MINSK, 1 December (BelTA) – “Today we cannot escape the feeling that another big conflict or a war is looming in the world,” said Aleksandr Lukashenko from the UN rostrum. He said this not at the recent summit in Baku, but almost ten years ago - at the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York. Unfortunately, these words have become prophetic. In the new episode of the BelTA YouTube project “How It Was. DOC” we will show you footage of the working visit of the Belarusian leader to the United States and recall what the head of our state said from the high rostrum of the organization that was already beginning to lose its authority.
The president of Belarus arrived in New York on 26 September. Of course, this visit was not limited to a speech at the summit. The first place Aleksandr Lukashenko visited was the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, where the president honored those killed in this terrible terrorist attack. Belarusian Irina Buslo was among those who died when the World Trade Center complex collapsed. The president laid a bouquet of flowers opposite her name that was carved on one of the marble slabs of the memorial.
As is usually the case, bilateral meetings were held on the sidelines of the General Assembly session. Aleksandr Lukashenko met not only with the leaders of other states, but also with the UN Secretary-General and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
But let's move on to the speech of the president at the general debate of the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly. The organization had already begun to lose its authority and was not particularly eager to solve the problems facing the world. For example, armed conflicts. The war in the East had already begun to flare up, but for some reason only Belarus and Russia sought to stop it when it was still possible.
“I would least want to sound prophetically, but today one cannot help avoiding the feeling of seeing a phantom of a new big conflict, if not a war. We must not allow this sinister phantom turn into reality. We have gathered today here to discuss important issues, outline a development program for the United Nations Organization. I have already said this: for millions of people on the planet the very notion of ‘sustainable development’ sounds as profane words as they die every day, children, the elderly die. Only one decision is important today, which is to put an end to wars and conflicts, at least to the ones that are currently raging on the planet,” the president said.
They got together, discussed an important problem, outlined some programs... Does this remind you of anything? This is just one example of the talk that the UN events were reduced to. The recent summit in Baku is the best example of this. You can talk a lot, argue, pass resolutions, but not solve specific problems. There were a huge number of them in the world back then, in 2015. And now there are only more.
“Global economic threats pose a serious challenge to the world's stability. Currency wars, sanctions, redivision of commodity markets, unfair competition and other negative phenomena aggravate the global crisis. And attempts of a number of leading states to solve their problems at the expense of other countries only add to confrontation and estrangement,” Aleksandr Lukashenko noted.
Something could have been done to eliminate unfair competition, and the sanctions that are its consequence, and currency wars. The Belarusian leader was not heard then, and today all this has escalated to the extreme. And the sanctions have intensified, and the war is no longer a phantom, but has become completely tangible.
The president's message still has not been embraced and acted upon. Only the stakes have increased manifold in nine years. And today another war is looming that is going to utterly destroy humankind. Speaking in New York, Aleksandr Lukashenko insisted that there was no alternative to dialogue, and nations would simply have to seek collective solutions to problems. He urged that it was time to stop and not cross the line, otherwise humanity would face a global conflict and an exchange of nuclear blows. Belarus was still willing to host Ukraine peace talks to prevent this conflict from spilling into a nuclear confrontation.
Of course, these are far from all issues that the president raised in his speech in New York. To learn more about Aleksandr Lukashenko's UN speech in 2015, watch the project “How it was. DOC” on our YouTube channel.
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