Statement on behalf of the delegation of Austalia

Australia's starting point for preparation for the Special Session is that the 1990 Special Session was held against the background of a strong and compelling political demand for effective action by the United Nations system in its work against illicit narcotics. It is quite reamrkable, in United Nations terms, that in only six years it was accepted by the international community that another Special Session should be convened.

The task ahead of us in preparing for the 1998 Special Session is to find a way to reconvene the sense of political commitment which pervaded the earlier Session, and learn some lessons from other efforts.

The first lesson, conveyed unambiguosly by the 1996 High Level Segment of ECOSOC, is that (whatever we might prefer to say) meetings spent listening to lengthy statements of national position achieve nothing. We must avoid a Special Session whose main contribution is a succession of set-piece speeches.

It will, of course, also be necessary to make arrangements to meet some other needs:

Many participating states will see the Session as a valuable forum for exchanges of views between Ministers;

It will be important for such opportunities also to be available to other delegation groups, particularly those representing those communities most affected by illicit drugs;

The Session should also bring together delegation participants with a real interest in sharing experience and learning from one another about ways in which the problems caused by illicit drugs can best be resolved at a national level.

There are several ways this can be approached, but it will require some clever strategic planning by the Session's organisers.

One option which we would wish to see considered would be a procedure for the Special Session which would seee it move quickly to active consideration of priority issues without being bogged in the traditional swamp of lengthy and tedious debate. We would encourage our colleagues to borrow from what we see as a very helpful example set by the World Conference on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, held in Stockholm in 1996.

That Conference began by adopting its final documents - at its first meeting - and then moving into workshop sessions which were held simultaneously with a plenary forum at which Ministers were able to deliver statements of national policy. Ministerial statemnts were strictly limited in length, and the workshops were held around selected priority themes.

If that example were to be used for the preparation of the 1998 Special Session, it would be necessary to use the next fifteen months to draft and agree on final documents for the Session which directly addressed substantial issue of concern, perhaps making use of a small informal drafting group which could seek the views of all interested participants on issues of concern. It could then prepare drafts for consideration and preliminary acceptance for the next preparatory session of this Commission, with a view to having final documents ready for acceptance at the outset of the Special Session.

The Special Session would then move into a procedural format along the following lines:

plenary sessions would receive statemnts by delegation leaders, many of whom, we would hope, would be Ministers expressing firmly the strength of their governments' political commitment to all levels of work against illicit drugs;

workshop sessions would be held on four (we suggest) areas of priority topical concern, with the aim of assisting all states in their efforts to deal with problems arising in those areas. We would see it as valuable for the Session organisers to select, with due regard to equitable distribution across geographic and other relevant lines, small panels whose members could help guide discussion in directions which would assist all states in their work to implement effective national strategies.

We recognise that it might also be beneficial to convene, at the conclusion of the workshops' sessions, an ad hoc committee of the Assembly which could refine any outcomes from the workshops and present them to the plenary session for consideration and intergration into a Sessional report which could be used by the United Nations system and member states in their future work.

Mr. Chairman,

We do not look to this Session to create new instruments, but rather to take an honest look at the state of our efforts to implementing the existing conventions. Under the scenario we propose it will be necessary to select four topics for discussion in the proposed woekshops. In our view these should be

Measures to promote universal adherence to and effective implementation of the three Conventions;

Measures to strengthen internaional cooperation against money-laundering;

Demand reduction measures;

Improving intergovernmental cooperation, including work to improve the effectiveness of the intergovernmental machinery charged with addressing narcotics issues in different agencies and organisations.

We recognise that there are a number of issues of importance to delegations which ar not specifically addressed in this short list, but would ask delegations to understand that it is simply not possible to discuss all issues in any depth at a Special Session of the General Assembly unless it is at least two weeks long. We have sought to identify those issues which have come forward as those generating the most widespread interest, across the widest range of countries, and in fields likely to attract the political interest which we feel is vital to the success of the Session.

The issues listed are also a mixture of those which attract significant domestic attention in nearly all countries, and those which are of undeniable international and intergovernmental concern.

A short comment on domestic concerns and the need for them to be integrated into our work is also appropriate at this stage.

Australia, with the experience of being a federal state, is of the view that it is increasingly important for all relevant levels of government to be exposed to the intricacies of international debate on drugs issues. Australia would hope that other member states will share this view, and will see the Special Session as an opportunity for representatives of other levels of government in their own countries to participate in the Session. We, for our part, would envisage making a place available within our delegation for a representative of our States and Territories.

Likewise, Australia holds the view that the Session provides an excellent opportunity for relevant non-governmental groups to meet and exchange views, and, if possible, to help governments understand better the way narcotics problems affect societies in all parts of the world. We also envisage including appropriate representatives of our non-governmental community in the Austalian team at the Session, and would urge all other participants to look for ways to contribute to this opportunity. In this context, it would be our hope that the Special Session will have a parallel NGO forum organised alongside it, and that a way will be found for NGOs to contribute to the Session itself.

We recognise that these views may take some time to digest, but we would urge all delegations to do a good bit of lateral thinking about how to make this Session the success it deserves to be. Narcotic drugs are too serious a series of subjects to be sent off again into turgid debating swamp from which nothing of particular value emerges.