STATEMENT BY MR MARTTI AHTISAARI,

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF FINLAND,

AT THE SPECIAL COMMEMORATIVE MEETING

OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

ON THE OCCASION OF THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY

OF THE UNITED NATIONS,

New York, October 24, 1995

The founding fathers of the United Nations had the vision of a global system of collective security. Mindful of the lessons of the 1930s, they wanted to ensure prompt action by the United Nations to keep watch on the state of peace and security, seek co-operative solutions, and deal effectively with aggression.

The Cold War ruined this vision. Now we have the historic opportunity to restore the United Nations as originally conceived.

Yet our Organization is crippled by massive non-payment of properly assessed contributions, in breach of the Charter obligations. I am deeply concerned about this tendency to run down the United Nations.

It is also customary to criticize the United Nations and its Secretariat. I have worked in the UN and I know that there are a great many dedicated and competent professionals in this Organization, led by our distinguished Secretary-General.

Today the world needs the United Nations for global governance: to foster peace and enhance the rights of every human being through sustainable development. Our immediate task is to provide effective follow-up to the successful conferences in Rio, Cairo, Copenhagen and Beijing.

More than ever, the Security Council is needed to ensure effective action for peace. A representative Security Council, reflecting realities of today's world, is the best guarantee for effectiveness. Finland therefore supports an enlarged Security Council, including new permanent members from all regions.

The end of the Cold War has provided the United Nations with new opportunities to strengthen international peace and security. It has helped the world to focus on threats to our common security which are not amenable to resolution by military means.

This is already true in Europe, the principal theater of the Cold War, with the European Union as the main actor projecting stability and prosperity throughout the continent.

Two recent reports of the Secretary-General have focussed global discussion. The Agenda for Peace and the Agenda for Development provide a wealth of ideas to meet the challenges of the post- Cold War world. It is our duty, as leaders, to turn ideas into practice.

I shall take up one proposal which the Secretary-General placed before us in his Agenda for Peace. He has suggested that the United Nations should have its own rapid reaction force when there is anemergency need for peace-keeping troops.

I find myself in profound sympathy with the Secretary-General's concerns. My own involvement with the United Nations has convinced me of the need for the international community to react in a rapid and concrete manner to emergencies.

I am convinced that the United Nations should establish, as part of the reform, an effective, integrated, multinational crisis management capability to meet the challenge of future emergencies.

Discussion to date has shown that perhaps the most practical way to make progress in the short term is to further develop the existing stand-by forces arrangement.

Stand-by arrangements are not enough to guarantee the availability of troops. Therefore we must think ahead. The Nordic experience in peace-keeping provides a solid foundation for innovation. The Nordic countries have already created two joint battalions that now operate successfully as part of UN peace forces in former Yugoslavia.

A well-trained and lean force which could be quickly dispatched by the UN or OSCE to perform demanding humanitarian or peace- keeping missions is a necessity for the future. The Government of Finland is presently preparing a Finnish stand-by force for this very purpose.

I propose that the Secretary-General entrust an eminent person, independent and well-qualified in both the military and political practice of peace-keeping, to sift from the plethora of ideas a limited number of practical and politically feasible recommendations for action by the time of the next General Assembly.

For five decades, the United Nations has sought to provide security in the broadest sense of the word. The World Organization has been a source of inspiration and an obstacle to cynicism. We may not always recognize its efforts, and we may sometimes even resent them. But we cannot do without it.