SG/SM/6026

SECRETARY-GENERAL WELCOMES SIGNING OF AGREEMENT ON COOPERATION BETWEEN INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION AND UNITED NATIONS

Following is the text of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's statement, translated from the French, at the signing today of the Agreement on Cooperation between the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the United Nations:

I should like to join you in welcoming the signing of this Agreement on Cooperation between the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the United Nations.

This text will serve to strengthen the long-standing ties that exist between our organizations in many areas, particularly in the promotion of peace, human rights and democracy.

In recent years the Inter-Parliamentary Union has made an invaluable contribution to the work of the United Nations. I am thinking specifically of the diplomatic role it played in Cyprus, the institutional assistance it offered in Cambodia and the electoral assistance it provided in Namibia. I am thinking also of its efforts in Haiti and Burundi.

We all know how important parliaments are in today's world.

They are without a doubt one of the new players on the international scene.

As representatives of public opinion, parliaments have an essential role to play in the service of the democratic imperative to which we all earnestly aspire: democracy within States and democracy between States.

Last August I told parliamentarians meeting in New York that I very much hoped the Inter-Parliamentary Union could become more involved in the work of the United Nations, for you embody one of the key ways in which the world is represented.

The Agreement which we are signing today seems to me to be a step in this direction, and it is an important step which formalizes a relationship of cooperation that I hope will only grow closer and deeper.

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United Nations