As I take my turn to intervene in this particularly important debate, I would like to offer the President my sincere and fraternal congratulations and to express the satisfaction of the Moroccan delegation at seeing a son of the Arab Maghreb, a man who is loyal to the African cause and devoted to the principles of the United Nations Charter, elected to the highest office of our Organization. At the personal level, too, how could I not be proud and touched to see one who was formerly a fellow-student, and a comrade-in-arms in the struggle for out peoples' liberation, become President of this Assembly?
203. I am happy to see him in the Chair, and I am confident that his intellectual qualities and his experience will enable him to deal successfully with the problems confronting this sixteenth session, which has been referred to in this hall as the "session of the brink".
204. I have listened carefully and given thought to the words of the distinguished speakers who have preceded me on this rostrum.
•205. I believe that the anxieties they have expressed reflect the uneasiness and apprehension of the peoples which they represent. All of us are deeply disturbed in face of the blind forces which are buffeting the world, In fact—why hesitate to say it?—we are all afraid. Yes, we are afraid of war. But that fear may be beneficial and may contain the seeds of our salvation. Amid the variety of the statements made from this rostrum and the diversity of the attitudes expressed in them, one can discern a general conviction that the persistence of the present disputes is futile and dangerous, that it is time to put an end to artifices and procedural battles, and that consideration for the welfare of mankind must prevail over considerations of self-esteem and prestige and aspirations to greatness. World opinion today is sufficiently enlightened and conscious of the real values, essential to humanity and necessary for the continuance of its mission of progress on earth, not to be deluded by outward shows of greatness or by the imposing facade of a structure based on unethical foundations.
206, We are beginning our work this year at a time when international relations have deteriorated very seriously and when world peace is threatened by a war which could destroy the whole of mankind. On every continent we find one or more sources of tension which for several years have resisted efforts to eradicate them. Indeed, new trouble-spots have been created in various areas merely in order to serve the interests of their creators, at the risk of setting off a world conflagration at any moment. Algeria, Berlin, Laos, Palestine, the Congo,' Mauritania and finally Angola all constitute problems whose solution is becoming increasingly urgent.
207. It was with the important object of seeking such solutions that a large number of non-aligned countries, tirelessly pursuing their efforts for peace, recently made a new endeavour in that direction by meeting at Cairo and at Belgrade to consider
the extent of the danger and its consequences, and to unite in taking action, alone or with the assistance of all those of good will, towards seeking genuine ways of removing anxieties and restoring an atmosphere of trust and sincere co-operation between peoples, such an atmosphere being an essential condition for the ensuring of world peace. I will not stop to refute here the unjustified criticism levelled at the Belgrade Conference in the Press and elsewhere and inspired by motives which are obvious and need no comment. This Conference was a challenge thrown of to those responsible for international tension, a cry of alarm expressing the intense anxiety to which all the peoples are a prey. We should pay a sincere tribute to its promoters and to the work of those who took part in it.
208. Devoted Members of the United Nations, placing ail their hopes in this Organization, these countries met just before the opening of the present session, steadfastly determined to continue their efforts within the United Nations in order to ensure that it employed all its resources and enlisted the support of all its Members to cope with the grave dangers besetting us.
209. At this crucial stage in the international crisis, the United Nations has received a severe blow as a result of the death of the Secretary-General, Mr, Dag Hammarskjold. There is no region of the world where Mr. Hammarskjold's abrupt disappearance has not been deeply felt. This sad event has brought home to us the importance attached by world opinion to the life of this Organization and the role which it plays. Mr. Dag Hammarskjold certainly made a quite personal contribution towards the enforcement of the United Nations Charter, thanks to gifts and qualities which have permanently linked Ms name with the major events of recent years. His tragic disappearance is a considerable loss. The noble work of our Organization must be tirelessly pursued, and strengthened at he points where experience has revealed shortcomings.
210. We are sure that an adequate and effective solution will be found to the problem of the Secretariat, and to that of the structural reform for which our Organization has felt ,a need. The important changes and developments which have taken place in the world since the creation of the United Nations, and the increase in its membership, call for a reconsideration of its structures. We propose that a special United Nations conference should be held to study this important question. Given the delicate and critical situation in which the United Nations finds itself at the present time, we believe it to be essential that this conference should convene immediately, in order to rescue us from this impasse and give the United Nations the strength and authority which will enable it to fulfil the functions entrusted to it by the Charter in the solution of grave international problems.
211. His Majesty the King of Morocco declared last month, at the Conference of Non-Aligned Countries at Belgrade:
"It would be a matter of making a clear distribution of the present seats on the Economic and Social Council and the Security Council, of developing the power and means of action of the regional economic commissions and of amending and improving the system of recruitment of United Nations personnel.
212. Our agenda this year includes, alas, a whole series of problems some of which have been before the United Nations from its earliest years and have already been the subject of clear and decisive pronouncements on its part. Other problems, which have escaped its attention or have never been brought before it, have reached a degree of gravity which imperils the peace of the world. Today all these problems are interconnected and, through the repercussions of one on another, are giving rise to such international tension that it has become essential for the United Nations to fulfil, immediately and energetically, its universal mission. There are a large number of Member States that have had no part whatever in the creation or development of these crises; but today all Members are directly concerned with them, because of the gravity and scope of their consequences.
213. Amid the convulsions shaking the world, it is still the African continent which endures the hardest fate. From one end of that continent to the other, racialism and colonialism manifest themselves in forma whose diversity barely conceals their common source: Algeria, the Congo, Angola, South Africa and South West Africa are all manifestations of the same segregation of races or of civilizations.
214. With regard to the problem of Germany and Berlin, we cannot but point out that its basic causes are bound- up with the division of a country and the destruction of a people1 s unity. The conflicting interests which clash in this area can be reconciled, sooner or later, only if the parties are wise enough not to allow the division of a country to lead to the division of the world. The vicissitudes of war cannot indefinitely stifle the natural impulses of a people whose destiny must be recreated, whatever the difficulties that this people may still have to overcome. While Berlin has once again become the crystallizing point of an international crisis, it also crystallizes our hopes of seeing the parties to the dispute show the necessary human wisdom and political intelligence in order to banish the spectre of war which is haunting the world. We therefore continue to hope that the virtues of negotiation will prevail and will lead to a peaceful and just solution of this grave problem.
215. We have been happy to see that a desire for conciliation has greatly lessened the acuteness of another international problem—that of Laos, which has several times threatened to produce a general conflict. It has been possible to. safeguard peace in Asia by seeking a solution based on the Laotian people's desire for neutrality; this desire must be scrupulously respected, if the encouraging initial action taken, at Geneva is to be consolidated in the near future on the recognition of a neutralist State, guaranteed by She United Nations, can restore that national unity which is essential to the restoration of peace. However, the peace which is being patiently sought in Asia will remain precarious as long as a nation of more than 600 million people—the People's Republic of China, which carries an increasing amount of weight and has a definite influence on international politics—is unjustly barred from the
United Nations, although it could make a positive contribution to our work and would set the seal on our Organization's universality.
216. All these crises and problems produce political tensions which create a desire to "strengthen positions", leading in its turn to a desire for power and to a frantic arms race. The competition in nuclear weapons of mass destruction is obviously a continual threat, to mankind. Enormous sums are pointlessly consumed by such armaments each year, instead of being used to raise the economic and social levels of many countries and to help them banish hunger, disease and ignorance. This money would also help to increase the economic and social prosperity of the protagonists themselves, whose aspirations to well-being have not yet been entirely satisfied. It would also help them to assume moral responsibility in respect of the under-privileged countries, and would give international co-operation its true meaning—that of human solidarity. The important problem of disarmament involves not merely the great Powers. We, the small countries, also have a word to say, for the fate of all mankind is at stake. We consider that the participation of the non-aligned countries in the disarmament negotiations will, help to bring the various standpoints closer together and thus hasten the conclusion of an agreement on general and complete disarmament. We appeal once more to the atomic Powers to cease their nuclear tests, which are both costly and harmful.
217. The two . great Powers have just issued a joint statement of agreed principles for disarmament negotiations [A/4879]. This strengthens our hope of a settlement of this grave problem. There is not a single country which does not wish to support, to the full, the general desire for the earliest possible settlement of the problem. The Moroccan delegation has already made, from this rostrum, proposals which include a plan to give the neutral countries a larger role in the search for a solution. This year, our delegation intends to repeat these proposals during the debate on this question. My country protested against the nuclear tests carried out by France in the Sahara. At the fourteenth session of the General Assembly, Morocco, supported by many other countries, initiated action which resulted in the adoption of a resolution [1379 (XIV)] requesting France to refrain from such tests in the Sahara and elsewhere; but France is still defying the African people and the international community. As a result of its obstinacy, what was so laboriously agreed upon at Geneva has been called in question, and we are once more faced with a crisis which many of us recognized to be a possibility when we appealed to France, also, to suspend its tests.
218. Besides the crisis factors I have just mentioned, there is another factor which has been a source of conflict for some considerable time already and has left its mark on nearly all the problems before us: I would even say that it is the major factor contributing to the deterioration of relations between peoples and the disturbing of their security. I mean colonialism in all its forms. The peoples whose civilization has given the world eminent thinkers, philosophers and historians no longer seem to want to distinguish themselves in the international community, except by this determination to maintain their presence and their wish to exploit countries which in actual fact they conquered by force, although it was done in the name? of morality and civilization—these ideas which they proclaimed only so long as their domination lasted. When we look at the recent history of relations between States, it is difficult not to define them merely as relations between colonizers and colonized. Two dominant trends have characterized this period: On the one hand an emancipation movement reflecting the peoples' determination to shake off for ever the yoke of oppression, and on the other the last manifestations and stratagems of a colonialism that knows its last hour has struck.
219. Africa is now the scene of a fierce, tragic, and often bloody struggle; but Africa, which was the cradle of colonialism, will also be its tomb.
220. For more than seven years, the Algerian people has been carrying on a heroic struggle for its right to freedom and independence. This ruthless war against a people struggling courageously for its dignity and its most sacred rights has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives. What is France expecting from the prolongation of this savage but useless war? What could one year or even ten years more bring to Algeria but more ruins, more destruction? If France has not been able to crush the Algerian movement in seven years of war with the aid of forces much greater than those of the Algerian fighters, it should by now be convinced of the need to end these cruel battles forthwith and, in a more serious and realistic spirit, to open negotiations with the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic— the only real representative of the Algerian people, and the only one entitled to make commitments on its behalf.
221. The aim of the negotiations should be to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of the Algerian people. In a recent statement, General de Gaulle referred to the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Algeria in terms which are obscure. Now, in his speech of 2 October, he has renewed his offer to allow the Algerians to exercise their right of self-determination. He also said that he had no doubt that the Algerians wished to establish an independent and sovereign State. Why, therefore, delay the solution of the Algerian problem, a solution which can reside nowhere but in formal recognition of the independence, unity and territorial integrity of Algeria? In our view, recognition and support of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic by the States which have so far not taken that step will be an act of justice in regard to the Algerian people and a substantial contribution to the cause of peace.
222. Morocco has been and always will be behind the Algerian people in its struggle to achieve liberation. Morocco also supports it in all its efforts to find a way of ending the war and establishing peace on the basis of respect for its rights and national dignity. Nothing, however Machiavellian or seductive, can shake the solidarity of the Maghreb.
223. At two particularly critical moments in its history, North Africa's inescapable need for unshakable unity has been revealed. First, when in the nineteenth century the war of conquest led to the disappearance of the Algerian State, it was clear that a dire fate awaited Tunisia and Morocco. Today, this same need for unity drives Algeria towards its destiny, shared in common with its brothers of Tunisia and Morocco.
224. It M almost as if Africa's destiny was born under an unlucky star: as soon as there is a glimpse of hope in a disturbed area, the crisis moves to another region of the continent.
225. The people of Angola, long oppressed but never resigned to its fate, has undertaken to free itself— choosing, likewise, the most painful but also the most heroic and perhaps the surest way of doing so. Portugal has had a breathing-space in which to meditate upon the many experiments in decolonization that the world has witnessed, both in Asia and in Africa; but it persists in measuring the strength of its empire by the brutality of its planters, and in believing that certain alliances are a talisman which will protect it indefinitely. The awakening of the people of Angola and its determination to free itself at any cost seem only to inspire Portugal with a desire to exterminate the inhabitants of Angola and to defy world opinion and the world Organization.
226. Africa has noted with satisfaction the decision [resolution 1603 (XV)], taken by the United Nations at the fifteenth session of the General Assembly, to appoint a sub-committee to investigate the extent of the repression, and the real situation, in Angola. Morocco and its people have formally pledged their full support for the cause of the people of Angola, and will stand at its side until its liberation. Africa is entitled to become once again purely African, and not to have some of its regions still designated by the names of their former occupiers. There should no longer be a Portuguese Guinea and/or a Portuguese Angola, any more than a Spanish Sahara, a French Algeria or a French Somaliland. Despite the wave of liberation which has emancipated much of the continent, such anomalies still exist. These are redoubts in which colonialism is seeking to entrench itself or assume new forms, as varied as they are insidious. The replacing of one legal form by another does not, of itself, suffice to bring freedom or lead to the emergence of a new State.
227. Faced with the solidarity of a people conscious of its unity, the colonialists, finding themselves powerless to maintain their rule by dividing that people, are resorting to an even more immoral procedure—partition, which gives a State independence only in exchange for open violence done to its territorial integrity.
228. With the Katanga situation, the United Nations has experienced one of its most serious crises. The Congolese people has suffered from it as much, perhaps, as from the entire period of its foreign domination. All Africa has been profoundly shaken by it; and this criminal adventure, whose list of victims is undoubtedly not yet closed, has recently cost the Secretary-General of our Organization his life. The collusion extended to the originators of the Congo's division, together with the impunity that they have enjoyed, has encouraged them to flout the national and the international will, to which their only answer is crime and murder.
229. What is at stake in this unhappy Congo affair is much more than the imperialist designs, of domination and exploitation. A colonizing nation does not quickly repudiate these two instincts which constitute its true make-up. This power-giving knowledge of evil inspires every action of such a nation and provides it with more than one means of adapting itself to the exigencies of world progress, while at the same time playing it false.
230. What colonialism plays within the Congo, as elsewhere, is the very principle of the unity of a country and a nation, and it does so in the hope of re-conquering them. Violation of the territorial integrity of a country freeing itself from domination is the ransom imposed by the colonizer. Before leaving the house to which he can no longer lay claim, the colonizer makes provision for his re-entry by the back door.
231. This was what happened just after my country had gained its independence, France, which had formally undertaken by international treaty to respect the unity and territorial integrity of Morocco, resorted to this method to shear off one of our provinces whose resources and strategic position furthered certain permanent interests of France in the way of exploitation and the pursuit of its new African policy.
232. Indeed, the attempt had begun in the period of the Protectorate itself through a series of administrative measures calculated to remove the Mauritanian province from the jurisdiction of the central power.
233. We agree with the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nigeria who, in his statement this morning, expressed the hope that certain countries would not oppose the admission into this Organization of certain African States. But it is first of all necessary that these should be States as recognized by international law; secondly, the entity involved should not be a region detached from the territory of a Member of the United Nations and elevated to artificial statehood.
234. In this particular case, successive processes of carving-up, in accordance with military considerations or local interests of the moment, gradually altered the purely Moroccan administrative character of Mauritania and gave to it structures that increasingly resembled those of the West African territories. However, no act of the Moroccan authorities ever sanctioned these unlawful transformations. A special administrative regime was installed not only in the Mauritanian province. Other regions, in which armed resistance to occupation had been lengthy and stubborn and had not ended until the 1930's, were subjected to an exceptional administrative regime— sometimes exclusively military—because of the insecure situation.
235. France cannot claim to remove Mauritania from Moroccan sovereignty because of a special administrative organization, any more than it can remove the region of Agadir or the region of Zaihn, which were also subjected for a long time to a regime which in effect withdrew them from the central authority.
236. Furthermore, on the very morrow of independence France clearly recognized the existence of a frontier issue the examination of which was to take place subsequently. There could be no doubt about the nature of the problem: it was essentially a territorial dispute whose settlement was to result primarily in the effective extension of Moroccan sovereignty to the whole of the national territory, as recognized internationally immediately prior to the Protectorate.
237. Convinced of its clear right, which is established beyond all question in a number of, international conventions, my Government officially put the question to the French Government during the first months of Moroccan independence.
238. France was not the only country thus to be confronted with the problem and with the question of its responsibility. All the capitals that were bound by bilateral or multilateral conventions bearing on the safeguarding of the kingdom's sovereignty and territorial integrity were advised of the situation through normal diplomatic channels during the year 1957.
239. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, having been requested by France to assist in the development of the resources of the Mauritanian province, was also approached by my Government, and the memoranda which we submitted^ to it delayed its decision for two years. The decision was finally taken only because of the interests of certain great Powers which disregarded their responsibilities by creating the legal fiction of a "State of Mauritania" ,
240. France's long silence in the face of all the notes and representations of my Government was followed by some dilatory replies bearing on certain procedural matters but containing no explicit denial of Morocco's lawful rights. True to our traditional principle of settling all conflicts by negotiation, and while continuing to assert our claim firmly, we remained confident and hoped that France, which had not denied our right, could not indefinitely delay its recognition. It was in those circumstances that, in reply to the Moroccan Government's last note, dated 15 December 1959, the French Government on 20 January 1960 sent a note in which it rejected the Moroccan claim to territories which, it said, "come under the sovereignty of France and of the States members of the Community".
241. This was the first time since 1912 that France had called in question one of the principles that had been most formally recognized by France itself and by the Powers which had consented to the establishment of its Protectorate over Morocco.
242. One of the peculiarities of the Protectorate's history is that the juridical nature of the regime was to have safeguarded Morocco from integration into the French colonial empire, by reason both of the permanence of its international juridical personality and of the preservation of its territorial integrity.
243. While the recognition of its independence admittedly restored to it the prerogatives of a sovereign State, the restrictions which were abnormally attached to the effective exercise of its sovereignty over the whole of its territory cannot justify the impairment of its territorial integrity.
244. What France was unable to accomplish lawfully under the Protectorate regime, it accomplished arbitrarily on the morrow of independence through an administrative alteration of the structures' in one part of the country and through the introduction of a legal fiction which totally defies the current and well-defined norms of international law. This is the first time that such a change has been made, unilaterally, in one of the fundamental concepts of international law.
245. To bolster up this fragile position and conceal its unlawful nature, France is endeavouring to gain the admission to the United Nations of a so-called Mauritanian State whose territorial mass has been torn from Moroccan flesh and whose population has been forcibly detached from the people to whom it belongs.
246. It is these considerations which led my Government in 1960 to request our Organization to include this question in the agenda of its deliberations.^/ A number of delegations recognized our right and defended it with us. I take this opportunity to extend to them, once again, the gratitude of the Moroccan Government and people.
247. The Security Council, to which the application of Mauritania was submitted and to which my delegation presented its view, did not see fit to accept the application. This year again, attempts are being made to force the decision of the Council, by introducing into the consideration of this question certain extraneous elements. My delegation will not allow itself to be diverted by such stratagems, and will oppose the admission of an artificial State the creation of which is based purely on the theft of a territory and the violence done to a people.
248. The Assembly knows that other parts Of Moroccan territory are still being withheld from bur sovereignty and kept under foreign rule. Ever since we became independent, the Moroccan delegation has been denouncing this situation in the Assembly and in the Fourth Committee. Many of the Governments represented here have been directly informed to this effect by His Majesty's Government.
249. First there is Ifni where, in June 1957, tension rose to such a pitch that regular armed conflict almost broke out between the population and the Spanish military authorities. Negotiations lasting several months, such as those in 1959, have unfortunately led to no result.
250. Sequiat el-Hamra and the Southern Sahara, which Spain occupied under an agreement with France when the latter was just starting its occupation of Morocco through Mauritania, are still not under Moroccan sovereignty and their peoples are being forcibly kept outside the national community. Here again, we have been able to cope with all the strains to which friendly relations between Spain and Morocco are being subjected as a result of this situation.
251. Unfortunately, the Spanish Government seems to have no real wish to negotiate. Moreover, some of Madrid's decisions seeking to extend Spanish sovereignty to these territories force us to the conclusion that the process by which France is separating Mauritania from Morocco presents some attraction for certain minds in the Spanish capital. In any event, this is to all intents and purposes what is happening in regard to Ceuta and Melilla, where the authorities are refusing to recognize for the population any nationality other than Spanish and frequent expulsions of Moroccans are taking place.
252. I request the General Assembly to take note of our most explicit reservation and our categorical refusal to allow our territory to be dismembered, while those who are tearing it apart and defending their action are none other than the signatories of the agreements which made of Morocco's territorial integrity a law putting an end to territorial ambitions and the disputes resulting from them.
253. The circumstances in which an Arab country's richest province was stolen and handed over to foreign immigrants recall to us the tragedy of 1 million
Palestinians, stripped of their property and driven out of their homes.
254. All principles of law and all moral and humanitarian values have been ignored; and the United Nations, powerless, has quieted its conscience only by granting to the refugees an inadequate minimum of material aid which, instead of solving the problem, has merely added others to it.
255. Resolutions have been adopted which, while not restoring justice, would at least, if respected, have mitigated the tragedy and increased our Organization's authority. They are ignored, however and shamelessly violated. Nevertheless, the peoples that are the victims of all these tragedies are still among those most deeply attached to the United Nations, to its values and to the hope for peace which it represents.
256. My country's policy is based on these values and these principles. We desire that it shall be marked by faith in this Organization and in the spirit of co-operation and solidarity which is its raison d'etre. While Morocco takes no side in quarrels arising out of conflicts of interests to which it is foreign, it feels itself affected by all the problems which are brought before the Organization and the international community, and shoulders its responsibilities to the full.
257. Some scepticism has been expressed regarding the policy of non-alignment, which is our doctrine and the basis of our actions. This policy issues from no ancient school, but in the space of a few years it has won the support of many countries and distinguished Heads of State; as its outlines emerge more clearly with the course of events and from exchanges of views among its supporters, it shows itself to be indispensable to international equilibrium and capable of bringing such equilibrium into being, whereas contending blocs can only be a source of crisis. Non- objective and often malicious critics resort to easy slogans and cast aspersions on our attitude, calling it political inertia and a flight from responsibility.
"Our neutralism", said His Majesty, King Hassan at the Belgrade Conference, "means, not isolation or lack of interest in any section of humanity, but, on the contrary, a search for the acceptance in human thought of all that is true and just."
258. Nevertheless, we are aware of our weakness. Our country's economic and social development is not yet such as is called for by our political action in the international field. There are many reasons for this, and they are linked with our recent history. We cannot of ourselves remove all the obstacles, because they are not solely national in character. Cooperation among ourselves and with all like-minded quarters .is, we feel, the best course, since the assistance and mutual aid which it presupposes requires that there be true solidarity between the peoples.
259. The United Nations is all the time trying to Capture this spirit of solidarity and translate it into fact. Its resources encounter limits beyond which it cannot always pass, but the international community of which it is the embodiment has, as a whole, a potential that can in fact bring to man greater prosperity and hence more genuine freedom.
260. This, at all events, is the frame of mind in which we take part in the debates of this session of the Assembly, a session that is incontestably of decisive importance for the future of the Organization. We hope that these debates will conclude with satisfying answers to the anxious questions asked by the peoples in regard to the peace of the world. Only then will", the prestige and authority of this Organization make it into mankind's greatest common achievement. The destiny of the United Nations is inextricably linked with the destiny of the world, and the Organization must remain, as His Majesty the King of Morocco has said, a positive act by mankind on behalf of peace and co-operation among people?, we must do all we can to correct its weaknesses and give it the authority and resources that are required if it is to accomplish tasks which are vital to the future of the human race.