BELGIE

Madame President, Mr. President, Secretary General,

Allow me first to thank you for the report you presented in view of this historic meeting. It is indeed excellent. It was the report we needed. Not only does it describe the major challenges but above all it also sets out clear and precise objectives. Belgium fully supports it. My country commits itself here and in the international institutions of which it is a member, to support all actions leading to their achievement.

I would like to expand on two major challenges outlined in the report- United Nations peacekeeping missions and the world disaster of AIDS.

Regarding the peacekeeping missions of our Organisation, it now has been forty years that peace operations have increasingly been deployed in the field. It is the natural vocation of our Organisation. The results of all these operations are unfortunately not always positive. And I express myself with restrain. In many cases they ended up in real debacle. The darkest pages were written in Rwanda where, under the indifferent eye of all of us, a genocide was committed. Several hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were slaughtered. Ten Belgian "Blue Helmets" lost their lives in this operation. Belgium endeavoured to learn the lessons from this tragedy. And I see with satisfaction that a number of these lessons were taken up in the report of the study group on peacekeeping operations under the leadership of Mr. Brahimi. These lessons are moreover directly in line with the conclusions and statements of facts of the OAU in this regard.

I want to emphasize in particular the necessity to insure sufficient quality and level of troops and equipment that must be provided on the basis of the worst-case scenario; to establish clear, credible and flexible mandates which can be quickly adapted to the circumstances in the field; to involve troop contributing countries in the formulation of the mandate; to insure the good preparation, information and training of troops for peacekeeping operations; to increase resources provided to management, information and planning; to remove bureaucratic impediments in the chain of command and in the relations between the field and the Secretariat.

However, despite the pertinence of all these recommendations, even the full implementation of the Brahimi report will not be enough to prevent tragedies such as those experienced in Rwanda, Srebrenica or Somalia. We will still be confronted with the difficulty of recruiting troops and with a late deployment on the ground. We must go further in our thinking. We need a new concept for peacekeeping. This new concept implies creating regional peacekeeping capabilities permanently ready for deployment. These capabilities, of a brigade-size force, would be set up by the States of a Region and would be supported materially and financially by the United Nations. The European Union is in the process of creating a rapid reaction force that will be operational in 2003. In a way, this new concept comes down to trying to generalize this initiative by setting up a rapid reaction force in each region of the world. However, it implies in no way the disengagement of Western countries. On the contrary, besides their own rapid reaction forces, these countries should help to finance equipment and training of these regional peacekeeping capabilities under the control and the responsibility of the United Nations.

Madame President, Mr. President,

The tragedy of AIDS has grown to an alarming extent : 36 million human beings afflicted by the disease, of which approximately two thirds in Sub-Sahara Africa. As in all major epidemics in History, the uncontrolled propagation of AIDS is reinforced by poverty, ignorance, dogmatism, social exclusion, non-recognition of the rights of women and the refusal of a number of people in charge to confront reality.

Objectives and deadlines submitted in the report of the Secretary-General must be met at all cost. Let us be clear, the only possibility to achieve these objectives and deadlines is for rich countries to raise substantially the resources allocated to prevention and distribution of medicine, and also of the development of a vaccine.

Regarding access to basic medication, Belgium has decided at any rate to provide in four African countries, in cooperation with UNAIDS, an assortment of medication worth 250 millions BEF The direct distribution to patients, which will start this year, will be guaranteed through existing primary health care structures. This basic medication must reach the poorest categories of patients. Offering them direct aid will contribute to break the silence around AIDS.

In the same spirit, Belgium has decided to allocate an additional contribution of 150 millions BEF to research in the field of AIDS.

Madame President, Mr. President,

I would like to conclude by associating myself strongly to the appeal of the Secretary General to Member States to reform the Security Council, without delay. It has been already under discussion for seven years. Time has come to conclude. To do so, it is necessary to relinquish positions that on one side are too conservative and on the other totally unrealistic. Those, for example, which defend the status quo. Those, likewise, which want to enlarge the Council to new categories of members up to the point of making it coincide with the General Assembly. Belgium co-ordinates a group of Member States Which has introduced realistic and operational proposals that enlarge to five the number of permanent members and to five the number of non-permanent members, with an equitable geographical distribution. Belgium is open to proposals going in that direction.

I thank you for your attention.