The General Assembly will resume its consideration of agenda items 46 and 120 in order to take action on draft resolution A/60/L.59.

It is now more than nine months since our leaders adopted the World Summit Outcome. It is high time and gratifying indeed that we now can agree on the effective implementation of the decisions of the summit in the development area. After all, development was at the heart of the world summit.

I have emphasized on several occasions that implementation of our commitments in the field of development and the full realization of the Millennium Development Goals remain fundamental tasks for the United Nations. With the adoption of the draft resolution before the General Assembly -- A/60/L.59 -- members will, during the sixtieth session, have taken important steps with respect to all three pillars of the United Nations, that is, development, peace and security, and human rights. We have shown that those pillars are mutually reinforcing.

This draft resolution is a result of your efforts, of your creative thinking, of your flexibility and of your ability to find possible ways forward. Let me commend you for having set aside your differences to reach an agreement acceptable to all. This text is yours, and I am proud to endorse it.

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the two co-Chairmen, Ambassador Verbeke of Belgium and Ambassador Diarra of Mali, for having steered this process to a successful conclusion. I would like also to thank the two facilitators, Paul Lolo of Nigeria and Carlos Ruiz Massieu Aguirre of Mexico, for their tireless efforts to reach compromises and develop viable formulas.

It is now our responsibility to translate into action, in good faith, the words of the commitments undertaken. Let us do so bearing in mind the sombre realities in the world as well as the millions of people whose lives and future we can and must improve.

Let me conclude by reminding members that we still have to reach an agreement on the draft resolution on reform of the Economic and Social Council. I had hoped that we would be able to do so before the beginning of the substantive session of the Economic and Social Council. However, time will not allow us to do so.

There are, as members well know, only a few outstanding issues in the draft resolution. The co-Chairmen will be in touch with members some time after the session of the Economic and Social Council in Geneva in order to come to a conclusion on reform of that Council before the end of the sixtieth session. A strengthened Economic and Social Council is in the interest of all Member States and is crucial for the standing of the economic and social issues on the agenda of the United Nations.

Before we proceed further, I should like to consult the Assembly with a view to proceeding immediately to consider draft resolution A/60/L.59. In that connection, since the draft resolution was only circulated earlier today, it would be necessary to waive the relevant provision of rule 78 of the rules of procedure.

The relevant provision of rule 78 reads as follows:

"As a general rule, no proposal shall be discussed or put to the vote at any meeting of the General Assembly unless copies of it have been circulated to all delegations not later than the day preceding the meeting."

Unless I hear any objection, I shall take it that the Assembly agrees with this proposal.

We shall now proceed to consider draft resolution A/60/L.59.

I shall now call on those representatives wishing to make statements in explanation of position before action is taken on the draft resolution. May I remind delegations that explanations of vote are limited to 10 minutes and should be made by delegations from their seats.

Mr. Kumalo (South Africa)

Mr. President, I wish to thank you for having convened this meeting.

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.

Today we are completing a process which started eight months ago, in which our leaders, through the World Summit Outcome, laid the foundation for enhancing development. Commitments were made and systemic issues agreed upon, and all that was needed was full and timely implementation.

The Group of 77 and China had hoped that the follow-up to the World Summit Outcome would lead us on a path that would enhance the momentum generated by the World Summit Outcome so as to fully realize and implement the commitments of all major summits and conferences in the economic, social and related fields, including the Millennium Development Goals, and help create an environment that would strengthen global political will as to the need to improve the lives of the more than a billion people who still live below the poverty line.

With the adoption of this draft resolution, the question will remain whether we have succeeded in the task set for us by our leaders to mainstream development as the most important central pillar of the United Nations agenda.

This draft resolution does not fully reflect the issues of implementation that it should have. In many cases, it is but a reiteration of already agreed language from the World Summit Outcome and therefore does not succeed in maintaining the political will and momentum of the World Summit Outcome.

Without concrete action to implement all the commitments on trade, agricultural subsidies and the transfer of vitally needed resources to developing countries which the developed community has already committed itself to achieving, we will not achieve our goal to fully realize, by 2015, the outcomes of all major summits and conferences, including the Millennium Development Goals and the World Summit Outcome.

The draft resolution also fails in that there is no political will from our partners to create an equitable and balanced financial, economic and social global order, which is necessary for creating a framework for implementation in an integrated, coordinated and comprehensive approach in the global partnership for development. The draft resolution, therefore, does not take the concept of national responsibility further into the realm of implementation, in the context of how developing countries can be assisted so as to enable them to achieve the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals.

Much as we appreciate the fact that this draft resolution will be adopted, the Group of 77 and China has two regrets. The first is that there was reluctance to improve the structure of the draft by slightly reordering the paragraphs after we had agreed on it. That is a pity, as willingness to continue the process under facilitation could have resolved in a few hours the whole issue of the placement of paragraphs and would have resulted in a far better draft resolution that the one we will be adopting.

Our second regret concerns the fact that, during the negotiations, the generous offer by His Royal Highness the Emir of Qatar to host a review conference on the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus was left out of paragraph 62 because there was an objection on the part of our partners. The irony, of course, is that the General Assembly had already accepted, in resolution 60/188, the offer made by the State of Qatar to host that review conference. We are pleased, however, by the emphasis on the need for adequate and substantive preparation for the review conference that is contained in the draft resolution that we will be adopting today, and we will work hard during the sixty-first session to make sure that the offer made by Qatar becomes a reality.

It is our hope that, with the adoption of this draft resolution -- imperfect as it may be -- in the coming years all the commitments will be implemented in a timely manner so as to create a better life for all those millions of people who so desperately need to be lifted out of poverty.

On behalf of the Group of 77 and China, I would like to thank the co-Chairmen, the facilitators and our partners for all the hard work they did to ensure that we could have this important draft resolution before us. We want to acknowledge the cooperation of our negotiating partners in making it possible to adopt this draft resolution by consensus, albeit many, many months later.

Finally, let me pay tribute to my colleague from Austria, whose term as representative of the presidency of the European Union (EU) ends tonight, and I welcome the new representative of the EU presidency, my neighbour, the Ambassador of Finland, and wish him all the best in this whole process.

Mr. Al-Sulaiti (Qatar)

I am grateful for this opportunity to explain our position on draft resolution A/60/L.59.

The State of Qatar has been an ongoing partner in international efforts to bring about development, particularly concerning the combating and eradication of poverty, as well as the promotion of development worldwide in a more just manner. Attaining those goals will have a positive impact on stability and on the maintenance of international peace and security.

As a member of the Group of 77 and China, which it chaired in 2004, the State of Qatar is particularly interested in international development. The State of Qatar has thus presented international initiatives and supports all such initiatives in the area of development. We were honoured to host the Fourth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization, which led to the adoption of the Doha Development Agenda within a multilateral framework. We also hosted the Second South Summit in 2005, at which we presented an initiative to establish a development fund.

At the meeting on financing for development held in the context of the 2005 High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly (see A/60/PV.3), His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar, presented an initiative to host in Doha the first follow-up conference for the International Conference on Financing for Development, on the basis of paragraph 73 of the Monterrey Consensus. We have also proposed the convening in 2007 of the first review conference, with a view to bringing about more progress in the area of development. The initiative of His Highness the Emir enjoys the support of many heads of State or Government who participated in the high-level meeting on financing for development. That support was reflected in the statement of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of developing countries following the high-level meeting of the General Assembly. Furthermore, in resolution 60/188, on follow-up to and implementation of the outcome of the International Conference on Financing for Development, the General Assembly welcomed Qatar's initiative.

We had hoped that paragraph 62 of the draft resolution before us would clearly state that the first review conference would be held in the State of Qatar, since resolution 60/188 had welcomed Qatar's initiative. It is regrettable that the draft resolution that we are about to adopt omits any reference to that initiative.

While we are disappointed that the paragraph proposed by the Group of 77 and China was not included in the draft resolution, we stress that, out of respect for the President of the Assembly and the Chair of the Group of 77 and China, we will join the consensus on the draft resolution before us. We hope that this omission will be corrected, and that His Highness the Emir's initiative will be activated during coming negotiations on preparations for the review conference.

The President

I note the explanation of position by the representative of Qatar, referring to paragraph 62 of draft resolution A/60/L.59, on preparation for the review conference on the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus, as set out in General Assembly resolution 60/188. As we are all aware, resolution 60/188, inter alia, welcomes the offer of the Emir and the Government of Qatar to host the conference, and we note that this offer has been reiterated today by the representative of Qatar.

Mr. Al-Anazi (Saudi Arabia)

We support the statement made by the representative of South Africa on behalf of the Group of 77 and China with respect to the generous offer of His Highness the Emir of the State of Qatar to host the first review conference of the Monterrey Consensus on financing for development, in the capital of Qatar, Doha. That offer had been welcomed by the General Assembly in resolution 60/188 on follow-up to and implementation of the outcome of the International Conference on Financing for Development. We look forward to the adoption during the sixty-first session of a resolution that will follow through on the Emir's initiative, particularly in the light of the intensive efforts made by the State of Qatar to support international endeavours for development and poverty eradication. We shall therefore join the consensus on draft resolution A/60/L.59.