STATEMENT DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY  
MR. FELIPE PÉREZ ROQUE, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 
OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA, AT THE GENERAL DEBATE OF 
THE 56TH SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE 
UNITED NATIONS  

NEW YORK, 13 NOVEMBER 2001  
 
Mr. President:  

Before delivering my statement, I would like to express our
condolences to the United States, the Dominican Republic and
other countries represented here that have lost citizens
among the many passengers and crew members who perished in
yesterday's tragedy of American Airlines Flight 587 - and I
hereby pass on these condolences to their families.
 
Mr. President:  

The war in Afghanistan must be stopped. The Government of
the United States must acknowledge that it has made a
mistake - and must halt its ineffective, unjustifiable
bombing campaign against that people.

As to its results, it would seem that this war has targeted
children, the civilian population and the International Red
Cross hospitals and facilities as enemies. As to its
methods, no honest voice would rise in this hall to defend
an endless slaughter - with the most sophisticated weaponry
- of a dispossessed, starving, helpless people. As to its
doubtful purposes, this war will never be justified from the
point of view of ethics and International Law. Those
responsible for it will one day be judged by history.

Cuba has opposed this war from the very beginning as an
absurd, inefficient method to eradicate terrorism - and
reiterates that it can only bring more hatred and
ever-increasing dangers of new terrorist actions. No one has
the right to continue murdering children, aggravating the
humanitarian crisis, visiting impoverishment and death on
millions of refugees.

If the United States obtained a military victory by
eliminating all regular and irregular Afghan resistance -
something that is not at all easy in practice and extremely
costly at the moral level, for it would represent a real
genocide without attaining the objective that we must pursue
- the world would be farther away than ever from achieving
peace, security and the eradication of terrorism. Cuba's
discourse is not founded on ill feelings against who has
been our most embittered adversary for over forty years. It
is inspired by a sincere constructive spirit and a sense of
respect for and sympathy towards the people of the United
States, which sustained the unjustifiable and atrocious
terrorist attack. It is also based on the aspiration of
peace and justice for all the peoples of the world.

What Cuba expresses in this hall - with full openness - may
not be to the liking of those who run the United States
today, but it will be understood one day by the American
people, whose generosity and sense of justice were proven to
the Cuban people when it had the support of 80% of the
public opinion in this country in our struggle to prevent a
kidnapped Cuban child from being uprooted from his family
and subjected to ludicrous political manipulations and cruel
psychological tortures. What Cuba says from this rostrum, we
know it well, is what many people rumor in the corridors of
this building.

What international coalition are we talking about? What is
its legitimacy based on - if it has started by stridently
disregarding the General Assembly of the United Nations? The
United States has not fostered international cooperation. It
has rather imposed its war on a unilateral basis and
unwontedly stated that whoever does not second them is with
terrorism. How long will the precarious support obtained
last - not resulting from harmonized objectives and
voluntary agreement, but from imposition through threats and
pressures?

One can be the strongest, but not necessarily right. One can
cause dread, but not sympathy and respect. Only from genuine
international cooperation - in which all countries, big and
small, participate with a full understanding of everyone's
positions; with broadmindedness and tolerance in the methods
used; in the framework of the United Nations Organization
and unflinchingly abiding by the principles enshrined in its
Charter - can a truly effective and lasting alliance emerge
to fight terrorism.

The world was surprised to learn of the official
announcement of the United States to the Security Council
that it reserved the right to decide on an attack against
other countries in the future. What is left of the United
Nations Charter after this? Can this unprecedented threat by
any chance be interpreted as an exercise of the right to
legitimate defense, enshrined in the Charter as the right of
a State to deal with acts of aggression until the Council
adopts the necessary measures and not as a vulgar excuse to
unleash attacks against other countries? Is or is it not
this announcement the proclamation of the right of a
superpower to trample upon the already wobbly and incomplete
standards governing sovereignty, security and the rights of
the peoples?

Cuba rejects that language with poise and steadfastness. We
have not done so out of concern for our own security -
because there is no power in the world that can subdue our
spirit of independence, freedom, social justice and the
courage to defend it at any cost. We did so because we
believe that it is still possible to halt the escalation of
a useless, brutal war that threatens to further plunge the
poor peoples of the planet into hopelessness, insecurity and
death - who are by no means responsible for any act of
terrorism, but will be - and already are - the main victims
of this senselessness.

Only under the leadership of the United Nations will we be
able to defeat terrorism. Cooperation and not war is the
way. The coordination of actions and not imposition is the
method. Our objective must be to obliterate terrorism by
removing its root causes - and not the hegemonic assertion
of the strength of a superpower, thus turning us into
accomplices to its haughtiness and highhandedness.

Therefore, Cuba - that has already responded to the
Secretary- General's appeal by deciding to immediately
ratify all of the international legal instruments on
terrorism - determinedly supports the adoption of a general
convention on international terrorism. Of course, this would
only be possible in the context of this General Assembly -
now absolutely ignored by the promoters of the new campaign,
but which in the last ten years, with the silence and apathy
of the Security Council, has seen the effective adoption of
the main resolutions and declarations calling for an
outright fight against terrorism.

That will finally allow us to define terrorism with
accuracy. We have to prevent a few people with vested
interests from trying to label as such the right of nations
to fight for their self- determination or against foreign
aggression. It must be clearly established that the support,
abetment, financing or concealment of terrorist actions by a
State is also an act of terrorism.

Cuba, while working to have its own anti-terrorism law in a
short period of time, unreservedly endorses the announcement
of an international conference on terrorism, under the aegis
of the United Nations. This has been an old aspiration of
the Non- Aligned Movement - and must enable us, as a result
of open discussions, collective actions, respectful and non-
discriminatory agreement; and not threat, terror and force,
to find the way to fully eliminate terrorism and its causes;
not only if committed against the United States, but also if
undertaken against another country, even from the territory
of the United States or with the leniency or complicity of
its authorities, as has been Cuba's painful experience for
over four decades.
 
Mr. President:  

Only four days ago, the Pakistani media attributed to a
rather well- known, very familiar character in the United
States, a statement supposedly made from Afghan territory
saying that he is in possession of chemical and nuclear
weapons and threatening to use them against the United
States if similar weapons are used by that country against
Afghanistan.

Everybody knows that Afghanistan does not have the slightest
possibility to produce and launch nuclear or chemical
weapons.  Only a terrorist organization or leader could come
up with the idea of executing an action of this kind with
nuclear or chemical weapons. That is theoretically possible
as it is also one of the consequences of the irresponsible
behavior of major nuclear powers and of the arms trade,
corruption and illegal traffic in all sorts of military
technology. Several of these powers have acted as
accomplices to and taken part in the traffic in fissionable
material and the transfer of nuclear technology, as it suits
their interests. However, under the concrete conditions of
the war in Afghanistan, it would be ridiculous to resort to
those threats and whoever did that would be signaling an
enormous political and military ignorance. Lacking such
means would make it a dangerous bluff, and having them would
be an absolute madness to threaten to use them.

If such statements published by two Pakistani newspapers
were true, they would deserve the strongest condemnation,
even if such weapons were eventually used against
Afghanistan. It would be a stupid reaction since in that
scenario that suffering, impoverished country would only
have the possibility to count on the universal rejection of
the use of such weaponry. Such threats only serve the
interests of the extremist and warmongering forces within
the United States, which favor the use of the most
sophisticated weapons of mass destruction against the Afghan
people. The best weapon for a country under aggression is to
earn and preserve the sympathy of the world, and not to
allow anyone to violate the ethical principle that no one
has any right to kill children, not even when others do
it. There is no justice in killing innocent people to avenge
the death of other innocents.

Cuba has stated, unhesitatingly, that it is opposed to
terrorism and that it is opposed to war. Cuba, that is not
under obligation to anyone, will continue to be consistent
with its positions.  Truth and ethics should prevail above
all else.  The unfolding of events, and the multiplication
of hatred, passions and potential dangers have come to show
that it was absolutely right to assert that the war was not,
is not and will never be the way to eradicate terrorism.
 
Mr. President:  

The most critical socio-economic crisis that our planet has
undergone, created halfway through the last decade by the
strident and irreversible failure of neoliberalism and
neoliberal globalization, has been dramatically aggravated
by this war imposed by one, but whose consequences we all
have to bear.

This war must be stopped not only for its consequences to
the Afghan civilian population, but also for the dangers of
destabilization in that region; not only to save thousands
of Americans - particularly the young - Afghans and other
nationals from a pointless death; not only to preserve an
atmosphere of international peace and stability, but because
this conflagration renders entirely impossible an objective
proclaimed by the United Nations fifteen years ago: the
right to development for all and the equality of
opportunities to attain it.  Because it renders obsolete the
decision made only a year ago to work together in order to
eliminate poverty from the face of the Earth.

Will we be willing to organize a coalition against poverty,
famine, ignorance, diseases, the scourge of AIDS that is
currently decimating the African continent; a coalition in
favor of sustainable development, in favor of the
preservation of the environment and against the destruction
of the planet?  A coalition has been summoned to avenge the
grievous death of over 4,000 innocent people in the United
States. Let us come together to seek justice against this
major crime - and let us do so without a war; let us come
together to save from death the hundreds of thousands of
poor women who every year die at childbirth; let us come
together to save from death the 12 million children who die
of preventable diseases every year in the Third World before
the age of 5; let us come together to take medications
against AIDS to the 25 million Africans who are hopelessly
awaiting death; let us come together to invest in
development at least a portion of the billions already spent
to carpet-bomb a country where almost nothing has been left
standing.

Cuba demands that this General Assembly, the Security
Council and the United Nations Organization as a whole deal
once again, as top priorities, with the debate of these
problems - which are crucial to the 4.5 billion inhabitants
of the Third World, whose rights and hopes have also been
buried under the rubble of the Twin Towers.
 
Mr. President:  

Cuba reiterates its outright condemnation of the terrorist
action committed last 11 September. Cuba reiterates its
condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and
manifestations. Cuba reiterates that it will not allow its
territory to be ever used for terrorist actions against the
people of the United States or of any other country.

Cuba has the morality to do it - because for over forty
years it has suffered from terrorist actions; because in
Cuba there are still relatives of the nearly 3,500 Cubans
killed as a result of aggressions and terrorist acts;
because justice is still demanded by over 2,000 Cubans
rendered disabled by aggressions and terrorist acts. Some of
its sons and daughters, who have fought terrorism, have been
victims of cruel persecutions, relentless treatment and
unjust and slanderous proceedings. The people of the United
States is a victim not only of terrorism and panic, but also
of the lack of truthful information, manipulation and the
questionable limitation of their freedoms. Cuba does not
nurture any hatred towards the American people - which does
not hold accountable for our terrorism-related suffering,
the aggressions and the unfair economic war that we have
been compelled to withstand almost a lifetime; and with
which it shares the aspiration of one day having relations
based on respect and cooperation.

Mr. President:  

If anyone here takes offense at these words, uttered on
behalf of a small generous, courageous people, I
apologize. We speak in a straightforward manner. Words exist
to uphold the truth, not to conceal it. We are rebellious
against injustice and oppression. We have morality; we
defend our ideas at the price of our lives. Our support for
any fair cause can be obtained, but we cannot be subdued by
force or through the imposition of absurd formulas or
embarrassing adventures.

For many years now we have proclaimed that for us - Cubans -
the historical dilemma is: "Motherland or Death!" Thence our
confidence and security that we are and will continue to be
a worthy, sovereign and fair people.
 
Thank you very much.