Musharraf seeks mechanisms to solve issues: Address to Asian-African moot
JAKARTA, April 23: President General Pervez Musharraf on Friday called for ‘powerful multilateral conflict-resolution mechanisms’ to handle festering disputes that had been causing instability in various regions around the globe. Addressing the Asian-African Summit 2005, he said that while the international community “must optimize bilateral negotiations for conflict resolution, powerful multilateral conflict-resolution mechanisms need to be institutionalized for the cause of regional and global peace.”
He said that today Pakistan and India could be jointly proud of showing sincerity, flexibility and courage that could lead to bilateral achievement of peace and harmony.
The president observed that the authority of the United Nations as a dispute resolver had seriously eroded over the years.
He said that Pakistan’s support for rehabilitation, reconstruction and normalization activities in Afghanistan was also a manifestation of its effective contribution towards political stability.
He said Pakistan had also been in the forefront of international efforts to promote peace in Africa by being a major contributor to the UN peacekeeping operations.
Referring to the UN reforms, he said the world should work together on consensus-based reforms guided by the principles of sovereign equality with emphasis on developmental issues.
He underlined the importance of concerted efforts to counter notions of clash of civilizations. “It is also important for all of us to join hands to counter the false and dangerous notion of clash between civilizations, and prejudices against Islam, which is a religion of peace and moderation.”
The international community, he emphasized, needed to broaden its view of socio-cultural understanding to promote inter-civilization harmony. He said his concept of enlightened moderation was an attempt to achieve this objective for the Muslim world.
“The Muslim societies require reform and the international community can help the process through educational, technological and developmental assistance.”
Underscoring the need for a joint focus on cooperation in trade and economic areas, Gen Musharraf said developing countries had been speaking of South-South cooperation for long but in practice it continued to be an illusion.
“Our mutual understanding combined with a preferential treatment between Asian and African countries requires the focus of our policymakers, trade officials and the business sector,” he said.
The president stated that developing countries’ struggle against poverty, under-development and disease was far from over. “We have yet to make our collective voice carry weight and make it felt in the world,” he said.
He observed that international agenda, being pursued by the developed world, focused on fostering democracy, facilitating access to market, promoting the private sector and furthering the cause of human rights.
“Globalization has become the order of the day although without adequate safeguards and equity this itself, to some extent, is becoming a problem. Terrorism and WMD proliferation have emerged as major threats,” he maintained.
Agreeing with the Declaration on the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership and the Joint Ministerial Plan of Action, the president said political solidarity, economic cooperation and socio-cultural relations should form the core of future cooperation between Asian and African nations.
The failure of the developed world to contribute its stipulated 0.7 per cent of GDP towards the millennium development goals betrayed a lack of seriousness toward addressing poverty, backwardness and under-development, he said.
“Clearly, a stronger global commitment is needed to eliminate poverty and deprivation and to comprehensively improve living conditions of people around the world. This represents the greatest challenge of our times and lies at the core of fighting terrorism and extremism.”
However, the president pointed out, the Eastern and Southeast Asian nations had emerged as the new global economic centres, emanating hope and raising the living standards of more than a quarter of the humanity.
“We must ensure that economic multilateralism is strengthened in an affirmative manner to benefit the developing world in the long-term.
“We must bank on developing our own technological and economic potential,” he said.
He said Pakistan, as one of the five co-sponsors of the Bandung Conference in 1955, accorded great significance to its principles and added: “We must remain committed to the vision and spirit of Bandung. Let me assure you that Pakistan will continue its efforts to strengthen the political, socio-cultural and economic bonds between all our countries.”—APP
