Mideast situation/Palestine question – GA debate – Verbatim record (excerpts)

Official Records

General Assembly

Fifty-fourth Session

12th plenary meeting

Friday, 24 September 1999, 10 a.m.

New York

President: Mr. Gurirab ……………………………………. (Namibia)

The meeting was called to order at 10.05 a.m.

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Agenda item 9

General debate

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The President: I call on the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Senegal, His Excellency Mr. Jacques Baudin.

Mr. Baudin (Senegal) (spoke in French): …

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In this sense, the evolution we have witnessed in the Middle East gives us grounds for hope, the hope of finally seeing a climate of complete trust and confidence and a sincere resumption of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and between Israel and the Arab countries, with the rights of the peoples of the region respected. My country, having presided over the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People ever since its creation, reaffirms its support for and solidarity with the fraternal people of Palestine, the Palestinian Authority and its head, President Yasser Arafat, which have been struggling now for more than half a century for the creation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian State.

We solemnly reaffirm our support for the Bethlehem 2000 project which has the objective of celebrating in Bethlehem, on Palestinian soil, the second millennium since the birth of Christ.

Furthermore, the Israeli Government seems now to want to work resolutely for peace. We urge it to continue on this path. It is the only approach that responds to the situation of the peoples of the subregion and to the hardships connected to the constraints imposed by globalization.

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The President: I now call on the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, His Excellency Mr. Kamal Kharrazi.

Mr. Kharrazi (spoke in Persian; interpretation furnished by the delegation): …

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One of the most horrifying manifestations of exclusion has been the global arms race. It literally aims at marginalizing others through the accumulation of conventional and mass-destruction agents of death, the formation of rival military blocs and the unbridled race to expand spheres of influence and domination.

The persistence of this paradigm is largely responsible for the most serious threat to the Middle East region. Exploiting this mode of global interaction, Israel, with impunity, has trampled the most fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to selfdetermination, has driven millions of people into diaspora, has illegally occupied territories of others in the Syrian Golan and southern Lebanon and has even gone as far as to commit extortion for partial fulfilment of its obligations. This has impeded the realization of the legitimate right of the Palestinian people, and indeed the entire Islamic world, to establish an independent Palestinian State in the occupied territories, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital. The same regime has posed a grave threat to regional and global peace and security through the acquisition of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and the rejection of universal non-proliferation regimes.

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The Acting President: I now call on the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Iraq, His Excellency Mr. Mohammed Said Al-Sahaf.

Mr. Al-Sahaf (Iraq) (spoke in Arabic): …

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The United Nations, in particular the Security Council, should implement its resolutions on the Middle East, primarily those relating to the question of Palestine, and should support the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people to regain their legitimate and inalienable rights to live on their national soil in Palestine. It should also support their struggle against the Zionist colonization of their territory and their fight to establish a sovereign independent State on their national territory, with Jerusalem as its capital.

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The meeting rose at 1.50 p.m.