Mr. Chairman,

Cuba offers great importance to the efforts made within the framework of the UN system to guarantee that all the peoples of the world fully exercise their right to self-determination.

The historical evolution of this right has been clearly sustained by the struggle of the peoples under colonial and foreign occupation, whose validity is still in force. Other similarly condemnable forms of violations of the exercise of the right to self-determination, such as domination and control policies on developing countries and the theories advocating an alleged “right of humanitarian intervention”, add up to the existance of non-self-governing territories and foreign occupation in nations such as that of the occuppied Arab territories, including Palestine.

Mr. Chairman,

The exercise of peoples’ right to self-determination is a preliminary condition for the full realization of all human rights. Talking about respect for these rights would be senseless, as long as foreign domination and occupation persist.

In this regard, Cuba demands the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from all the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine and the Syrian Golan, as well as, full respect for the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to establish their own independent and sovereign State. Likewise, Cuba defends the right to self-determination of the people of Puerto Rico and hopes that it joins the community of nations that are free from the colonial scourge in Latin American and the Caribbean.

Mr. Chairman,

Mercenary activities do not belong to the past. They have not only increased, but have also acquired new and dangerous forms which threaten the observance of human rights and the full exercise of the right of the peoples to self-determination.

Cuba welcomes the coming into force of the 1989 International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. Our country is now taking final steps towards the ratification of such instrument, expecting to do so in short term.

Cuba supports the proposals submitted by the former Rapporteur, Mr. Bernales Ballesteros, for the progressive development of the legal classification of mercenary activities and welcomes the election of Ms. Shaista Shameen, as the new Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the question of the use of mercenaries, and expresses its assurance to continue the work carried out by Mr. Bernales Ballesteros.

The resolution to be submitted by our delegation on the item, cosponsored by many other countries, will focus on those recommendations, and will equally ensure the follow-up to the important investigation by Mr. Bernales Ballesteros as to the activities of certain international private security companies; the new metamorphosis of global mercenarism.

Cuba wishes to highlight the Rapporteur’s relevant work of investigation, follow-up and denunciation on the terrorist and mercenary activities carried out against Cuba from 1997 to this date. Such actions were confirmed by the Rapporteur during his visit to our country in 1999. Likewise, we support the Rapporteur’s views on the clearly established and increasingly evident relation between the concepts of mercenarism and terrorism.

Likewise, the Rapporteur visited other countries where he interviewed several people responsible for these criminal activities against the Cuban people, among them those four who were caught in fraganti in Panama in 2000, while preparing an assasination plot on the Cuban President on the ocassion of the Iberoamerican Summit, which, if successful would have also taken the lives of thousands of Panamanian students and university professors.

Last August, the Cuban government denounced the pardon granted by the ex-President of Panama, Ms. Mireya Moscoso, to these four mercenaries and terrorists of Cuban origin, Luis Posada Carriles, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo, Pedro Remón and Guillermo Novo Sampol, an action supported and accepted by the anti-Cuban terrorist groups based in the United States and by the country’s authorities.

As a reminder, Mr. Posada Carriles has publicly acknowledged being directly responsible for the destruction of a Cubana de Aviación aircraft in flight in 1976, where 73 people died, and for the organization and implementation of the campaign with bombs in Cuban hotels and touristic resorts in 1997, among many other numerous actions comprised his long criminal records.

Mr. Jiménez Escobedo murdered Artañán Díaz Díaz, a fishery technician, in Mexico and is a Mexican justice outlaw being tried for explosive and drug trafficking. Mr. Novo Sampoll could be demanded by numerous countries for being one of the assassines of Orlando Letelier, Chilean ex-Foreign Minister and his secretary, a US national. Mr. Remón assassinated a Cuban diplomat in New York on 11 September 1980, the Cuban immigrant José Eulalio Negrín, and also placed bombs in the headquarters of the Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations in 1979.

The pardon granted to these four mercenaries and terrorists by the Panamanian ex-President is a disgraceful act and violates the national legislation of that country and the international instruments for the struggle against terrorism.

Three of them were welcomed and enjoy the most complete impunity in US territory. The fourth is hidden somewhere in Central America. It is not discarded that they are already planning new terrorist acts by means of the use of mercenaries who may jeopardize not only the Cuban and other people’s peace and security.

The Cuban people has been a victim of the most fierce terrorism and of mercenarism for more than four decades, including the relatives of the more than 3,000 people who died and the thousands of wounded, injured and handicapped people, resulting from these terrorist acts, cannot understand or be silent in front of such disgrace.

Mr. Chairman,

The Cuban people, facing during more than 45 years the most dissimilar and serious actions by the United States against the enjoyment of its right to self- determination, among them, a military invasion, nuclear agression threat, terrorism and biological warfare, numerous plots to assassinate its main leaders, the maintenance against the will of the Cuban people of a portion of their territory illegally occupied by the Naval Base in Guantánamo and the consequenses of a genocidal blockade; is being threatened once again by an eventual military aggression by the superpower, with the aim of destroying the political, economic and social system freely decided upon by Cubans themselves in the exercise of their right to self-determination.

The Cuban delegation would like to reaffirm that all its people is willing to defend, by any means necessary, its right to self-determination –conquered after more than a century of struggle by several generations of Cubans who have not hesitated, nor will ever hesitate, to lay down their lives for their nation’s independence and sovereignty.

Thank you very much.