SPEECH BY

                                      THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF PERU,
                                         DR. FERNANDO DE TRAZEGNIES GRANDA,
                                        IN THE 55TH PERIOD OF SESSIONS OF THE
                                      GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS
 

                                              NEW YORK,13 SEPTEMBER 2000

 
 
 
 
     Mr. President:
 
     First of all, I would like to join those that preceded me on the floor in congratulating you on your designation as President of the last United
Nations General Assembly within the XX Century. Peru is pleased that a representative of Finland, a country notoriously committed to the
objectives of the Organization, is directing the work of the 55th General Assembly. I feel sure that, under your direction, we will achieve the
mandates that are necessary to begin to pursue the vision that was developed by our Heads of State and of Government in the recently
concluded Millennium Summit.
 
     I would also like to take part in hailing and congratulating Tuvalu for its incorporation into the United Nations. This will undoubtedly represent
an important contribution to the different spheres of the work of the Organization.
 
     The Millennium Summit has evidenced the enormous challenges that lie ahead and the overwhelming need to forge a new form of
international order that will allow future generations to enjoy a world free from the threats of war, of poverty, of injustice and of environmental
deterioration and, at the same time, built in freedom with the participation of each of the great cultures that are a part of humanity, without neither
preferences nor prejudices.
 
     It is highly important that when we are about to conclude not just a century but also a millennium next December 31st , we stop for a moment
 on our way to reflect on the future of international relations. Peru is certainly not a decisive country in the development of these relations on a
 global level. Nevertheless, it would seem that one of the characteristics that appear at the end of the XX century and that will certainly be
 emphasized in the XXI century is the basic role that all the countries of the world, whether large or small, have to play in shaping the international
 order. And, in this sense, the perspective of a country such as Peru, that fully shares the Western civilization yet at the same time has its own
 characteristics that are the legacy of ancient times, may be interesting in the performance of the healthy exercise of approaching the subject
 from a different angle.

 
     Peru emphatically reiterates that the global order that must shape the conduct of the different international actors within the century
beginning on January 1St must be based on the essential principles of the United Nations Charter; which contrary to certain opinions, that we
believe to be mistaken, have not only not lost force but are more and more relevant for peaceful coexistence, collective security and the effective
possibility of development for all the specific groups that form part of this abstract element that we have designated as humanity.
 
     I would like to specifically emphasize, Mr. President, the rights that refer to the sovereignty of States, to non-intervention in their internal
affairs and to juridical equality between the States. These basic principles, that were incorporated into the Charter in San Francisco, have
permitted the development of effective mechanisms of self-control and stabilization of the international system.
 
     This is why we must renew our commitment towards these rules of international public law, restoring the functionality that belongs to them.
Only thus can we ensure that the democratic values that prevail within contemporary society will apply and be enforced within an international
system whose emerging features appear to seek new forms of exclusion.
 
     The world of today is not the same world of 50 years ago. Change and globalization are constantly reshaping reality at a growing rate and
are attempting to impose upon us a new sense of commonality and even new morals and a new political ethic that dogmatically and in a partisan
manner define what is proper and improper.
 

     The unrestricted respect for the international juridical order therefore acquires an enormous significance since it is the only basis that can
illuminate the common path and restrict arbitrariness and subjectivity. This is also the best route and the most effective mechanism for the
protection of human rights and human freedom to its fullest extent, which are undoubtedly the requirements that no member of the International
Communicate may evade.
 
     But this new reality also imposes upon us a need for commitment to the principle of shared responsibility. The profound interdependence
posed by globalization also assumes a collective determination by all the members of the Community of the United Nations to add their efforts
and resources towards the solution of problems that have systemic effects or which are of an international scope. I particularly refer to the
achievement of a lasting economic growth within the developing countries; the elimination of poverty; confronting the real threats to peace of an
international scope; problems of public health and endemic illnesses that are mainly linked to poverty; finding enough financing for development;
the digital gap; migrations and the free movement of the labor factor; environmental protection and conservation; the world drug problem beyond
a purely military perspective; and the scourge of terrorism and the different forms of international crime, including money laundering, arms
trafficking and international trafficking in people.
 
     It is highly important for Peru that each of these common problems be tackled within the framework of the United Nations and that common,
coherent and integral answers be achieved. We must be capable of finding effective solutions with sufficient political and financial support. In this
context, let me state our satisfaction and full support for the proposal by the Secretary General of the United Nations to concentrate the attention
of the International Community within the next years on the reduction of poverty so that by the year 2015 nearly 600 million people may be able to
overcome their state of chronic poverty. In this same order of ideas, I want to emphasize the imaginative and constructive proposal presented by
the President of Peru, Mr. Alberto Fujimori, by captured drug traffickers, that have been deposited in bank accounts in rich countries, to alleviate
the foreign debt of the poorest countries and, in general, to utilize those funds in order to contribute to the fight against poverty in the world.

 
     There are undoubtedly many and very difficult challenges that we must face during the next century. This is the time of technological
development and wealth but also the time of struggle against poverty. This is the time of globalization but also the time of the respectful
recognition of cultural diversity which is a wealth as important, or more so, than biological diversity. This is the time of the greatest use of natural
resources by man but also the time of the conservation of nature. This is the time of the universal spreading of democracy but also the time of
democratic respect for the different ways in which democracy is lived.
 
     Humanity has reached some basic consensus at this stage of its development. All the peoples of the world share certain values and certain
goals, such as freedom, democracy, equality before the law, respect for human rights, the need to eliminate poverty, the development of
creativity the need for man to always surpass itself. This has been the contribution of modernity, the contribution of the latest centuries
consolidated in the XX century. But it is also true that humanity is not made up -fortunately- of a single culture, that these values should find their
own realization through different mentalities, in different latitudes, at different periods of the history of each people. That is why post-­modernity,
that world of the next century, must know how to conserve and emphasize the values that are the legacy of modernity and carry forward its goals
as much as possible. But it must also acknowledge diversity; it has now to resolve dynamically the dilemma between unity and multiplicity.
 
     Possibly the most complex of all these challenges, the most difficult of all the coincidentiae oppositorum that the XXI century will demand is
to build an international system based on a genuine democracy. And by this I wish to indicate a democracy that does not consist of imposing a
political form in the image and similar to a specific system that is promoted as a model, a democracy that is not built on the basis of a mere
check list of institutions that have been taken out from a specific democratic experience and made into mandatory universal guidelines.
Democracy practices diversity and tolerance. It is a recognition that with regard to each subject - including the idea of democracy itself - there
can be different interpretations and none of them is entitled to ban the others. The task that awaits us, then, during the next century is to spread
and promote democracy but, above all, further examine its own meaning to avoid contradictions which would lead to its own destruction.
 

     Therefore, how can we spread democracy without endangering democracy itself - On the other side, how do we save diversity and
particularity without ending up with an outdated nationalism- These are the major problems of our time. They are the major dilemmas that wilt
have to be resolved within the XXI century.
 
     Any idea of a crusade, even in the name of democracy, is undemocratic because it is intolerant. And I would almost dare to say that any
principle of social organization that seeks to impose itself universally has an undemocratic base. Thus, paradoxically, the missionary enthusiasm
for democracy ends by affecting the nature of democracy itself.
 
Democracy, in fact, implies a delicate and fragile balance between the universal and the singular. Singularity should not be sacrificed on the
deified altar of the universality. Singularity should not be dissolved within a claimed universality and the singular should even less be confused
with the universal, assigning an absolute value to what is no more than the historic expression of a culture and of a time. The attempts to apply on
an international scale domestic policies and local interpretations of values, have always failed. In the second half of the XX century, we
witnessed the spectacular collapse of Soviet communism that claimed to be the political doctrine of the future, with which, following Hegel, we
would see the end of politics and therefore of history and enter into a sort of rebuilt earthly paradise. The claimed communist universality saw the
birth within itself of particularities and differences. It afterwards had to face other doctrines and world visions that were alien to its principles and
values; and against all that communism expected, these different perspectives did not vanish when faced with the presumed Marxist truth but to
the contrary, they won the ideological battle and made communism and Soviet Russia disappear. I am convinced that the same will happen with
any doctrine, whatever its perspective and the values that support it, that claims to lead the world into the end of history.
 
 

     This forces us to rethink certain subjects that are being all too easily accepted in a somewhat hasty and, to my mind, inconsistent manner.
There is a certain scorn towards the idea of sovereignty, towards the idea of the cultural identity of the peoples, under the pretext of the
construction of the universal society. Nevertheless, I believe that these concepts, even though they will need to be transformed and adapted to a
new globalizing view, they will continue to be held in the world of the future, if we favour a genuinely democratic way of thinking, ín which freedom
can also express itself under the form of cultural and ideological differences, these ideas. There ís no doubt that there is a crisis of the
Nation-State, because this apparently essential identification between the state as the political and juridical organization of society, and the
nation as a cultural organization, is false: multinational states do exist. The solution in these cases does not lie in abandoning the concept of
state and sovereignty to be absorbed within one of the globalizing forms of a supranational community, but in achieving within the state an
acknowledgment and complex integration of multiculturality. It is necessary to articulate diversity instead of imposing homogeneity that will
always be felt as a straightjacket.
 
     The new international order cannot be built by a single nation, a single culture or a single ideology but by the interaction of the different
 points of view that make up humanity. And, from a genuinely democratic and liberal view point, we must avoid the temptation of this new
 dogmatism, that is perversely subtle and with a powerful imperial vocation, which is the myth of "political correctness ".

 
     From this point of view, to build a new international order for the XXI century does not mean to resolve a mathematical equation nor to
scientifically build a model and apply it in a general manner to all the countries of the world in the vain attempt to create a universal international
society. Reality sweeps away all abstractions with the wealth of its multiple points of view. Reality is always dynamic, effervescent. It is always
undergoing permanent transformation thanks to the freedom that is the defining element of the human being. Therefore, politics, whether
domestic or international, is an art not a science, and a domestic or international order has to be the result of a complex interaction between
different and even opposed elements, just like a work of art. To compose this work of art which will be the new international order implies not the
destruction of what is different or opposite but to articulate it within what is general. It implies to combine unity with diversity, freedom with order.
To say it in Nietzschean terms, we have to combine the Apollonian with the Dionysian. If we build a purely Apollonian society, it will then become
a new form of dogmatism and cultural dictatorship, even if it paradoxically seeks the establishment of democracy. The building of a purely
Dionysian society is to fall into chaos and, therefore, destroy the social pact.
 
     The society of the future must be capable of living within diversity and expressing different points of view, different world visions and
different interpretations of democracy itself in order to manage the establishment of an organization of humanity that will tend not to create a
single and homogenous international society but an articulation of the wealth of social and cultural diversity seeking peaceful coexistence and
reciprocal cooperation without impositions or conditions.
 
Thank you.