unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (10/03/89)
UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY. GENERAL DEBATE
With a single market soon to be achieved, with economic and
monetary union in sight, and with political unification and a
common foreign and security policy among its aims, the European
Community endeavoured to become an increasing factor of
stability, peace and co-operation in the world, even more so in
Europe, he declared. Europe wished to be a magnet and a model
for progress which generated freedom and happiness for its
citizens. "This Europe of the Twelve is not a power, it is an
enabling force." He stressed that a strengthened European
Community could make an important contribution to the
establishment of genuine co-operation between East and West in
such a way that the scars left by the Second World War could
finally be healed. A common European house was only conceivable
as a truly democratic house, where every citizen was free to
enjoy fundamental political and economic freedoms. The world
must support the countries that effectively implement reform
policies based on those values. That was the reason for the
present aid and co-operation with countries such as Poland and
Hungary, he stated.
The common European house did not have to result in a Europe of
uniformity. It could contain numerous rooms in which each people
organized itself as a State under its right to
self-determination. But it was obvious that such a European
house was unthinkable as long as a Berlin wall continued to
divide Europeans, he concluded.
MOSHE ARENS, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, said the
United Nations had been founded by the nations that had fought
and won the most terrible war mankind had known: a war against
racism, fascism, and man's inhumanity to man. That war was
forever associated with the Holocaust of the Jewish people. The
murder of six million by Nazi Germany and its henchmen, the
abandonment of the Jews by the rest of the world, remained
engraved forever in the heart and soul of mankind, he stated.
In November 1947, the Holocaust still a vivid memory, the United
Nations General Assembly had reaffirmed a decision taken by the
League of Nations 26 years earlier. Then the League had given
international recognition to the Zionist movement and its goal
the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine. In 1947,
the United Nations called for the establishment of the Jewish
State in a fraction of the territory originally designated for
this purpose by the League of Nations.
The United Nations resolution of 1947 was today part of Israel's
history, an expression of support for zionism; the right of
the Jewish people to their own State in their ancient homeland.
"But in 1975", he went on to say, "the General Assembly, greatly
enlarged but unfortunately not grown in moral stature, adopted
the 'zionism is racism' resolution, that makes a sham of the
United Nations resolution adopted 28 years earlier, and that
continues to this day to be a stain on the record of this
Organization. As long as this resolution is not revoked, no
moral authority can accompany United Nations decisions, and an
air of hypocrisy continues to envelop its debates".
Israel had learned to be in the minority at the United Nations,
Mr. ARENS said, just as it had learned to exist in the dangerous
environment of the Middle East. "We live in a constant state of
alert, allocating a great part of our resources to defence,
determined to fight terrorism and ward off aggression." The
Arab armies surrounding Israel maintained an inventory of modern
weaponry; tanks, aircraft, missiles, artillery; larger than
all the weaponry of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO). During the past decade, military equipment valued at
some $100 billion was purchased by the countries of that area.
"We have already experienced five wars", he said, "we have
already lost thousands of our sons in Israel's defence. We see
around us a Middle East that is brutal and fanatic, where no
mercy is shown even to civilians".
A million soldiers were killed in the Iraqi-Iranian war, he
continued, where the most modern weapons of mass destruction
were applied, including chemical warfare used on a massive scale
by the Iraqi army. "Is it then paranoia when Israel, in this
environment and under these circumstances, feels itself
threatened?" he asked.
And yet Israel, embattled and beleaguered, continued in the quest
for peace. Many of the Arab rulers seemed to have no desire for
peace with Israel, no matter what the conditions. Worse yet, it
was the aim of those rulers to prevent others from making peace
with Israel.
The Foreign Minister of Israel, Mr. ARENS, then said that in May
of 1983, Israel had signed an agreement with Lebanon that would
have normalized relations between the two countries and that
entailed the withdrawal of the Israeli Defence Forces from
southern Lebanon. But that agreement was scuttled by Syrian
interference. "They had other plans for Lebanon. Six years have
passed and the Lebanese tragedy continues. Southern Lebanon is
still a staging-ground for terrorist attacks by the PLO and the
Hizbullah against the towns and villages on Israel's northern
border."
Israel's four-point peace initiative, he said, included a call
for a common Israeli-Egyptian effort to build on the foundations
of the Camp David accords towards a comprehensive peace for the
Middle East. He called on the 20 Arab countries, presently in a
state of war with Israel, to cease hostile propaganda and
economic boycott and begin a process of normalizing their
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