|
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear delegates to the Eurasian Media Forum,
Welcome to the Kazakh land, to Kazakhstan which is now an
authoritative member of the international community and the leader in
Central Asia. Since its
establishment the Eurasian Media Forum, which is being held for the
seventh time now, has been searching for ways of resolving problems
relevant to global development.
The range of issues to be looked
at this time is broader for it is known that we are committed to
resolving a number of political conflicts and overcoming the economic
crisis, which is of concern to the whole of the world.
Moreover, freedom of speech and
expression, and credible media reporting for the public are relevant
throughout the world. I believe
that these issues will be seriously discussed by members of
international media organisations attending this Forum.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We last met one year ago. Then we spoke about global responsibility
and the need to facilitate a dialogue between civilisations.
Has the world become safer since
then? Have solutions to pressing problems been offered? Have risks to
the world associated with modern challenges been mitigated?
Unfortunately, no. All existing
conflicts are still going on, and the risks have not been mitigated.
And there are even new ones now.
The world is again facing such challenge as separatism, which this
time has caused a real crisis in international law. Events in Kosovo
and Tibet have immediately became part of the set of tools used in the
global geopolitical struggle.
The world financial crisis
became the biggest challenge last year as it hit credit and financial
systems in many countries. And this makes everybody wonder whether we
need to stick to one or two international currencies, or create
regional currencies that could interact, given that the donor
countries have started cutting economic aid to poor countries.
And today the world is expecting
big humanitarian catastrophes like hunger, epidemics and civil
conflicts. According to the United Nations Organization, in the past
three years the world cost of food has grown 83 percent, and food
stocks are at their lowest levels in the past thirty years.
It is expected that by 2020
around one billion people in such vast countries as China and India
will join the middle class, and consumption of such foods such as
meat, milk and rice will grow by 50%.
International analysts believe that the rise in per capita consumption
of foods, and the growing production of bioethanol (by 2010 one third
of all corn to be harvested in the United States will be used to
produce it), as well as climate change result in food security
becoming a pressing problem again. A number of food revolts have
broken out worldwide. And this is happening in the 21st century!
The international price of
energy keeps rising, thus influencing the cost of all commodities,
including food. It seems as though the global economy will soon reach
its stability threshold due to the continuously rising cost of energy.
According to the International
Energy Agency the higher risk is associated with the fact that in the
coming 10 years investment in energy will be falling behind demand
growth rates, which means that an energy shortage will be further
experienced with all its possible consequences.
Dear Forum delegates,
Events that happened in the past
year make us draw conclusions, which are unfortunately not very
pleasant.
Firstly, the deterioration in
the situation in the global economy and food crisis have brought to
nothing all the efforts the international community had undertaken
earlier to mitigate humanitarian risks. In terms of key humanitarian
performance the world came back to what it had been 10 years ago, and
achieving the UN millennium goals is becoming problematic.
Such issues as hunger have taken
on a new look. Before it was caused by drought or other natural
phenomena. Now it is caused by the high cost of food. Almost 40
countries in totally different parts of the world are experiencing a
shortage of food and need help.
Over one billion people
worldwide are facing scarcity of water, and by 2025 this figure will
triple.
The way benefits are distributed has long been endangering the global
balance, and nobody can guarantee that this fragile balance will not
be soon lost.
We were all convinced that it
was impossible to achieve sustainable global development without
overcoming global economic misbalance for it creates an environment
which provokes illegal migration, extremism and growing social
tension.
Today the leading nations and
the international community in general need to take resolute actions
to come up with new forms of international cooperation, which can
stabilise the whole of the world economy and overcome global
disproportions.
As to Kazakhstan, we can play a
substantial role in both energy and food sectors. There are good
prospects for supplies of Kazakhstan energy to international markets.
Even today one third of the oil used in the European Union is produced
in Kazakhstan. Our respective opportunities are well known. And our
country has already become one of the international leaders in terms
of the production and export of grain and flour.
Tremendous opportunities are
apparent in cattle breeding, where environmentally safe and
genetically clean products are produced. The Kazakhstan agricultural
sector is becoming extremely attractive to investors.
Secondly, the geopolitical and
inter-civilisation tensions which are currently intensifying are
diverting enormous resources and thus that making it difficult to
resolve social, economic and environmental problems.
The world is currently being
fractured by numerous geopolitical conflicts, which as they escalate
amid rash comments are turning into conflicts of culture and
civilisation. The division of nations into rich and poor ones,
resulting from events that started happening to mankind centuries ago,
is turning into a division of cultures and religions.
This entails prejudices,
misunderstanding and carelessness like that notorious cartoon scandal
or senseless attacks on the Olympic flame.
The West and Russia, the
Christian world and the Islamic world, rich North and poor South,
developed democracies and "rogue" nations. This is just a short list
of existing civilisation tensions that make our future prospects
cheerless. It is no surprise that the total distrust being experienced
throughout the world is pushing many nations to increase their defence
potential, start an arms race and even obtain weapons of mass
destruction.
Any sensible man must then conclude that there is a need to change
prevailing priorities and values.
Today as never before in the global history all the countries need to
be responsible in a new way.
There is a need to communicate based on legal, cultural and historical
factors, which can lead to a new architecture of global security,
based not on parity of forces but on such qualities as openness,
dialogue and trust.
Thirdly, there is now the need
to re-evaluate assumed opportunities, and the limits of international
jurisdiction taking an account international law, and the role and
responsibly of every single state.
Nowadays nations still act in selfishly perceived national interests.
In doing so commitment of nations to international law is often
inversely proportional to their power.
Such a concept as "international
community" is becoming an abstraction, which is only used to make it
responsible for resolving issues that are difficult to resolve or to
gain "global understanding" for somebody's external policy.
There is a need to create
completely new mechanisms to effectively coordinate the interests of
different international actors. All countries are obliged to act in
order to contribute to regional and global security regardless of
their economic and political potential.
It becomes apparent in the 21st
century that the future should not be predicted. It should be created.
The future cannot be bad or good. It depends on us.
Therefore all countries with no
exception are hugely responsible. Will our children and grandchildren
live in a safer world, adapted to a better life, or will the most
pessimistic and dramatic global development predictions prove correct
– it depends on actions we take today.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Since the moment Kazakhstan gained independence it has been an example
of a nation that never took a single step, action or ever made any
statements that could endanger regional and global security.
The initiatives we launched immediately after gaining independence –
withdrawal from nuclear weapons and promotion of trust in Asia –
demonstrated right away that we recognise our responsibility to the
international community. By the
way, nuclear powers, urging everybody to disarm, non-proliferate and
give up possession of nuclear weapons, are doing nothing to reduce or
eliminate nuclear arsenals. That is what the whole of the
international community needs to take notice of. This is a big
challenge being faced by the mankind. This is what drives other
countries to make and possess nuclear weapons.
Today Kazakhstan has its own
regional and global agenda. There are several items on it:
First. As a country at the interface between the West and the East we
not only recognise the need to facilitate a continuous dialogue
between civilisations, cultures and religions, but we also proactively
advocate it.
The Conference on Interaction
and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) initiative and the
idea of the Eurasian Union offered by our country, are supported by
more and more people. Kazakhstan took the lead in setting up the
economic union of central Asian states. Despite the fact that some
leaders in our region still don't recognise the need to set up the
union that is in the interests of all our states, I think that this
initiative has good prospects, too.
In 2003, our capital, Astana,
which will mark its 10th anniversary in two months from now, became
the centre of global dialogue between people representing different
faiths. We plan to hold the 3rd Congress of the World and Traditional
Religions next year, and we would like it to be held under the United
Nations Organization aegis. This
unique Forum may be an illustrative example of the fact that it is
only possible to bridge the gap between religions and cultures through
peace, understanding and partnership between various nations. And such
goals can be achieved – it just takes patience and willingness to
speak to each other. Second. We
launched the initiative to facilitate a dialogue between the West and
the Islamic world. I may say that it is of great interest to the
member states of the Islamic Conference Organisation. It was highly
valued in the West, as well. In order to follow it up, an
international conference on Common World: Progress Through Diversity
will be held in Astana this October. We invited foreign ministers from
Muslim and Western countries to attend it.
We see it as a venue for a
dialogue close to the idea of the Alliance of Civilisations aimed at
mobilising the collective political will to bridge the gap and
eliminate growing mistrust between civilisations.
Third. Our country also strives
to play a significant role in economic cooperation between Europe and
Asia.
Incidentally, despite the
adverse impact of the world financial crisis our economy is generally
performing well and is not causing concern to our people.
The economy continues growing
fast. Prices of goods that we traditionally export are still high.
Currency reserves are adequate, and the country's sustainable economy
is able to overcome any temporary difficulties.
Striving to serve as an economic bridge between various parts of the
continent, we began implementing a project called Western China -
Western Europe. When implemented, it will link the two biggest parts
of Eurasia by powerful transport routes. We are planning to invest 7.5
billion US Dollars in it. It will
be the restoration of the Great Silk Road, which centuries ago brought
the Asian and European nations closer to each other.
I am pleased to state that as I mentioned earlier, it was Europe that
recently became the key trade partner of Kazakhstan. The political
dialogue is developing positively, too. That's how the decision about
electing Kazakhstan to chair the OSCE in 2010 can be described.
This decision encouraged us to develop a special programme called The
Path to Europe. It is evidence of our commitment to increasing
cooperation with Europe in such sectors as power, freight transit,
transfer of technology, education and humanitarian cooperation.
Fourth. We shall focus on
setting the international agenda of Kazakhstan's upcoming chair of the
OSCE.
We are planning to put the
emphasis on pressing problems such as security and support for the
dialogue between cultures and religions.
Our aim is to recall once again
that it is impossible to shake hands when fists are clenched.
Our aim is to support eliminating the new dividing lines in Europe, to
search for factors uniting the countries representing Euro-Atlantic
and Eurasian areas of operations of the Organization.
A separate group includes issues of building a safe, stable and
reliable central Asia. For this we count on the proactive
implementation of the European Union's Strategy for Central Asia.
There is also the need to make sure that the OSCE will play an
adequate role in the settlement and rehabilitation process in
Afghanistan after the conflict is resolved.
We want to propose to member
states of the Organization to make a sort of road map to support
ethnic and religious accord. It will be useful for all post-conflict
societies in the vast Eurasian continent.
All our efforts and all our
experience are evidence of one thing – the dialogue between cultures
and civilisations is not only required, but it is also possible. It is
demonstrated by Kazakhstan where people, representing 130
nationalities and ethnic groups, and 46 faiths live and develop in
peace. It is the only way of overcoming destructive stereotypes,
representing both parties as rivals.
Of course, the media and experts play a significant role here. It
depends on their objectivity and their morality whether such
far-fetched obstacles will be overcome, myths destroyed and mistakes
corrected so that they no longer impede cultural dialogue and the
harmonious co-existence of different civilisations.
Dear Forum delegates,
The media have colossal opportunities in the 21st century. Global
communication networks, satellite television and the Internet give the
media a chance to get everywhere.
Yes, new information
opportunities promise unprecedented freedom, but at the same time they
make it possible to manipulate and mislead people.
Today due to national partiality
and heavy dependence on ruling elites, the media often become a tool
of global political struggle, being used in information wars. This is
an alarming trend.
Any journalist must recognise the power of what he or she says.
Although the international agenda is set by politicians, the media
have an opportunity to adjust it and incorporate such components as
moral and justice.
Leo Tolstoy once said: "A
mistake does not stop being a mistake just because the majority finds
it is not a mistake".
Reporting ideals, culture,
aspirations and the needs of other nations, the media can contribute
to the elimination of ignorance and misunderstanding between them, and
promote and strengthen common human solidarity.
The objectivity and justice of
the leading international media could considerably mitigate the
potential of conflict breaking out in many hot spots of the world.
We are obliged to learn how to
find a balance between the right to freedom of speech and the concern
for global security.
I hope that the Media Forum will
focus on looking for answers to these pressing questions of these
days.
I wish you all good health and
success to the seventh Kazakhstan Media Forum! Thank you for your
attention!
|
