In the annual report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Organization which, together with the report of the Security Council, forms the main basis for this general debate, two points are remarkable above all others.
130. The first is the failure of the great Powers, victors in the Second World War, in then efforts to achieve an understanding concerning the peace treaties with the defeated countries. If no remedy is found for this adverse situation, it will continue to affect the Organization’s work in the future as it has affected it up to now.
131. The second is the action undertaken by the United Nations to redress the situation in Korea and restore peace.
132. In circumstances like the present, it would perhaps be advisable to exercise the privilege of saying nothing. When problems are so delicate, when passions and suspicions have become so acute, one unfortunate expression or a mistaken intention is sufficient to widen differences. Yet the matters before the Assembly are of such a nature that my delegation considers it the bounden duty of Members of the United Nations to set forth clearly their views on the general progress of the Organization.
133. The opinion is very generally held that the condition of the world, as this Assembly meets, is more alarming than at any other time since 1945. Both the retiring President of the Assembly, General Romulo, and Mr. Entezam, who is now so competently presiding over our deliberations, drew attention to that fact in their speeches on the opening day of this session.
134. For some, the movement towards universality of the United Nations is making slow progress, since there are many States whose desire to become Members has, for perfectly well-known reasons, not yet been satisfied. For others, the spirit of San Francisco has foundered, and, with it, the work which it inspired. From all quarters the weakness of the United Nations is criticized. The example of the League of Nations is frequently recalled.
135. Allow me to say that I do not altogether share this tendency to pessimism. It is true that the examination of the report of the Secretary-General, as well as those of some other principal and subsidiary organs of the United Nations, shows once more the disproportion existing between the variety and effectiveness of the Organization’s work in what are known as technical questions and the very meagre results obtained in political questions.
136. The principles of the Charter express the aspirations of all men of good will: peace, justice, security, equality of the large and small nations; their aim is “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights…, to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”.
137. The authors of the Charter, while enunciating these principles, realized that the world was neither static nor immovable, and contemplated the coming into play of dynamic forces, at times opposed to existing forces, as well as the means for solving, in a spirit of co-operation and harmony, the problems which such forces might bring in their wake.
138. But a great deal of time is required for noble ideas to bear fruit and penetrate the minds of men and peoples. Anyone who has learnt how many centuries it took to establish and consolidate the rules of law which today give stability to relations between individuals and are almost universally respected, must agree that an augury of better times is provided by the progress already achieved in the international sphere in the regulation of relations between States in accordance with principles which, until very recently, pertained only to the realm of doctrinal speculation.
139. In spite of great difficulties, the United Nations has progressed, slowly but surely, towards the achievement of those purposes. We are convinced that if the Organization did not exist, the world would be abandoned to absolute chaos. And this is not mere idealism. I make so bold as to call it realism, since we may recall the incontrovertible and repeated fact that each apparent failure of a universal international body is succeeded by an even greater effort to recreate it in a better and more dynamic form.
140. Those who maintain that the United Nations is suffering from the same ills which brought the League of Nations to disaster should reflect on what happened between 1931 and 1939. In those years, the League dealt with — or was required to deal with — a series of aggressions committed against Manchuria, Ethiopia, China, Czechoslovakia and many other countries. The ineffectiveness of the League in regard to those questions should be compared with the attitude adopted by the United Nations in the questions of Greece, Palestine, India-Pakistan, Indonesia and Korea.
141. In all these questions the United Nations provided the means for restoring peace and, in the case of Korea, for repelling aggression. We hope that, once peace has been achieved, the United Nations will in addition take adequate measures to pacify men’s minds and promote an atmosphere of justice under a free regime.
142. It was precisely this determined attitude on the part of the Security Council in the case of Korea and the support given by an overwhelming majority of Member States which caused hope to revive even in the most sceptical and silenced the Organization’s detractors.
143. Still there are some who say that the most serious situation confronting us is not so much the problem of restoring peace in Korea as the unwillingness of one member of the Security Council, which enjoys the privilege of the veto, to accept the position taken by the Council, and by fifty-three of the fifty-nine Member States of the United Nations, with regard to the armed action of the North Korean authorities against the Republic of Korea, a State which had been established by the United Nations and which functioned under its aegis.
144. The fact is the more obvious since, for a time, the Security Council acted as it should, that is, it took adequate and concrete measures to repel aggression, in keeping with the Charter and the interpretation placed on it and on the events by the majority.
145. Owing to the circumstances attending the case of Korea, the action of the Council since 1 August last has revealed once again its organic weakness and revealed in all its magnitude the perils to which the Venezuelan delegation, among others, referred in San Francisco when it accepted the voting formula in the Security Council as proposed by the great Powers. At that time the delegation of Venezuela spoke on these lines: We are voting in favour of the Yalta text not reluctantly but without enthusiasm. At all events, it appears necessary, in the present circumstances, in the first stage of the international Organization we are creating. It is, however, our ardent hope that in the not too distant future it will be possible to give greater flexibility to the procedure established by the Charter and that progress will be made towards a system under which a single member will not be able to obstruct the Council and which will at the same time be more in accordance with democratic principles. For this purpose amendments to the Charter should be facilitated.
146. The requirement indicated by the delegation of Venezuela in San Francisco became obvious as soon as the Security Council began to function, since in its work the Council has been handicapped by the systematic obstruction on the part of one of its members of any majority decision which that member considered as conflicting with its interests, of whatever nature, including the interests of mere propaganda.
147. Apparently it is we small Powers that are most concerned in opposing right to force, since our very existence depends on the check which respect for the international standard should place on the sweeping expansionist force of the great Powers.
148. I say “apparently” because the example of what happened to Germany and Japan, which were great Powers until they unleashed the Second World War, should be borne in mind by those States which base their conduct not on respect for right but on the use of force.
149. On that account, we cannot conceive that any State with the most elementary instinct of self-preservation could be interested in the collapse of the United Nations, or what is worse, in making it inoperative, in undermining its existence. And for that reason also, when the Organization’s collapse is predicted in some quarters, it is the duty of all of us, by strengthening the effectiveness of its machinery, to affirm our faith in it and in its principles, not only on account of what it may accomplish but because of what in certain political and, of course, in technical matters it has already accomplished.
150. Before summarizing my country’s position on the present international situation, my delegation wishes to express the satisfaction with which it has followed the efforts of the Secretary-General of the Organization, as explained in the introduction to his report, to end the impasse which the United Nations has reached in some of its vital activities.
151. Venezuela, in the face of the aggression upon the Republic of Korea, has already stated its position and reaffirms it here. It condemns aggression and it firmly believes that the authority of the United Nations will restore the rule of law in that part of the world. Venezuela has taken concrete action in the matter; it has made contributions of an economic nature, to assist, in so far as it is capable, in repelling the aggression, as I had the honour to inform the Secretary-General a few days ago.
152. In this hour of crisis, in which the world Organization is for the first time opposing an act of armed aggression and applying the measures authorized under Chapter VII of the Charter, Venezuela is convinced that it is the inescapable duty of the Members of the United Nations to strengthen, both morally and legally, the authority of the Organization.
153. Finally, Venezuela believes that the resolutions duly adopted by the Assembly should guide the work of the other principal and subsidiary organs, in particular the Security Council, so that the Council may take effective action as provided for in Article 24 of the United Nations Charter.