Mr. President,
Mr. Secretary-General,
Distinguished Delegates,
 
Allow me to begin, Mr. President, by congratulating you on your election as president of this, the 55th General Assembly. I wish you all the best in carrying out your duties.
 
Mr. President,
 
Last week, my Prime Minister Mart Laar spoke to the Millenium Assembly on a number of issues Estonia sees as being especially salient to the UN this year. In my brief
remarks today, I would like to underline four in particular: first, the need to reform the Security Council; second, efforts to raise the effectiveness of peacekeeping; third, the
importance of narrowing the global gap between rich and poor; and fourth, the role of IT in furthering development.
 
The first concerns efforts to reform the Security Council. The strong executive power vested in the Council was originally designed to provide a venue for speedy decisions
and subsequent action. In practice, however, the Council is increasingly prone to indecisive waffling which, in turn, undermines its own authority, credibility and thus
effectiveness. In order to combat this effect, Estonia believes that the voting procedures and mechanisms governing the work of the UN's most powerful body must be
re-vamped.
 
One such procedure that deserves our attention is the veto. Some permanent members of the Security Council have used the veto, or have threatened to do so in order to
advance their own domestic and foreign policy interests irrelevant to the particular issue at hand. Because the Security Council derives its legitimacy from member states, it is
the duty of the permanent members to exercise their veto power responsibly.
 
The composition of the Council, which still reflects the power relationships current in 1945, is another issue that cries out for resolution. From the inception of the UN that
year until just a decade ago, the peoples of my country were afforded only rare glimpses of the goings-on at the UN through tears in the fabric of the Iron Curtain. When we
finally re-established our independence in 1991, we emerged onto the international arena only to discover ... that the Security Council, judging by its composition, was still
stuck back in the year 1945.
 
This strikes Estonia as being anachronistic if not wrongheaded. The guarantors and greatest contributors to stability in the world have, in the course of half a century,
changed fundamentally. We need not fear opening a discussion on whether the moral and legal reasoning underlying Security Council membership in the wake of the Second
World War is still appropriate for the post-Cold War era.
 

My second point today regards peacekeeping. Earlier this year, my Government decided to forego the privilege of paying only 20% of our peacekeeping assessment. Instead,
we unilaterally opted to shoulder 100% of that expected of us. This is because Estonia regards peacekeeping to be among the UN's most crucial assignments in fulfilling its
historical mandate of collective security. Security cannot be had at discounted prices. That is why Estonia is willing to pay more for what we hope will be a better product.
 
Paying our own way is not enough to raise the effectiveness of peacekeeping. What we require, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair said here last week, is "a far broader
concept for security." The Security Council took an important step toward ensuring the security of people as well as frontiers last week with its unanimous resolution to
overhaul UN peacekeeping operations. These changes should create a more potent, better financed force that can react quickly where needed.
 
My third point focuses on the need to increase equality around the globe. In his Millenium Report, the Secretary-General called on all of us to focus on the eradication of
poverty. We can go a long way toward levelling the playing field for all peoples by alleviating debt and allocating more resources for development assistance. As my Prime
Minister Mart Laar said here last week, however, these efforts must go hand-in-hand with good governance and open markets. Without a commitment to these two elements,
no amount of aid and debt relief will bring us closer to our intended goal.
 
The idea that open governments and open markets are a prerequisite for good economic performance leads me to my fourth and final point, namely, the role of IT in
furthering development. In his Millenium. Report, the Secretary-General rightly stressed the need to ensure that the fruits of new technologies, especially information
technology, be available to all. I personally took part in the High-Level Panel on Information and Communication Technology held here last April, because we have some
experience in these matters: Estonia has the honour of finding itself among the 20 most computerised nations in the world.
 
Among the most important findings of the panel was the undisputed if not terribly original conclusion that IT programmes  are, in fact, beneficial for development. We have
seen this in my country first-hand through our Tiger Leap programme whereby every school in Estonia has, for some time, been connected to the Internet. Even more
clearly, we have witness how access to IT has brought new possibilities to rural areas, which often bear the brunt of change. This is why Estonia wholeheartedly endorses
the UN's plans to assist all member states in making the IT dream a reality.
 
Thank you, Mr. President.