It was characteristic of the international situation in the year now drawing to a close that technically there has been no break of continuity between the fifth session of the General Assembly and this, its sixth session, which has opened in an atmosphere of cordial hospitality shown by the French people and Government.
101. The Organization, established at San Francisco “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, has had to face a flagrant case of breach of the peace in the Far East, exactly five years after the signing of the Charter.
102. The hand that set in motion the machine of aggressive war against the Republic of Korea on the morning of 25 June 1950, also roused the free world from its lethargy and, by awakening the reaction natural to the instinct of self-preservation, helped to strengthen the system of collective security.
103. The General Assembly began the proceedings of its fifth session last September under the ominous sign of aggression. The cries of the victim rendered vain all the artifices of rhetoric; the blood of the Korean people was itself more eloquent than anything that could be said in justification or even in condemnation of the crime. Still, the aggression against the Korean Republic represented the test by fire of the effectiveness of the United Nations and of the ability of the free world to meet the challenge.
104. The prompt and energetic action taken by the Security Council through its resolutions of 25 and 27 June 1950 gave a lead to the determination of the great Powers, on whom Article 24 of the Charter confers the primary responsibility of the maintenance of peace and security, to make a joint effort to resist the aggression and to establish peace and security in the disturbed area.
105. As became apparent subsequently, the absence of the concurrent vote of one of the permanent members of the Council, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, could only be construed as a calculated attempt to encourage the aggression and to paralyse the Organization in its measures to defend peace and the principles of the Charter.
106. The vast majority of nations, great and small, endorsed the measures taken by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter. Virtually the whole world may be said to have come forward in a solid block to offer moral and material resistance to the aggression. In contrast to this impressive solidarity, a small group of Member States adopted an attitude inconsistent with the obligations of the Charter and fraught with danger for the future of the Organization and the international community as a whole, for their attitude constitutes nothing less than an attempt to justify aggression as an instrument of political or ideological expansion.
107. The attitude shown by this bloc of nations in declaring its support for the aggressors instead of participating in the collective action, gave rise to profound misgivings for the immediate future. It was quite natural for men to fear that the blow struck against the Korean Republic was but the prelude to new aggressions and the signal for the launching, in physical form behind the guns of armies, of a well known plan for world domination, hitherto confined to the ideological sphere. That understandable fear still holds and binds us, because contempt for the principles of law and of the foreign policy of States, the distortion of the most simple facts, and the derision of United Nations objectives and resolutions, represent a rule of conduct which could not and, so long as it is persisted in, cannot be compatible with the maintenance of peace.
108. In the light of the flagrant case of the aggression against the Korean Republic and the subsequent intervention of the Peiping Government in the conflict, it is clearly necessary first, by legal and technical means, to use the collective security machinery provided for in the Charter, and secondly, by practical measures, to organize a better defence of a world that seeks to live in peace and to banish the danger of new aggressions.
109. It is by now an accepted truth that the “Uniting for peace” resolution [377 (V)] of 3 November 1950 marked a decisive moment in the determination of the Members of the United Nations to prevent an organization established to preserve peace from possibly being paralysed in its action of resisting the aggression, and to prevent all the principles, purposes and measures established by the Charter pursuant to a solemn agreement from becoming, as a consequence, of no effect or even the butt of cruel derision for some.
110. We shall not at this juncture go into the controversy of the so-called right of veto so frequently raised both inside and outside the Organization. It is sufficient to state that, as a result of the aggression against the Republic of Korea, the idea took shape in the minds of most Member States that the unanimity rule laid down in the Charter as the ideal arrangement for agreement between the five great Powers must not be vitiated in its essence or purpose nor converted into an instrument for preventing peace and opening the way for aggression.
111. The “Uniting for peace” resolution has saved the Charter and the Organization from this unwholesome interpretation which would have been bound sooner or later to destroy both.
112. The peoples of the world desire peace and hate war. But it must be said that it is the imperialist policy culminating in the aggression in Korea that still remains the most serious obstacle on the road to peace.
113. The spokesmen of this new imperialism may pretend that they cannot stifle their laughter at the disarmament proposals of some of the great Powers or at the opinions of the medium and small countries; and nobody can prevent them from continuing to use this platform for committing afresh every day, in this land renowned for its moderation, the sin of pride and that other nameless sin of which the Scriptures speak and which Anatole France calls “ bad taste”. Nor can anyone or anything prevent the peoples from continuing to judge them by their deeds and from drawing their own conclusions from such deeds.
114. It might perhaps be speaking with too much frankness to remind them that title blood of peoples and the destruction of towns, as witnessed in Korea since the aggression of 25 June 1950, are more substantial evidence than the fallacious ideologies, which mirage-like, point the way to world domination and to the exploitation of all nations under the dictatorship of a central committee.
115. The Paraguayan delegation does not, however, wish to abandon the idea that a positive policy of pursuing the aims of the Organization can still be urged upon those States which, by basing their whole policy on the belief that their regime is absolutely incompatible with that of the others, have been systematically frustrating all attempts to ease world tension and to create an atmosphere of rational serenity in. which to consider the world’s important problems.
116. Paraguay continues to place its faith and hope in this idea and at the same time reaffirms its unshakeable belief in the ability of the United Nations to safeguard from all risks the system of collective security laid down in the Charter and the ideal of peace to which the peoples cling.