1. Mr. President, I had occasion to extend to you the congratulations of my delegation on your election to the Presidency of the General Assembly at its twenty-second session when I spoke here for the first time [1572nd meeting], expressing the confidence of my delegation that your personal qualifications as a statesman and your wide experience will ensure the success of our deliberations in this session.
2.May I now pay special tribute to your distinguished predecessor, Ambassador Pazhwak of Afghanistan, who had the rare distinction of presiding over three sessions of the General Assembly in one year. The exemplary manner in which he conducted the work of those sessions, his wisdom and dedication, have earned the admiration of all the Members of this Assembly.
3. The United Nations has been trying, within the limitations under which we have conducted our work here, to be true to the values and principles of its Charter and to uphold the cause of world peace. Regrettably, this effort has often been unsuccessful. Perhaps part of the reason for this lack of success lies in the restricted nature of collective action undertaken by an Assembly of sovereign States whose national interests are sometimes widely disparate and conflicting. The disparity of those interests and the need for compromise and accommodation have in turn led us to accept the gradual erosion of ,the principles of the Charter, for considerations of expediency. We have also come to allow the primacy of the great Powers to hold sway not only in issues of war and peace where the Charter provides for this primacy, but in almost every issue that has come before the United Nations. United Nations action has thus continued to fall short of the aspirations of those who saw in this Organization an embodiment of the collective conscience of mankind. The smaller, newly independent countries have been particularly prone to expect more of the United Nations than it has been able to achieve.
4. The Prime Minister of the Sudan, in addressing the fifth emergency special session earlier this year, was expressing this resurgent faith when he said:
"The United Nations should be a forum where the smallest nation could speak its mind and state its position without fear, a forum where the highest ideals are proclaimed and defended. We know that it has not always been such a forum because many times the realities of political life and international relations have imposed their own logic. The present case, however, is not one of these instances. We are dealing here with fundamental principles about which there should be no compromise. This is a clear case of aggression which should be condemned in the clearest terms. This is a case of usurpation which should be remedied by, and through, the United Nations." [1530th meeting, para. 98.]
5. The first Article of the first Chapter of the Charter calls upon the Members of this Organization "to maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression".
6. This is a solemn undertaking to which we are all bound in equal measure. It is our firm conviction that if the United Nations had acted in accordance with the principles of the Charter, it would not have failed to condemn Israel's aggression and demand the unconditional withdrawal of the Israeli troops of occupation. The fact that the United Nations failed to take this decision provides an example of the limited and restricted scope for action that the Members of this Organization have come to accept. This was a question on which the great Powers were divided; and since the great Powers were divided the Security Council was not able to exercise its responsibility for determining that aggression had been committed and deciding upon measures for securing the withdrawal of the aggressive Israeli armies and the restoration of peace. All that the fifth emergency special session of the General Assembly succeeded in doing was to call upon Israel to refrain from changing the status of Jerusalem and seek to accommodate the victims of its aggressive war. The major issues of aggression and occupation were avoided. Israel proceeded to consolidate its conquest of Jerusalem and to obstruct by every means the return of the refugees.
7. In addressing ourselves to the United Nations yet again in the case of the Israeli occupation of the Arab lands, we are appealing to the principles of justice and equity which must be upheld by the United Nations, The Israeli aggression and occupation is a test of the will of the United Nations to repudiate the thesis that it is powerless to restore the rule of law. The Foreign Minister of Israel, however, rejects this role of the United Nations. Speaking before this Assembly on 25 September, he said:
"The fact that the United Nations was unable to prevent the war has a direct bearing on the question of its capacity and title to impose a peace. The interests of the parties and of the Organization itself require that United Nations action must be realistically adapted to United Nations capacities." [1566th meeting, para. 146.]
8. But while on the one hand, Israel declares its lack of confidence in the United Nations, on the other it bases part of its refutation of the charge of aggression on the fact that the United Nations did not condemn its action as aggression.
9. The fact that the Assembly did not condemn Israel as an aggressor does not alter the situation. Israel's whole history is an attestation of this charge. The Israeli spokesmen who have blandly stated that Israel came into being as a result of a decision by the United Nations must be reminded that the area taken by Israel by force of arms was, even in 1948, more than one third of the area assigned to the "Jewish State" by the United Nations. More than one half of the dispossessed Palestinians came from those areas. Israel's acts of aggression, many of which were condemned by the United Nations — including its major campaign in 1956 — have further consolidated its usurpation.
10. The Israeli Government now declares that Israel will not agree to return to the positions established by the General Armistice Agreements of 1949, which represent in its view a return to a condition of instability. The Israeli Foreign Minister, in his address to the Assembly quoted above, maintained that there is no valid choice before the international community except to endorse Israel's policy of what he called "a transition from the cease-fire to a negotiated peace settlement" [1566th meeting, para. 128]. This line of reasoning ignores some basic facts about the present situation in the Middle East, namely, that the Arabs will not engage in negotiations with Israel under duress and the threat of continued occupation, nor are they ever likely to recognize an Israeli State with expanded frontiers that cut through the heart of their lands.
11. This question of recognition of Israel by the Arabs, which has been made so much of in Zionist propaganda to prove that the Arabs are living in an atmosphere of unreality, must be put in the proper perspective. It is not the fact of the existence of Israel as a State that the Arabs do not recognize. Such an assertion is so patently absurd that one wonders how it has ever come to be part of the equipment of the Zionist propaganda arsenal. Israel exists and is part of our world in the same way that injustice exists and is part of our world. How can the Arabs deny the existence of Israel when it has occupied their lands and made millions in their nation homeless? What the Arabs do not recognize is a State that bases its claim to existence and status as a nation on the obliteration of another nation. The Jews have lived in Palestine for centuries — so have the Arabs. But when the Zionists decided to establish a Jewish State in Palestine it was part of their decision to displace and dispossess the Arabs. For Israel is not a country or a State like any other; it was conceived and established as an exclusive State of the Jewish people and for the Jewish people. The Palestinian Arabs had no place in the Israeli scheme. Those of us who are seeking an equitable and just solution should, in fairness, think of the status and of the existence, and of the right to live, of the Palestinian people.
12. Almost all speakers from this rostrum have stated that they would not accept or concede that any right of possession can be asserted as a result of military occupation. The inevitable corollary of this statement is that the troops of occupation must vacate the occupied territory without conditions or reservations. To make withdrawal conditional and contingent upon negotiation about frontiers is to assert a right for the Israeli armies to remain in occupation of the Arab lands until these conditions are met. But if no right can be claimed as a result of military occupation, it logically follows that the occupying troops must withdraw before any claims for guarantees or concessions can be made. The Arabs will certainly not accept the right of Israel to expand its frontiers until it is satisfied that its security is not longer in jeopardy. Thus, if by insisting on direct negotiations with the Arabs Israel is seeking to repudiate the validity of the Armistice Agreements and to adjust its borders in order to include more Arab territory and consecrate by agreement what it has acquired by force, its hopes for negotiation will be disappointed and its dream of achieving stability is not likely to be realized. Israel's continued occupation of Arab territory creates the very conditions that it is seeking to avoid—Arab resistance to Israel's usurpation is likely to be intensified rather than diminished. The threat to peace will ever be present. Israel must therefore be warned against its cavalier dismissal of the United Nations and its claim that the United Nations is incapable of bringing about conditions where peace can prevail by ensuring withdrawal of the Israeli troops.
13. Perhaps the shock of the Israeli defiance of world opinion and its increasingly rigid attitude in relation to the question of withdrawal and the status of Jerusalem will lead some of the Members of this Organization to reconsider their acceptance of the facile contention that Israel's engagement in war with the Arabs was in defence of its existence. No further evidence is needed of its expansionist policies beyond its recent decisions about Jerusalem and the establishment of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. The United Nations cannot ignore the defiance implicit in those actions, and it is not too late for justice to be done.
14. The United Nations, as we know, faces other challenges in other areas — notably in southern Africa. The Government of South Africa has denied that the United Nations has the right to assert the will of the majority of the population to be free and has even accused this Assembly of committing an illegal act in deciding [resolution 2145 (XXI)] to end South Africa's Mandate over South West Africa.
15. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of South Africa, in his letter of 26 September 1967 [A/6822] to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, states that South Africa has no intention of handing over the administration of the Territory to the United Nations. It is claimed by the South African Foreign Minister that the people of South West Africa have made progress in all spheres of life, and are living in a haven of peace and tranquillity in the midst of the turmoil of the African continent. The facts, however, as we all know, tell a different story.
16. The people of South West Africa, like the peoples of Mozambique and Angola and the people of South Africa itself, has represented nothing to the advocates of white supremacy except a reservoir of cheap labour. They have had to endure for so long the degradation of their humanity under a system that considers them less than human, merely to be able to work for a living. All this is well known, and yet South Africa cynically maintains that it is leading these people to self-realization. That claim is made in defiance of the facts, and the cruel policy of apartheid continues without regard to the United Nations and its Charter. In all that. South Africa is sustained by its allies and trading partners. It is time that those allies and partners were warned that in the long run it is in their best interest to be on the side of the just cause of African freedom in South West Africa, as well as in the Territories under Portuguese administration.
17. The failure of peaceful measures against the entrenched interests of the white supremacists of southern African is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in the failure of economic sanctions against Smith's rebel regime in Southern Rhodesia. It is time that this Organization identified itself more closely with the cause of the oppressed and extended to them all the assistance that they need. The United Nations must support the struggle for liberation with every means at its disposal.
18. The threat that is inherent in the possibility of local wars developing in the context of great-Power antagonism into major wars remains a present and grave danger. The great Powers, whose nuclear arsenals already contain weapons capable of reducing the whole world to ruin, are not restricting further development and sophistication of those destructive devices; and the fear that the small nations may put themselves completely at the mercy of the great nuclear Powers is not completely dispelled by the fact that those Powers agree to establish for themselves a monopoly of the means of destruction. We recall that not so long ago it was firmly believed that the mere possession of nuclear weapons was in itself a deterrent to any aggression, as such an aggression would have invited immediate retaliation and intolerable destruction.
19. Apparently that situation has now changed. Now it is thought that the deterrent capability of nuclear weapons must be enforced by defensive anti-ballistic missile systems developed under what the United States Secretary of Defense, Mr. McNamara, called "a kind of mad momentum intrinsic to the development of new nuclear weaponry". We hope that we have misread the signs that the super-Powers are now — or shortly will be — in the throes of this new madness. If that turns out to be the case, there will be less reason to rejoice over their agreement on a treaty on nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. That advancement of the cause of peace which we all hailed would be nullified if another arms race were about to begin. Peace is possible only through general and complete disarmament, and our efforts towards the achievement of that end must never flag or falter.
20. Our hopes for a peaceful world are not encouraged by the persistent failure of this Organization to allow the Government of the People's Republic of China to exercise its lawful right to join this Organization. The People's Republic of China, a founding Member of the United Nations, is now a great nuclear Power. It is not only wrong to exclude it from world councils, but it is now perilous to continue to do so. We believe that this situation must be remedied if the United Nations is to achieve the true universality that forms the very basis of its Charter. Nor can the international community continue to ignore the suffering and havoc which the valiant people of Viet-Nam has endured for so long. The people of Viet-Nam, which fought so heroically against colonialism, is certainly capable of shaping its own destiny; it should be allowed to do so without foreign intervention. We all have a duty to condemn this unjust and brutal war and call for a halt to the bombing of North Viet-Nam as a first and necessary condition for negotiation of a peaceful settlement.
21. The developing countries can prosper only in a context of peace. Their anxieties about war and the wasteful expenditure on armaments are real and understandable. There has been a marked reverse flow of resources from the developing to the developed countries in recent years. The terms of trade have continued to function in favour of the developed countries. Hence the necessity becomes more pressing for the fulfilment of the targets of the United Nations Development Decade. In this respect, the work undertaken by the Committee for Development Planning in drawing up a charter for the second Development Decade is a step in the right direction. However, two basic factors need special emphasis.
22. First, international action for attaining the target set in the Charter must be channelled as far as possible through multilateral institutions. Secondly, the special needs of the developing countries should form the basis of the targets for international action with aid continuing to be the focal point, followed closely by trade, while the movement of commerce must be facilitated through the relaxation of barriers.
23. In the coming session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to be held at New Delhi, the developing countries have agreed to concentrate the activities of the conference on some commercial and financial issues considered by the Secretary-General of UNCTAD to be ripe for negotiation. The developing countries realize, one hopes, that a holding strategy of attrition in relation to these issues may prove detrimental to their own best interests.
24. The launching of the United Nations Capital Development Fund [resolution 2186 (XXI)] will mark an important event in the history of multilateral economic co-operation. It is our hope that the Secretary-General will henceforth proceed with the appointment of the Managing Director in time for the General Assembly to confirm the appointment and elect the Executive Board. The developing countries have indicated their strong support of the Fund in the hope that it will insulate the process of development from the vagaries of capital markets and the vicissitudes of balance-of-payments conditions of which they have been victims for so long.
25. It is commendable and heartening to see the United Nations genuinely trying to meet the challenge of economic development where its efforts in many areas have been effective and forward-looking. It is our sincere hope that the Organization will meet the challenge of establishing and defending peace in the world. To this end we must renew our pledge and determination to unite our strength to maintain peace and reaffirm our faith in freedom and justice.