28 Septiembre 2011, 12:21 PM
The democratization and refoundation of the United Nations (UN), along with the elimination of the right to veto, was proposed by the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, through a new letter to the President of the General Assembly and representatives of the peoples of the world.
The Minister of People's Power for Foreign Affairs, Nicolás Maduro, became the spokesperson of the country during the 66th UN General Assembly to read the letter from the Venezuelan head of state to the bosom of the organization.
The intervention of the head of the Venezuelan diplomacy focused on supporting the Palestinian Authority to be recognized as a free and independent state, the need for withdrawal of forces from the Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from Libya, as the only way to achieve peace, and the denounce against the new forms of destabilization applied by the empire in these nations.
The Bolivarian Revolution leader, a staunch defender of the cause of the oppressed peoples of the world, reflects in his letter about the new colonial wars and military bases by the United States throughout the world, in the eyes of this multilateral body.
Following is the full text:
New York, September 27, 2011
Caracas, September 26, 2011
Mr. President of the General Assembly:
Distinguished representatives of the peoples of the world:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I address these words to the General Assembly of the United Nations, to this great forum where are represented all the peoples of the earth to express the truths of the Bolivarian Venezuela and to reaffirm our unwavering commitment to justice and equality, that is, to peace.
Peace, peace, peace ... We are not seeking the peace of the graveyard, as Kant said with irony, but a peace based in the most zealous respect for international law. Unfortunately, the UN, throughout its history, rather than adding and multiplying efforts for peace among nations, ends up guaranteeing - some times in action and others, by omission- the most ruthless injustices.
We have to always remember that the Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations, speaks to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war ... Pure dead letter. Since 1945 up to now, the wars have done nothing but grow and multiply inexorably. We see, again, a destroyed Libya bloodied by the will of the powerful of this world.
I want to make a call to reflection on the governments of the world: from September 11, 2001, began a new imperialist war that is historically unprecedented: a permanent war, in perpetuity.
We must look ahead the terrifying reality of the world in which we live. It is necessary to formulate a set of concerns from the dangers and threats that haunt us: why America is the only country that seeds the planet with military bases?, What do you have such a chilling fear of for such a growing budget increase in military power?, why has it sparked so many wars, violating the sovereignty of other nations that have the same rights to their destinies?, How to enforce international law against its foolish aspiration of submitting the world to their military hegemony as warranty of energy sources to sustain its predatorial and consumerist model?, why the UN does nothing to stop Washington? If we respond with absolute sincerity, to these questions, we would understand that the empire has been awarded the role of judge of the world, without nobody giving such responsibility to it, and therefore imperialist war threatens us all.
Washington knows that the multipolar world is already an irreversible reality. Its strategy is to stop at all costs, the rising of a group of emerging countries, negotiating large interests with its partners and followers, to give the direction of multipolarity empire wants. But that's not all: this is a reconfiguration of the world that is based on the Yankee military hegemony.
Humanity is facing the real threat of permanent war. In any scenario, and Libya demonstrates it, the empire is willing to create the political conditions for going to war. In the imperial vision of the world, is reversing Clausewitz's famous axiom: Politics is the continuation of war by other means.
What's in the background of this new Armageddon?: The absolute power of the financial-military leadership that is destroying the world to accumulate more and more profits, the financial-military leadership depends, in fact, a set, each time bigger, of States. Note that the mode of existence of financial capital is war: a war that ruins the most, and enriches up to the unthinkable, to a few ones.
In the short term there is an enormous threat to world peace: the unleashing of a new series of colonial wars, which began in Libya, with the sinister aim of giving a second wind to the capitalist world system, now in structural crisis, but without putting any kind of limits to its destructive and consumerist voraciousness. The case of Libya on the claim must alert us to implement a new imperial form of colonialism: the military intervention backed by undemocratic bodies of the United Nations and justified based on prefabricated media lies.
Humanity is on the brink of an unimaginable catastrophe: the planet marches inexorably towards the most devastating ecocide, global warming is announced, through its dreadful consequences, but the ideology of Cortes and Pizarro on the ecosystem, as it says the remarkable French thinker Edgar Morin, leads them to continue pillaging and destroying. The energy crisis and the food crisis exacerbate, but capitalism keeps trespassing all limits without punish.
Against this backdrop so bleak, the great American scientist Linus Pauling, who twice won the Nobel Prize, still enlightens us the way: I think in the world exists in a power greater than the negative power of military force and nuclear bombs: The power of goodness, morality, humanitarianism. I believe in the power of human spirit. Lets mobilize, then, all the power of human spirit: it is time. It imposes to unleash a political counteroffensive to stop the powers of darkness from finding justifications for going to war: to wage a widespread global war with which they pretended to save the capital of the West.
Venezuela calls for the establishment of a great alliance against war and for peace: the supreme goal of avoiding war by any means. Must be defeated politically the warmongers and, moreover, the military and financial leadership that sponsors and governs them.
Lets build the balance of the universe that devised the Liberator Simon Bolivar: the balance that, in his words, is not to be found within war, the balance that comes from peace.
It is necessary to make memory, and immediate memory: Venezuela, along with members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA), was actively advocating for a peaceful and negotiated solution to the conflict in Libya. Also did so, too, the African Union. But, ultimately, won the logic of war decreed from the Security Council of the UN and implemented by NATO, the armed wing of the American empire. The logic of war which was spearheaded in the communication transnationals: remember that "Libya case" was taken to the Security Council on the basis of the intense media propaganda, who lied in stating that the Libyan aircraft bombed innocent civilians, not to mention the grotesque media staging the Green Square of Tripoli. This deliberate campaign of lies, justified hasty and irresponsible actions of the Security Council of the UN, which paved the way for NATO to implement, by military means, its policy of regime change in that country.
It is worth asking: what has become the no-fly zone established by resolution 1973 of the Security Council? Maybe the more than 20,000 NATO air missions against Libya, many of them to bomb the Libyan people, are the very negation of the exclusion zone? Completely destroyed the Libyan air force, the continuity of "humanitarian" bombing shows that the West, through NATO, imposes its interests in North Africa, turning Libya into a colonial protectorate.
It is a mockery to say that the UN has imposed an arms embargo on Libya, when NATO itself introduced thousands of heavy weapons to support violent insurrection against the legitimate government of that country. The embargo, of course, only had to prevent the Libyan government to defend its sovereignty, once again validating this cruel mode of operation according to which international law imposes only to the weak.
What is the real reason for this military intervention?: To recolonize Libya to take over their riches. Everything else is subordinated to this goal. No one colonizes innocently, he said, quite rightly, the great poet Aimée Césaire from Martinique in his extraordinary Discourse on Colonialism.
Incidentally, the residence of our ambassador in Tripoli was invaded and ransacked, but the UN remained silent in the forum, keeping a shameful silence.
We demand an immediate halt to the bombing of Libyan territory. We will also continue to demand respect for international law in the case of this sisterly nation: we will not remain silent about the evil intention of destroying the foundations that give to it meaning and purpose. For this reason, we launched the following question to this House: Why is granted Libya's seat at the UN to the self-called "National Transition Council" while blocking the entry of Palestine, ignoring not only their aspirations, but what is already a majority will of the General Assembly? Venezuela ratifies here, with all his strength and moral authority that grants the wishes of the majority of the peoples of the world, their unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian people and its unrestricted support of the Palestinian national cause, including of course the immediate admission of a Palestinian State of full right within the United Nations Organization.
And the same imperialist format is repeated in the case of Syria. Be it not for some permanent members of Security Council making today shows of the strength that they lacked in the case of Libya, all would be defined so that the Security Council gave its backing to NATO to fire missiles and send bombers against Syria.
It is intolerable that the powerful of this world seek to arrogate the right to order a legitimate and sovereign rulers to relinquish any time soon. This was the case with Libya, just as they want to proceed against Syria. Such are the asymmetries in the international arena and these are the attacks against independent nations.
We are not who to advance an opinion on the internal situation in Syria, first by the complexity inherent in any national reality, and second because only the Syrian people can solve their problems and decide their fate in response to the right to self-determination an inalienable right in every way. But that does not prevent us from thinking that is one hundred times better bet on the success of the comprehensive national dialogue that has called for President Bashar Al Assad, than to impose sanctions and screaming like hyenas for a military intervention. From the Bolivarian Venezuela we support, unambiguously, the huge efforts made by President Bashar Al Assad to preserve the unity and stability of his homeland, before the voracious imperialist siege.
Mr. President,
Let's turn our attention now to the Horn of Africa and have a heartbreaking example of the historical failure of the UN, the majority of serious news agencies say that between 20.000 and 29.000 children under 5 have died in the last three months.
The great journalist Frida Modak, in her article To Die in Somalia, reveals all the misery, worse than the one that devastates the vast Horn of Africa, is gnawing at the main international organizations, first and foremost at the UN: What is needed to address this situation are a 1.400 million dollars, not to solve the problem, but to attend the emergency in Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia. By all accounts the next two months are critical to prevent the deaths of more than 12 million people and the most serious situation is the one in Somalia.
It can not be more appalling this fact, if at the same time we do not ask ourselves how much is being spent in destroying Libya. And this is how congressman Dennis Kucinich responds: This new war will cost us $ 500 million during the first week alone. Of course we do not have financial resources for that and will end up reducing funding for other important domestic programs. According to the same Kucinich, with the spent on the first three weeks in the northern African continent, to massacre the Libyan people, much could have helped the entire region of the Horn of Africa, saving tens of thousands of lives.
The reasons for the criminal intervention in Libya are not humanitarian, are based on the Malthusian assumption that "there is an excess of people in the world" and must be eliminated, generating more hunger, destruction and uncertainty. Generating, at the same time, more financial gains. In this sense, it is really unfortunate that in the opening message of the 66th UN General Assembly was not a call for immediate action to resolve the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, while ensuring that "the time has come act "on Syria.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We cry, too, for the ending of the shameful and criminal blockade against the Republic of Cuba: block, which for over fifty years, has had the empire, with cruelty and brutality against the heroic people of José Martí.
Until 2010, are already nineteen votings in the General Assembly of the UN's that confirm the universal will to demand to the U.S. an end to the economic and commercial embargo against Cuba. Exhausted all the arguments of the international sense, it only remains to believe that such cruelty against the Cuban Revolution is the result of imperial arrogance to the dignity and courage shown by the rebellious Cuban people's sovereign decision to govern their destiny and fight for their happiness.
From Venezuela, we believe it is time to demand to the United States not only the immediate and unconditional end to the criminal blockade against the Cuban people, but the release of the 5 antiterrorist Cuban fighters held hostage in the prisons of the Empire for the sole reason of seeking to prevent illegal actions that terrorist groups prepared against Cuba under the umbrella of the United States government.
Mr. President of the General Assembly and distinguished representatives of the peoples of the world:
We want to reiterate: it is impossible to ignore the UN crisis. Faced with this same General Assembly we held in 2005, the United Nations model was exhausted. At that time, we proposed also the urgent need to its re-foundation.
Since then, nothing has been done: the political will of the powerful has been imposed. Of course: the UN, as it works today, obediently serves their interests. For us, it is clear that the United Nations does not improve or gets better from within. If the Secretary General, along with the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, are participating in an act of war, as in the case of Libya, there is nothing to expect from the current format of this organization. And there's no time for reforms: the UN does not accept any reform, the disease that it bears on the inside is deadly.
It is intolerable that there is a Security Council that gives its back, whenever it wants, to the clamor of the majority of nations, deliberately ignoring the will of the General Assembly. If the Security Council is a sort of privileged members club, what can the General Assembly do, what is its manoeuvre margin, when they are violating international law?
To paraphrase Bolivar -when referring specifically to the nascent imperialism in 1818 - enough of the laws are practiced for the weak and the abuses practiced by the strong. We can not be, the Peoples of the South, who respect the international law, while the North destroys and loots us, violating it.
If we do not assume, for once, the commitment to reestablish the United Nations, this organization will definitely lose the little credibility it has left. Its crisis of legitimacy will accelerate to the final implosion. In fact, that is how it happened to the body that was its immediate predecessor, the League of Nations.
An essential first step to begin to reestablish the United Nations would be to eliminate the category of permanent membership and the right to veto in the Security Council. Likewise, we should democratically maximize the decision power of the General Assembly. Also imposes, in the immediate, a thorough review of the UN Charter in order to proceed with drafting a new charter.
Peoples of the world:
The future of a multipolar world in peace, resides in us. In the articulation of the majority of the peoples of the planet to defend against the new colonialism and achieve balance in the universe that neutralizes imperialism and arrogance.
This broad, generous, respectful, inclusive calling, is addressed to all peoples of the world, but especially to the emerging powers of the South, who must assume with courage the role that is called upon to play in the immediate.
From Latin America and the Caribbean have come powerful and dynamic regional alliances that seek to set up a regional democratic space, respectful of the particularities, and eager to put the emphasis on solidarity and complementarity, strengthening what unites us and politically resolving what divides us. And this new regionalism supports diversity and respects the rhythms of each one. Thus, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) advances as a vanguard experiment of progressive and imperialist governments, seeking formulas to break with the prevailing international order and strengthening the capacity of people to face, collectively, the factual powers. But this does not prevent its members to give a decisive and enthusiastic boost to the consolidation of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), a political bloc federating the 12 sovereign states of South America, to group them as Liberator Simon Bolivar called a "Nation of Republics." And beyond, the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean are preparing to take the historic step of establishing a regional body bringing us all together, without exclusions, where together we can design policies that will ensure our wellbeing, our independence and our sovereignty, based on equality, solidarity and complementarity. Caracas, the capital of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is proud from now to host, next December 2 and 3, the Summit of Heads of State and Government that will found definitely our Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
We Venezuelans pin our hopes on a broad alliance of regional assemblies in the South, as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), CARICOM, SICA, the African Union, ASEAN and the ECO and, particularly, in inter-regional instances of articulation of emerging powers such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) should become an articulated attraction pole with the Peoples of the South.
I will conclude by recalling the great singer of the Venezuelan people: Ali Primera. In one of his songs he calls on us: "What is the struggle of men/ to achieve peace? / And what peace? / If they want to leave / the world as it is". Today more than ever, the worst crime against peace is to leave the world as it is: if we leave it as is, the present and the future are and will be determined by perpetual war. On the contrary, to achieve peace is to radically reverse everything that hinders, to say with the same Ali Primera, To make mankind human.
Hugo Chávez Frías
President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
