62. Mr. President, will you allow me, first of all, to convey to you the warm felicitations of the Philippine delegation on your election as President of the nineteenth session of the General Assembly. Your election by unanimous acclamation was not only an exceptional tribute paid to you personally and to the country you so ably represent, but also a dramatic recognition of the significant role which Africa has assumed in the affairs of mankind and in the future of this Organization.
63. One could well believe that the logic of events, rather than mere coincidence, has placed upon the shoulders of an African President of the General Assembly a major share of the responsibility for steering the United Nations safely through a dangerous crisis arising from recent developments and decisions relating mainly to Africa. The concurrence of these two facts encourages the hope that a permanent solution to the crisis shall be devised, consistent with the Charter and acceptable to the General Assembly.
64. Unless and until a solution to this crisis is found, we are condemned to do our work in an atmosphere of unreality. The extraordinary procedure which permitted us to open and proceed with the present session we owe entirely to the prudence of the Secretary-General and to the goodwill of the parties principally involved.
65. But this is a temporary palliative which merely enables us to buy the time we need in order to discover a permanent remedy. What confronts us is not merely a financial crisis which can be resolved by the payment of certain sums of roubles and francs, but a constitutional crisis which compels us to decide whether we want the United Nations to continue to exist, and, if so, what we want it to be or to become, to do or to be capable of doing.
66. On many previous occasions, under one agenda item or another, we have debated and endeavoured to define more precisely the purposes and principles of the United Nations as enunciated in Chapter I of the Charter. No portion of the Charter has been more frequently invoked than this, and the attempts to analyse its scope and meaning fill many volumes of our records. Today, however, the question of what the United Nations is and what we want it to do is presented to us, not as a subject of philosophical or juridical exegesis, but as an issue directly related to the power of the purse. That is why it has assumed the nature of an acute problem which cannot be sidestepped indefinitely. That is why any attempt to gloss over the dispute that has arisen or to remain silent while negotiations are in progress would constitute a grave disservice to the Organization.
67. While we have no desire to disturb such negotiations, it would be a mistake to act as if the controversy concerned only two or three Member States, however important or powerful, and to accept the view that it is their exclusive responsibility to negotiate an agreed solution. Even if we agree to refrain from voting, we are at least entitled to express our views or to make our wishes known. After all, this is what votum means in the original Latin. We have a right and a duty to t-ay that we want the United Nations to survive, and to indicate under what terms such survival may best be ensured. The Great Powers directly concerned, far from disdaining our views and suggestions, should welcome them as a guide in measuring their own aims and policies and in determining in what direction we may safely move in order to extricate ourselves from this impasse.
68. There is no question that an important decision must be taken during the present session concerning the procedure that is to govern the peace-keeping operations of the United Nations. Such a decision would first of all, place on a new, more clear-cut basis the division of responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security between the Security Council and the General Assembly. It would set forth without ambiguity the precise relationship between the authority to ordain or to carry out peace-keeping operations and the responsibility to raise the funds required by such operations. It would take account of such questions as the financial assessments that would be appropriate to the author, or to the victim, of an act of aggression which calls for a peace-keeping effort by the United Nations.
69. Such an over-all decision concerning the organization, conduct and financing of United Nations peace-keeping operations is long overdue. It would put an end to the makeshift procedure which has been followed until now on a strictly ad hoc basis. Such a decision would of necessity look to the future; it would apply automatically to all future peace-keeping operations of the United Nations. But it would provide so useful framework for all United Nations activities in the domain of peace-keeping that it would be immediately accepted as the most imaginative and practical instrument of a constitutional character since the Charter was proclaimed in San Francisco. And every detail and aspect of this framework would have been examined with such great care and so thoroughly discussed and debated that its approval by the General Assembly and acceptance by the Security Council would inevitably influence our attitudes towards the peace-keeping operations undertaken by the United Nations in the past. A decision covering future operations would cast its shadow backward, and its principles would be inevitably invoked to resolve subsisting controversies.
70. It is to the formulation of such an over-all decision concerning future peace-keeping operations that the present disputants might more usefully address their efforts. This Assembly would certainly be prepared to buckle down immediately to this important task. Meanwhile, however, the question of the application of Article 19 of the Charter must be faced. There is no way to avoid it. Given the text of the Article and given the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, which was sought by the General Assembly itself, there is no escape from the obligation to apply the Charter provision. Failure to apply it to powerful States today, and its application to less powerful States tomorrow, would be intolerable from the point of view of the latter. The result would be anarchy.
71. The attempt to blur the clear outlines of the dispute by calling the payments by some other name is no doubt well-intentioned, and one could wish that it might be accepted. But failing such a remedy, we are obliged to fall back upon procedures sanctioned by the rule of law, by reason and by common sense.
72. For the present, the Charter is the law, and if we ignore Article 19 and decide that it does not apply to the arrears on assessments for certain peacekeeping operations, we immediately invite the collapse of responsibility and order within the Organization. This will come about in various ways; through the threat of financial bankruptcy, disregard of the obligations of membership, deterioration of individual and collective discipline, and attrition of the United Nations capacity to maintain international peace and security.
73. We cannot disregard Article 19, and we do not agree with those who fear lest the procedure laid down by the Article would bring about the destruction of the United Nations. This dire prediction is based on the belief that the Members whose position is not sustained by the General Assembly would immediately resign from the Organization. We need not point out to the Members concerned that we all need the United Nations, and that the United Nations needs all of us.
74. Members have walked out from meetings, and boycotted portions of a session, but in the one case where the membership of a certain State has been under serious question there has been far more talk of its expulsion than of its resignation.
75. What we might more likely expect from a clear- cut determination of the present controversy is not the wreckage of the United Nations as such, but the emergence of the kind of a United Nations that we honestly need and want, for which we are prepared to sacrifice and to pay. We shall be compelled to indicate more precisely what we want the United Nations to be and to do, and having cone that, to pay our share of the expenses without fail. This can only be a gain not a loss.
76. Three of the Great Powers, permanent members of the Security Council, are known to be directly involved in the controversy. It would take all three of them, together, by deliberate decision, to wreck the United Nations. Each of them, singly, cannot and probably dares not do it. At the same time, the United Nations is saved the moment any one of them decides not to join the others in the deliberate act of wreckage and destruction. We do not believe that such a conspiracy exists, whether by accident or design.
77. If these three Great Powers should decide to come to the General Assembly for judgement, what would we do? We hope that we shall not be compelled to emulate the wisdom of King Solomon, who succeeded in determining who was the true mother of the disputed child by threatening to cut it in twain. During the war, these three Great Powers gave equally of the lives of their sons and the sacrifices of their peoples, in order to make-the United Nations a living reality. Now that the United Nations is just beginning to yield returns upon the original investment, in terms of the expanding freedom of peoples and the strengthened peace of the world, it is inconceivable that these same Powers should risk dismantling the Organization or want to destroy it. This would be unnatural.
78. Mr. President, we have dealt at some length with a question which is uppermost in our minds but which, for some curious reason, has been muted during this general debate. The result is an atmosphere of make- believe, as if everybody is aware that we are just killing time, and that nothing can be said or done meanwhile that really matters. It is a depressing experience. We have elected our President, but there is no General Committee. We are having a general debate, but we do not have an agenda. The regular Committees have not been organized. We run the risk of not electing the new members of the three Councils, thus inhibiting them from functioning by 1 January 1965. We run the risk also of having no budget approved before the end of 1964.
79. We stoutly reject the notion that this Assembly of 115 delegations has neither the wit nor the courage to surmount this controversy, which if allowed to persist without solution, is bound to earn for us the pity, if not the contempt, of the world.
80. We would have preferred, Mr. President, to have spoken of the achievements and failures of the past and of our plans for the future. For there are many things to which we can point with pride in the record of the past twelve months. In the politico-military field, there is the partial test-ban treaty; the "hot line" link between Washington and Moscow; the cutback in the production of fissionable materials by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United States; the reduction in military expenditures by the United States and the Soviet Union; and the modest progress achieved in international co-operation in the peaceful uses of outer space—all these sufficiently massive in their total impact for peace so as to outweigh the ominous portent of the atomic explosion by Communist China.
81. We would like to underscore our hope that the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament will continue exploring every avenue that could lead to a significant break-through in this most crucial of questions ever to confront the United Nations.
82. We also reaffirm our unalterable opposition to any move to give the seat of China in the United Nations to the Communist regime in Peking as an act that would reward aggression and encourage that regime's unabashed belief in the inevitability of war and its unashamed policy of force in achieving its objectives. As regards the question of Korea, the Philippines continues to support the stated objectives of the United Nations and favours the continued existence of the United Nations Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea in pursuance of those objectives.
83. By the same token, the Philippines would like to express its sympathy for the peoples of two other divided nations, Germany and Viet-Nam. We hope that the German people will soon be permitted to achieve their unification in accordance with the principle of self-determination through the freely-expressed will of the people. We pray that free Berlin will continue to stand as a symbol of the determination of the liberty-loving people of Germany to resist Communist regimentation and tyranny.
84. As regards Viet-Nam, the Philippines is committed to a policy of assisting, within its means and on request, the Republic of Viet-Nam in its efforts to defend itself against Communist encroachment and infiltration from the north.
85. In the same spirit, the Philippines has sponsored with El Salvador and Nicaragua [A/5765] the reinclusion in our agenda of the item "The question of Tibet", under which the General Assembly would call for respect of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the people of Tibet in accordance with its resolution 1723 (XVI).
86. It will be noted that most of these questions are directly related to the policies or actions of Communist China. It might have seemed more prudent to keep a discreet silence about the misdeeds of Communist China following its recent explosion of an atomic device, particularly where this concern so-called lost or desperate causes. But the Philippines believes that there are no lost causes where freedom and justice are concerned, and that it is particularly cowardly to sweep these old questions under the carpet in the face of a condemned aggressor grown more arrogant still by the possession of an atomic fire-cracker.
87. The Philippines will continue to support the work of the Special Committee until the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples is fully implemented and the last subject people is free. We shall co-operate in carrying out any practical measures to combat the discredited and disastrous policy of apartheid of the Government of South Africa.
88. We regard the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, which convened in Geneva earlier in 1964, as a major step toward the realization of the goal of the United Nations Development Decade. While it may have fallen short of the expectations of most developing countries, the Conference did advance their cause by achieving explicit recognition of the urgent need to reform the existing structure of international trade in favour of the less developed countries. It was at this Conference that the developing countries, uniting in the Group of 75, found a new and vigorous voice to express their anxieties and their needs. Having played an important part in forging the agreements concluded at Geneva, the Philippines expresses the hope that the Group of 75 will continue to be a positive force in working for equitable change in the world economic order.
89. The Philippines has maintained its special interest in human rights. We have done so because we sincerely believe that respect for the worth and dignity of the individual is the foundation of all social well-being and that social progress is the necessary concomitant of economic advancement. It has been said that developing countries need to give precedence to economic programmes at the cost of subordinating social necessities. Fortunately, the Philippines has not accepted this artificial and harmful dichotomy. We believe that a free and enlightened citizenry is the surest guarantee of political stability and material development. The Philippines will give its particular attention to the adoption of measures of implementation of the two Covenants on Human Rights. We hope that, after a long delay, effective measures to protect and guarantee human rights will finally become an integral part of these legally binding instruments; for, without effective measures of implementation, the rights set forth in these Covenants will remain meaningless and, at best, theoretical. Tomorrow, 10 December, we celebrate the sixteenth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the passage of so much time since 1948 eloquently dramatizes the work which awaits to be done with the least possible delay.
90. It only remains for us to refer briefly to the role of the Philippines in the effort to achieve a peaceful settlement of the conflict between our neighbours, Indonesia and Malaysia. The background of this conflict was laid before the General Assembly at its eighteenth session. In June 1964, President Macapagal was able to persuade President Sukarno and Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman to hold a summit meeting in Tokyo. The meeting made possible with the cooperation of the Governments of Thailand and Japan, considered President Macapagal's proposal for the establishment of an African-Asian conciliation commission which would make recommendations for the peaceful settlement of the dispute and the restoration of normal relations among the parties.
91. President Sukarno accepted the Macapagal proposal without reservation and pledged in advance to accept the recommendations of the conciliation commission. Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, on the other hand, accepted the proposal in principle, on condition that Indonesian troops be first withdrawn from Malaysian territory. Unhappily, the Philippines failed in subsequent attempts to bring the parties back to the conference table in order to reach final agreement on the terms of the Macapagal conciliation proposal. When, two months later, the conflict was brought before the Security Council on a formal complaint by Malaysia, the draft resolution which, among other things, would have endorsed the Macapagal proposal was blocked by the negative vote of the Soviet Union. The conciliation proposal itself was, however, commended by all members of the Council.
92. This fact encourages us to hope that at an appropriate occasion, possibly some time during the present session, the representatives of Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia may have an opportunity to meet informally here in New York to explore the possibility of bringing the "confrontation policy" to an end and restoring normal relations between the three countries. So far as the Philippines is concerned, we are prepared to normalize our relations with Malaysia as soon as it agrees to the settlement of our claim to North Borneo by the International Court of Justice. We hope that Malaysia will eventually welcome this proposal, which demonstrates our readiness to accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court and to abide by the rule of law in international relations.
93. By mediating and conciliating the dispute between Indonesia and Malaysia, and by scrupulously adhering to the rule of law in its own attitude towards Malaysia, the Philippines hopes to make its modest contribution to the peace and security of our troubled area.
94. Mr. President, following the example of previous speakers, we would have preferred to have concentrated exclusively on a more detailed summary of the past and future work of the United Nations in various fields. Yet an exclusive concern with these staple problems before the United Nations, in airy disregard of the crisis that threatens the United Nations itself, would have deepened the sense of unreality and the atmosphere of make-believe which have permeated our meetings since 1 December.
95. We must break this illusion which, by a combination of procedural tricks and stage management, gives us the eerie feeling of participating in a slow pantomime in an underwater tank. In truth, however, we are facing reality in two dimensions of danger: to the survival of the United Nations, and to the survival of humanity.
96. During this session, the General Assembly is confronted by these two tremendous challenges to its courage and wisdom. May it prove itself equal to both of them.