Mr. President,
Mr. Secretary General,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates:

Mr. President,

May I begin by congratulating you on your election as President of this 54th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. I am confident that the skills and vast experience you have acquired throughout your distinguished diplomatic career will provide the guidance we need to guarantee the successful outcome of the Session. I must also recall the valuable contribution of your predecessor, Mr. Opertti, to the work of the last session of the General Assembly.

Mr. President,

I would like to take this opportunity to extend my warm welcome and congratulations to the Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Nauru and the Kingdom of Tonga on their admission to the United Nations.

Mr. President,

As the twentieth century comes to an end, it is evident that all countries in the world ? advanced, developing, or transitional ? will be substantially affected by globalization. Further specialization and widening of markets through trade, larger division of labor, and more efficient and diversified allocation of financial resources should increase overall productivity and raise living standards. However, no country will benefit from this trend spontaneously and automatically. The major tasks which governments face today are development and the pursuit of sound policies and appropriate structural adjustments to meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities that globalization offers. While sound domestic economic planning and reforms are critical to meeting the challenges of globalization, regional cooperation and integration processes are essential to maximizing the emerging benefits and opportunities.

We ? as a country and the region as a whole ? are trying to adjust to the multiple stresses of post Soviet economic, cultural and political transformations. Clearly these problems can stress relations as much within states, as among them. Armenia does not see, either itself, or the region, as being permanently condemned to marginalization, but rather it believes that through close cooperation in the region, whether political, economic or security based, will help bring lasting stability and prosperity based on a sense of solid and shared emergent values.

Cooperation within the framework of the regional economic initiatives such as INOGATE and TRACECA is essential. Armenia is sincerely open to such cooperation, although we have to state with regret that the blockades imposed on Armenia by Turkey and Azerbaijan are a serious obstacle to such cooperation. It is obvious that the region's high potential cannot be fully utilized if attempts are made to isolate one of its constituents. Such attempts are doomed to failure and will adversely affect all concerned in the region.

Black Sea Economic Cooperation is another mechanism that could contribute to region's economic development. The activities of the recently established Black Sea Trade and Development Bank will considerably contribute to carrying out the projects elaborated by the member?states of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation. In this regard Armenia fully supports the granting of an Observer Status in the UN General Assembly to the Organization of the BSEC.

Mr. President,

A young republic in transition from a long nightmare of totalitarian single party state, to an emergent democratic, free market, open society, Armenia must simultaneously, consolidate its state structures, move its economy forward and resolve the Karabagh conflict. It must do all three at the same time for they are in fact interdependent.

First and foremost Armenia must ensure that the Armenian population of Karabagh continues to enjoy its security within its own lands. Our recent memories of vulnerability and insecurity make it impossible for any Armenian, anywhere, to accept anything less than the inalienable right of the people of Karabagh, not to be subjugated, not to be dominated, and not to be subordinate. Armenia understands this and is actively engaged in pursuing, in every possible forum, a resolution of the conflict with Azerbaijan, that would achieve peace without endangering the hard won and legitimate rights of our people to live in secure dignity and freedom.

Mr. President,

Since 1992 the OSCE has played a key role in the process for finding a peaceful solution to the conflict in Nagorno?Karabagh. It has been actively involved, through the various permutations of the Minsk process to define the elements for a durable peace and stability in the region of the Transcaucasus. Armenia is committed to pursue every possible and credible attempt to resolve the conflicts that linger in the region. It is committed to explore every avenue for peaceful relations with all its neighbors, relations based on mutual respect and recognition.

The OSCE, through the co?chairs of the Minsk group, is trying to reconcile seemingly incompatible principles. We have always remained opposed to one?sided orthodoxy and always advocated a more flexible approach. It is therefore with interest that Armenia and Nagorno?Karabagh received the Minsk Group Co?Chairs' draft proposal during their latest visit to the region. My Government, as well as the authorities of Nagorno?Karabagh, considered this formulation by the Co?Chairs a more realistic effort in trying to address the thorny issue of the status of Nagorno?Karabagh with minimal prejudice to either of the competing claims.

Indeed, we must distinguish between stability and the forced maintenance of the status quo. Conflating the two is neither wise nor practicable in the long run. A status quo in political life is never inherently permanent and a viable policy of stability requires a mechanism to pursue an evolutionary, dynamic process of managing change. We have new and dynamic challenges to the
status quo. We should not be shy to address these challenges creatively and objectively to conceive more adaptive answers than falling back in a comfortable, yet dangerously elusive status quo.

Mr. President,

As Armenia actively defends and pursues Nagorno Karabagh people's right to self?determination through peaceful means, we also sympathize with and support all other just self?determination claims in other parts of the globe. Armenia applauded Indonesian Government's courage when it announced the conduct of referendum on East Timor's independence. Today we are concerned with the latest developments but we hope that the results of the popular consultation will be fully respected. We also commend the role that the United Nations has played in organizing and supervizing the popular consultation.

Armenia also welcomes the most recent positive developments in the Middle East peace process. We hope that the Palestinian people's right to self?determination will be fully realized thus bringing lasting peace and stability to Middle East.

Mr. President,

The last decade of the 20th century was marked with serious achievements in the sphere of disarmament, global and regional arms control and more remains to be done. At the global level, that would mean reviewing the NPT in the year 2000, completing the work of the Biological Weapons Convention Ad Hoc Group on a compliance and verification protocol; completely eliminating existing stocks of chemical weapons, as well as ensuring the universality of the Chemical Weapons' Convention regime. Similarly, at the regional level, we attach great importance to the successful conclusion of the CFE Treaty adaptation process, which will be signed by Heads of States at the OSCE Summit, this November. We are convinced that the Adapted Treaty will significantly contribute to the strengthening of European security.

In pursuing its national policies Armenia has made a priority to support the international efforts in securing peace and stability throughout the world. We believe that our full participation in the work of the Conference on Disarmament will allow us to make further contributions to the issues of arms control and disarmament. We hope members will support Armenia in its willingness to become a full member of the Conference on Disarmament.

Mr. President,

Armenia welcomes the Millennium Summit initiative. On the threshold of the new millennium it is important for the Heads of States and Governments to discuss the tasks that the UN is going to undertake in providing global peace and security.

Believing that the United Nations should play the leading role in the formation of an international anti?criminal strategy, Armenia supports the idea of holding, in Vienna, in the year 2000, the 10th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Treatment of Offenders.

We call for the accession of the maximum number of countries to universal conventions against terrorism and support the Russian proposal on a UN Convention for combating acts of nuclear terrorism. Armenia, likewise, supports the initiative of holding a conference or a special session of the General Assembly against terrorism in 2000.

On October 1, Armenia will sign the Statute of the International Criminal Court, thus becoming the 87th state to do so.

Mr. President,

Maintenance of international peace is one of the most important functions of the United Nations. The challenges that the international community faces today are diverse and complicated. This holds true especially for the reform of the Security Council, since ensuring peace and security throughout the world depends on a Security Council which functions effectively.

Security Council resolutions should be unbiased and universal and reflect common approach to the conflicts based on internationally accepted principles and criteria including peace keeping operations. To strengthen the role and function of the Security Council, one way is to ensure a more equitable representation of the membership of the United Nations in that organ, in accordance with the sovereign equality of States and other relevant provisions of the Charter, and to make its work more transparent. A more equitable representation in the Security Council may be obtained by increasing the number of its members, taking into account growth in the
membership of the United Nations.

Mr. President,

After this brief comment on matters that concern Armenia's current affairs, its membership in the UN and the pending issues of the Nagorno Karabagh conflict, allow me a moment of reflection. We are often so preoccupied by immediate crises that lingering, chronic and fundamental phenomena do not always get our full attention.

In this end of a century and a millennium, at the threshold of a new era, we would not be candid if we did not admit to a certain disappointment, a certain sad recognition that we, as a collectivity, a community of nations, have not come as far as people everywhere would have wished us to come. I am sure we are not alone in our disappointment as we look around us, in the last ten years, and see that the hopes of 1989 have not been fully realized. Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor are all, historically speaking, in the present.

It is not for lack of charter, conventions and universal declarations that tragic events and murderous actions are committed, often by states, and through these means. After the Second World War, and the end of the Cold War, we might have been justified to expect a let?up in the organized display of man's inhumanity to man, of citizen's fratricidal war against citizen, a state's attempt to exterminate part of its own people. But evidently, our most recent experiences tell us that the persecution of innocent civilians for no other reason than their ethnicity, religion or national origin continue unabated.

Mr. President,

Armenia and Armenians have a unique history through which to see these events. We notice the more and more frequent use of the term genocide, across various continents. And we are reminded of our own tragic experience as victims of Genocide at the beginning of this century. Sad, but true, the Genocide of Armenians beginning in 1915, opened this century of horrors. We at least are convinced that nothing contributes so much to the repetition of horror as the reluctance, the unwillingness, the complicitor's avoidance to tell the truth.

The denial of Evil, its relativization and its banalization have done much to look at evil as a political event, to manipulate, to equivocate, to prevaricate for the so?called defense of real?politik.

Mr.President,

Our democracy and future prosperity count on a time when through peace, the Caucasus fulfills its promise as a region of neighborly cooperation and economic growth. Without regional political stability, regional economic prospects for all the countries of the Caucasus will remain rocky. And without satisfying the security and aspirations of the people of the region, there cannot be political stability.

Thank you Mr. President