The 38th floor: excerpts from statements by UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar made between 1 January and 31 March 1991.

Excerpts from statements by UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar made between 1 January and 31 March 1991

Encouraging hope in arms limitation...

In the field of arms limitation and disarmament, the agreements that have been reached encourage hope that much more can be achieved. The 1987 Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Nuclear Missiles between the United States and the Soviet Union will, we trust, soon be supplemented by the strategic arms reduction talks agreement which is expected to cut their strategic nuclear forces significantly. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe concluded in Paris last November and the new set of confidence- and security-building measures adopted in the framework of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe have genuinely established a new basis for growing cooperation. These positive measures, if fully and faithfully implemented by all parties, will definitely have a lasting impact on international peace and security.

'The riches of nature'

Ancient peoples had great respect for their natural environment, because the depend on it for their sustenance. I consider this gift of Denmark to be particularly appropriate at a time when the earth's natural resources, many of them non-renewable, are constantly being threatened and degraded--by carelessness, abuse and by natural and man-made disasters, including conflict.

Human beings have the technology and the ingenuity of benefit from the riches of nature, but they must learn to respect the resources they use, lest they destroy them completely. Peoples in the past revered their environment because they realized it was their primary source of life. Let us hope that future generations will form the same impression of us.

At the unveiling of a gift from Denmark to the United Nations entitled "The Sun Chariot", presented by Queen Margrethe II, New York, 22 February

Decolonization: a historic

anniversary

The year 1990 was not only the thirtieth anniversary of the historic Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, but also the year when Namibia acceded to independence. In this context, I wist to pay special tribute to the important contribution that this Committee has made, both as an advocate for the rights of the Namibian people, and in supporting the efforts that led to the independence of Namibia.

At the opening of the 1991 session of the Special Committee on decolonization...