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It's not about territories. It's about the existence of a Jewish state at any boundaries. And yet at the time, right at that time, we were threatened with annihilation by three Arab armies that were about to invade us. You know what Israelis were doing at the time? They were digging mass graves in preparation for the thousands and thousands of casualties in preparation to bury our dead. At the time, I was an Israeli high school student in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, five days before the war broke out. I flew back to Israel. I found a country in total blackout. Israel braced for impact. I flew back to see my brother, Jonathan. Yonatan. Yoni. He was a 21 year old paratroop officer and like the rest of the army, his unit was already mobilized. I went to find him. I was told the paratroops are encamped in the orchards, the orange groves around Ramla. So I went there and I asked some soldiers, do you know where Yoni Netanyahu is? Nope, nope. Then one guy said, oh, you mean the young guy? Yeah, he's in the next grove. So I went there and suddenly at the end of a long row of trees, I saw my brother. He was absolutely shocked to see me. Bibi said, Bibi, what are you doing here? We ran, we hugged each other and over a cup of makeshift military coffee, I asked him the question that was on my mind. The question that was on everybody's mind. So I said. What's going to happen? He paused, and then he said something I'll never forget. We're going to win, he said. We have no other choice.
We witness geopolitical instability in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. It is made worse by growing nuclear ambitions in the Middle East and Asia, as well as the irresponsible transfer of military related goods, dual use items and sensitive technologies. In recent months, Iran has continued attacking neighboring countries, often through its proxies, while actively impairing the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. These actions constitute a serious threat to regional and international peace and security. We reaffirm our full solidarity with the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Jordan. We call on Iran to halt its nuclear and missile programs, as well as its collaboration with armed groups across the Middle East. Lithuania commends all efforts to find a solution ensuring freedom of navigation. We will contribute with our demining capabilities to the international maritime missions in the Strait of Hormuz. As regards the situation in the Gaza Strip, my country supports international efforts to maintain and consolidate the cease fire. The Comprehensive plan to end the Gaza conflict, including the deployment of the Temporary International Stabilisation Force, provides the guidelines to follow. Lithuania reiterates the importance of full demilitarization of non-state armed groups. Humanitarian aid must also be allowed to reach those in need safely and without obstruction. To this day, the two state solution remains the only way towards a comprehensive, just and lasting peace. In this light, it is crucially important to abstain from any further actions incompatible with a credible political process. Ladies and gentlemen, the one conflict that poses the greatest threat to the world order is Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, supported by its proxies. In the 12 years since the illegal occupation of Crimea, Russia has escalated from clandestine operations and limited warfare in eastern Ukraine to massive military operations, mass killings and ultimately the largest drone attacks against civilian infrastructure the world has ever seen. The current stage of the war, which began with the full scale invasion in February 2022, has already lasted longer than the First World War. In the last 55 months, Russia has suffered 1.5 million military casualties. In the last year, it has gained 0.3% of Ukraine's territory, at the cost of over 400 000 soldiers killed and wounded. Yet all these enormous efforts, all that blood and tears, basically came to nothing. Ukraine is still standing proudly as an independent state. The Ukrainian language, culture and national identity are alive and thriving. In all but name, Russia has already lost the war. Yet its leadership does not allow itself to admit defeat, fearing international legal accountability and possible revenge from its own people. As inevitable approaches, the stakes get higher and the Kremlin regime increasingly finds itself cornered. How much more Ukrainian civilian lives will be sacrificed on Russia's war altar? How many people will be tortured, sexually assaulted thrown into dark dungeons, never to see the sunlight again? How many children will be illegally separated from their parents and sent to Russia to suffer indoctrination? We do not know the answers, yet we must all feel the deep pain brought by this brutal and pointless war. And we all should join our forces to draw Ukraine's victory closer, for it is only Ukraine's final victory safeguarding its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity that could ensure the global peace, security and credibility of the United Nations Charter. What we can not allow is the brute force prevailing over international law. We cannot tolerate any longer Moscow's colonial aspirations, which undermine global food security and driving up food prices. Russia's imperial ambitions reach far into Europe, Africa and Asia. No country should consider itself immune from this threat. Naturally, Lithuania witnesses many dangers up close. In recent months, Russia's war of aggression has led to numerous violations of our airspace by combat drones. Russia has also intensified hybrid attacks, disinformation and sabotage efforts. Where Russia advances, opening Pandora's box of new techniques for destabilisation, other hostile actors follow, learning new skills and ideas.
Let us allow cooperation with Cuba and with all nations to be guided by the interests and well-being of people. Let us ensure that small island developing states have fair access to the financing necessary to build resilience before disaster strikes. Let us equip our young people to lead the technological transformation rather than become casualties of it. Let us protect our oceans and our planet, and let us transform our multilateral institutions so that they deliver not simply promises, but progress. The measure of this United Nations cannot only be the resolutions we adopt, it must be the lives we improve, the children we protect, the conflict we help prevent the opportunities we create and the hope we restore. Mr. president, Grenada stands ready to work with all Member States and the international partners in advancing a future that is peaceful, resilient, inclusive and sustainable. One year ago, Grenada came before this assembly with a message about resilience and education. Today we build upon that message. Resilience gives us the strength to endure. Transformation gives us the power to change. Partnership gives us the ability to do both. Together, through renewed trust and genuine partnership, we can build a United Nations that delivers, a United Nations that protects, a United Nations that listens, a United Nations that acts, and ultimately a world in which no country, no community, and no person is left behind.
In the relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the clarification of the fate of several thousand missing persons is a matter that needs to be addressed, on which we have reached an agreement to cooperate with Azerbaijan. Armenia is ready to continue and deepen cooperation with Azerbaijan on the issue of de-mining and, of course, people in the Republic of Armenia are waiting for the return of Armenians who were detained in Azerbaijan as a consequence of the conflict. Along with these issues still being unresolved, another reason that fuels pessimists is the use of conflict rhetoric from time to time in certain circles of Armenia and Azerbaijan, sometimes at the official level. I think that we, I mean Armenia and Azerbaijan, have achieved more than sufficient results, which should be more valuable for us than the use of conflict rhetoric, whether it is about history or historical-cultural monuments or anything else. Nurturing the peace, strengthening and making it institutional should be the main theme of cooperation between Armenia and Azerbaijan. For two and a half years now, there have been no casualties or injuries as a result of crossfire between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and I think this is the greatest value that was created as a result of cooperation in recent years. We have never had such a period in the relations between independent Armenia and independent Azerbaijan before. Even though Armenians and Azerbaijanis have centuries of experience of peaceful coexistence. Our task, however, is not to restore that experience, but to build inter-state relations on the basis of that experience of the peoples, based on respect for each other's territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence. This, by the way, is exactly the rhetoric that Armenia and Azerbaijan have already agreed upon and initialed in the text of the Agreement on Establishing Peace and Inter-State Relations between the two countries. The signing and ratification of that agreement, which was initialed at the Washington Peace Summit, is the next major topic in the joint agenda of Armenia and Azerbaijan, and we will consistently continue to work in this direction. Ladies and gentlemen.
The NATO action in Libya significantly worsened the security, political, humanitarian and human rights situation in our region through in particular, the spread of terrorism and violent extremism. Now, faced with this reality, it is legitimate to question the effectiveness of the tools available to our organization. It is for this reason that we welcome the Strategic review of the United Nations Regional Office for West Africa and the Sahel, which should lead to an approach better aligned with the realities and concerns of the people impacted. The government of Mali reiterates its strong condemnation of international terrorism and its foreign state sponsors, who finance arm, provide logistical support and intelligence to this organized transnational crime. Following Ukraine's initial statement in 2024, in which it acknowledged support for terrorist groups operating in the Sahel, that country publicly reiterated the highest level of state interference in Africa. And beyond our states, other independent sources also corroborate these unacceptable actions by Ukraine. Here we have a country which claims to be protecting its territorial integrity, where, as in Africa, in the Sahel, it provides clear support to terrorist groups and other harmful groups which undermine the territorial integrity of our countries. Given our history, the international community in particular Africa, cannot just remain silent in the face of what it was being done by Ukraine. It has enormous consequences for African countries, and it goes beyond that. We understand very well that Ukraine is just a visible part of the iceberg, which is trying to destabilize our country, to break our determination to throw off the colonial yoke. Terrorism, which is nurtured and supported from outside, does it in three ways. First, in the armed way. We know that it's attacking civilian populations. It's a security crisis in the economic way, which impacts our countries and through the media notably through us, organized and systematic disinformation campaigns and certain media outlets nostalgic for colonial past play a role in these. The coordinated attacks of 25th April and 4th of July 2026, and several locations in Mali caused numerous casualties, and they demonstrate the existence of the dangerous connection that we're becoming increasingly aware of. So the scenario we witnessed in 2012 is repeating itself now with terrorist groups and so-called separatist armed groups now forming openly terrorist coalition against Mali institutions and populations. Regional and international responses, including the deployment of international forces, have failed to halt these complex security crises and massacres affecting Sahelian populations.
Following the Dagalo militias takeover of Al-Fashir and the compelling evidence and testimony presented by the Sultan of the Masalit people to the Security Council, we call upon you to advance legal accountability processes for the perpetrators. This is one of the effective avenues for de-escalation and for curbing the wave of violations committed by the militia, with considerable support from its regional and external sponsors. These continued violations alone undermine the credibility of any political partnership in the political wing of the Rapid Support Forces Militia during the remainder of the transition period, given its continued and reprehensible complicity. The Security Council has failed to condemn and identify the sponsors, thereby contributing to the concealment of those atrocities. These sponsors have also continued to recruit foreign mercenaries and provided political cover for the militias political wing, while fabricating accusations against the Sudanese armed forces, supported by regionally funded platforms backed by the militias sponsors that disseminate disinformation, baseless allegations and fabricated condemnations aimed at tarnishing the reputation of our professional armed forces. Our armed forces have fought alongside the allies during World War Two. The response has been efforts to undermine and destroy the armed forces and to impose sanctions on their leaders and expand the Darfur arms embargo to encompass all of Sudan. This paves the way for the victory of the militia and the foreign mercenaries, who constitute 60% of its members. Throughout this war of aggression, the Sudanese armed forces have adhered to the following principles the protection of civilians in accordance with the approved national plan submitted by Sudan to the Security Council. Distinction at all times between combatants and civilians, and between civilian objects and military targets. Taking precautionary measures to avoid and minimise incidental harm. Refraining from using civilians as human shields. Refraining from recruiting child soldiers, refraining from enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention of civilians, and adhering to humanitarian truces to end the war. Pressure must be exerted on the regional sponsors and certain neighbouring states that have not merely facilitated the transfer of weapons, equipment and supplies to the militia through their territories, but have also created battlefronts and enabled repeated attacks launched by militias and mercenaries from within their territories in broad daylight and established hospitals along their borders to treat militia casualties. Mr. president, the cause of Palestine remains the central issue in the Middle East. The Palestinian people must be empowered to exercise their right to self-determination and establish their independent state, with Jerusalem as its capital, and refugees must be allowed to return in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy. Sudan also stresses the importance of stability in the Red Sea, Bab el Mandeb and the Gulf region. Given their impact on the wider region, there is a need to end the current situation in a manner that spares the peoples of the region, the scourge of war and its consequences. We reaffirm our full support for the countries of the region in preserving their sovereignty, security and stability. We underscore the importance of respect for international law and the charter of the United Nations, and the importance of refraining from interference in the internal affairs of states. Before concluding, allow me to convey to you the greetings of General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, who is at this moment among his people, as they chant in one voice, one army, one people behind their leader.
The catastrophic humanitarian conditions endured by the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip, as a result of continued casualties, displacement, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the collapse of the health care system require safe, urgent and sustained humanitarian access. It also requires allowing the UN and its specialized agencies to carry out their missions, especially the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Tunisia considers that any attempt to dismantle this long standing UN agency, or to undermine its mandate prior to a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, constitutes a desperate attempt to eliminate the right of return and to liquidate the Palestinian cause as a whole. The logic of force may be able to impose a bitter and inhumane reality for a period of time, but it can never break the will of peoples nor halt the course of history.
