A BENG HAD TIMES SPECIAL EDITION

Quote of the day:
If you were asked to deliver a package to the President of Belarus, what would you do?

I'd deliver it.

Asked of Cavalry Couriers, New york



The Being Had Times is proud to present:
The complete text of Alexander Lukashenko's speach to the United Nations, 15 September, 2005



Mr. President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
To have an honest look at today’s world is the reason why state leaders
have convened here at the United Nations. Together we must gain the
understanding of the main thing: do we lead our countries and the mankind
along the right path? We should answer this question for ourselves and our
nations. Without that we have no chance to get out of the deadlock that we are
in.
Fifteen years have passed since the break-up of my country, the USSR.
That event dramatically changed the world order. The Soviet Union, despite
all mistakes and blunders of its leaders, was the source of hope and support for
many states and peoples. The Soviet Union provided for the balance of the
global system.
Today the world is unipolar with all the consequences stemming from
this. The once prosperous Yugoslavia was devastated and disappeared from
the map of Europe. The long-suffering Afghanistan became a hotbed of conflicts and drugs trafficking. A bloody slaughter in Iraq is continuing to the present day. The country has turned into a source of instability for the vast region.
Iran and North Korea are looked at through gun sights.
Belarus is a nation just like the majority represented in this hall. Having
emerged from the debris of the Cold War, Belarus became a state of advanced
science and technology inhabited by ten million of highly educated and tolerant
people. The UN ranked us as a developed country with a high level of human
development.
Like you, what we need from the world is peace and stability. Nothing
more. The rest we shall create ourselves through our own efforts.
My country is free from conflicts. Different nations and nationalities
peacefully coexist in Belarus each practicing religions of their own and having
their own way of life.
We do not cause any trouble for our neighbours, neither through territorial claims nor trying to influence their choice of the way of development. We gave up our nuclear arms and voluntarily relinquished the rights of a nuclear successor to the USSR. Today we shall sign the Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. We also declare that we have decided to sign the Additional Protocol to the Agreement between the Republic of Belarus and the International Atomic Energy Agency for the Application of Safeguards in connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
We have established a lasting and successful union with Russia as our
very close neighbour. We build our country using our own wits and on the basis of our own traditions. But it is obvious that this very choice of my people is not to everyone’s pleasure. It doesn’t please those who strive to rule the unipolar world.
Wonder how?
If there are no conflicts – they are invented.
If there are no pretexts for intervention – imaginary ones are created.
To this end a very convenient banner was chosen – democracy and human
rights. And not in their original sense of the rule of people and personal
dignity, but solely and exclusively in the interpretation of the US leadership.
Has the world really become so black-and-white, deprived of its
diversity of civilizations, multicoloured traditions and ways of life meeting
aspirations of people?
Of course not! The simple thing is that it is a convenient pretext and an
instrument to control other countries.
Regrettably, the United Nations, though it belongs to us all, allows itself
to be used as a tool of such policy. I am saying this with particular bitterness
and pain as President of the country that co-founded the UN, after sacrificing
the lives of one third of its people during the Second World War for the sake
of our own freedom and the freedom of Europe and the entire world.
The Human Rights Commission keeps mechanically stamping resolutions on Belarus, Cuba and other countries. Attempts are being made to impose such resolutions also on the UN General Assembly.
But how can the United Nations be minding imaginary “problems” while unable to see true disasters and catastrophes - of the calibre and nature which nobody other than the UN as community of civilized nations can cope with and restore justice and order?
Let us give a glance at the world as it is.
Quite recently, in the room next to ours we were shown maps and graphs allegedly depicting weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Were those weapons found?
They do not exist. In the meantime, Iraq was razed with bombs, devastated, people brought to utmost despair. Terrorists are threatening to use weapons of mass destruction against cities in Europe and America.
Has there been an open and independent trial under UN supervision of the Guantanamo prisoners? How many of them are there and who are they?
Who will defend the rights of the Abu Graib victims and punish all of their torturers without exception? Afghanistan was ravaged with rockets and bombs under the pretext of finding Bin Laden. Was the world’s "number one terrorist" captured? Where is he now? He is at large, but Afghanistan and Iraq territories began to generate hundreds and thousands of international terrorists.
Foreign troops occupied the independent Afghanistan but the drugs production grew ten-fold. Did those troops enter the country for this purpose?
Today, Belarus, Tajikistan, Russia and other former Soviet states are literally flooded with a wave of "traditional" drugs from Afghanistan meeting a wave of previously unknown synthetic drugs from Europe.
The leaders of the destroyed Yugoslavia and Iraq were put behind bars on groundless, absurd and far-fetched accusations. This was a very opportune way to conceal the truth about annihilation of their countries.
The trial of Milosevic was made into a caricature since long ago. Saddam Hussein was abandoned to the winner’s mercy, like in barbarian times. There is nobody to defend their rights except the UN, their states no longer around, destroyed.
They should be released to be able to defend freely their rights, honour and human dignity. AIDS and other diseases are ravaging Africa and Asia.
Poverty and deprivation have become a real and not a virtual weapon of mass destruction, moreover - racially selective one. Who will be able to stop this?
Who will insist that the United States of America put an end to its attempts against Cuba and Venezuela? These countries will independently determine their lives.
Trafficking in persons has become a flourishing business. Sexual
slavery of women and children are seen as a common thing, almost a norm of
life. Who will protect them and bring to justice consumers of “live commodity”? How can this disgrace to our civilization be done away with?
This, in short, is the distressing account of the transition to the unipolar world.
Was it for that purpose that we established the United Nations?
Is it not high time for the UN to put an end to internal corruption scandals and get down in deed to address anguish and misery of the world? The answer to this question, in our view, is very clear.
Let us be honest to the end. We cannot bury our head in the sand like an ostrich.
In the end, the UN is us.
Therefore, it is up to us to take the destiny of the world in our own hands. We must realize that the unipolar world is a world with a single track, a one-dimensional world.
We must become aware that the diversity of ways to progress is an enduring value of our civilization, the only one that can ensure stability in this world.The freedom of choice of the way of development is the main precondition for a democratic world order. This is exactly what this Organization was established for.
I do hope that the mighty of the world will understand this too.
Otherwise, the unipolar world will ultimately strike them back. Great American Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, who stood at the roots of the League of Nations and the United Nations, were conscious of that.
Should we agree between us on this principal point, then we would succeed in implementing the principles of multipolarity, diversity and freedom of choice both in reality and the UN documents that we must abide by. We would protect the world from terrorism and the vulnerable, women and children, from slavery. We would protect all those unprotected.
It is then that the UN would become the organization of the genuinely united nations. This, and not the numerical increase of the Security Council membership, is precisely the core of the UN reform.
I thank you.


On World Summit's second day, UN reform, development goals top agenda


15 September 2005 – The United Nations World Summit, the largest-ever gathering of Heads of State and Government, went into its second day today with leaders stressing the need for UN reform, the fight against terrorism, and further effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of slashing a host of socio-economic ills by 2015.

Opening the morning session President Ismail Omar Guellen of Djibouti praised "the catalytic leadership and tenacity" of Secretary-General Kofi Annan in pushing for reform to ensure the UN remain relevant for coming generations and noted the role of the MDGs as a global partnership to reduce poverty, improve health, promote peace and human rights, gender equality and environmental sustainability.
Full Text


From China View

Belarus to sign int'l convention against nuclear terrorism

MOSCOW, Sept. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko issued on Wednesday a decree declaring that Belarus will sign the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, the Itar-Tass news agency quoted the presidential press service as reporting from Minsk.

Belarus stressed the importance of the convention that "closes the gap in the area of international law for regulating the fight against terrorism and is aimed to prevent terrorists from getting hold of nuclear materials," the press service said.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the international convention on combating nuclear terrorism in April of the year, which was initiated by Russia.
"Belarus' acceding to the convention and the president's signing it during the 60th session of the United Nations General Assembly will be evidence of Belarus' active and consistent stand in the framework of the anti-terrorist coalition under the United Nations auspices," the press service noted.
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Commet:

From the Seventh Sky blog:

Recently there's been much rabble about the political situation in Belarus. Belarus for Dummies might have said a year ago that it's typical of former Soviet republics... repressive, autocratic government, a stagnant centrally-planned economy, heavy reliance on the sale of old military hardware, heavily dependent on Russian ties. However, the post-Soviet world has changed a great deal.

In Georgia, Ukriane and most recently Kyrygzstan, virtually bloodless populist revolutions have led to transitions of power from autocrats to (arguably but most probably) real democratic politicians. Meaningful elections are being held in places no one thought they would be. And the mentality that spurned on the Velvet revolutions in these states is spreading to surrounding countries whose populations are hungry for change.
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