CORRECTION
In Press Release GA/AB/3414 of 27 November, the summary of the statement by the representative of Canada on page 9 should read:
PAUL HEINBECKER (Canada) noted that nobody understood better than the Secretary-General the gap between peacekeeping needs and the capacity of the United Nations to fulfil those needs. Nobody was more aware of the action necessary to close that gap. His experience of the Rwanda and Srebrenica tragedies, his appointment of the Brahimi Panel, and his prompt tabling of the implementation plan were all evidence of his strong commitment to help those who could not help themselves.
He said the Panel had presented pragmatic and practical ideas for change, which Canada welcomed and supported fully. Over the past few months, there had been encouraging signs that a broad partnership was coalescing, between the United Nations system, Member States and all other actors concerned, in responding to the need for more effective peacekeeping operations. Member States, including Canada, had begun to evaluate their national capacity to respond and contribute to that need. It was now the Fifth Committee’s turn.
If Brahimi failed, he feared the United Nations would also fail and the Committee would share an important part in that failure, he stressed. The vast majority of Member States cared about the United Nations. Those which had the means and the capacity to help implement more effective peacekeeping, but lacked the will, should reconsider. Refusal to pay their assessed contributions or hedging their payments with conditions encouraged those who would like to see the United Nations fail.
Some Member States, particularly but not exclusively African States, needed and would continue to need United Nations services, he said. Better peacekeeping did not necessarily equal fewer development funds. If anything, the reverse was true. There could be no development without peace and security. The Secretary- General’s request for emergency resources should be considered in that context.
The reputation, and possibly the future, of the United Nations was at stake, he stressed. Its failures and near failures, in Rwanda, Srebrenica and most recently in Sierra Leone, had dwarfed its successes in the public mind. It was to that public, whose sons and daughters participated in peacekeeping operations, that the United Nations must be accountable.
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