Mr. President, this eighteenth session of the General Assembly being under your distinguished presidency, I feel particularly privileged and happy to extend to you the warmest congratulations of my country, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, two of whose three partners are, as you know, close neighbours of Venezuela, your country. Above the more conventional links of friendship and trade which exist between us, we value the deeper bonds which —even before Brion and Piar from our country took part in the glorious liberation of Venezuela— had existed in so many ways and which, we sincerely hope, will continue for many years to come.
116. It is for these reasons, as well as because of my great esteem for you, Mr. President, that I feel particularly happy and proud to see this session placed under your able guidance.
117. The settlement of the basic conflicts that decide the fate of the world is a task for which the United Nations is not equipped. When the authors of our Charter granted to five great Powers the right of veto in the Security Council they thereby ruled out any attempt at such an ambitious undertaking. That is why, for more than a decade and a half, we have been doomed to carry the burden of the East-West conflict without being able to shift if from our shoulders.
118. This time, as so many speakers before me have pointed out, our hope for improvement would seem to be better founded than it has been in the past. In the political sky we see some faint rays that may herald a new dawn; the course of this session will show whether we can expect the sunrise. How different our world would look if the threatening gloom of world conflict should disappear.
119. The test-ban agreement, now signed by so many countries —my own among them— is a first step in the right direction; many more will have to be taken. It takes a long time for mutual trust to be restored. My Government fully intends to support every effort that can strengthen peace and freedom in the world and promote the development of constructive forces.
120. Although our Organization by itself will not be able, at this or at any other session of the General Assembly, to solve the great conflict that holds our world divided, it can, by working steadfastly and progressively step by step, reduce its intensity. It is for that reason that disarmament and the problems of nuclear power must continue to play a prominent part in our discussions. For that reason too, a climate of mutual trust must be encouraged here.
121. In conflicts of smaller dimensions, of course, the United Nations can intervene. In the Congo, in the Middle East and in Asia, several operations have been undertaken during the past few years. None of these has escaped criticism and none of them has given full satisfaction to all parties concerned, but on the whole I would say that they have proved the United Nations ability to extend the area of peace in the world by mobilizing world opinion and taking action for the prevention of potential conflicts and the mediation of existing ones.
122. For my country, acceptance of the agreement with Indonesia concerning West New Guinea was not an easy matter. Nevertheless, I wish to state that the period of seven months of United Nations administration has proved its merits. For the first time in history, the Secretary-General was entrusted with the entire administration of a large territory. When he transferred it to Indonesia, the first phase of United Nations involvement in West New Guinea ended. The second phase remains; it will continue until the United Nations has completed the task it solemnly undertook a year ago: to see to it that the Papuan people are given the opportunity of exercising their right of self- determination before 31 December 1969.
123. We may reasonably expect that there will be other cases in which the United Nations will be called upon to exercise a peace-keeping function. If so, the method applied by the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority in West New Guinea, under which the costs were shared and paid in advance by the two countries concerned, may well serve as a precedent to be followed; such an arrangement can prevent friction at a later stage.
124. In cases where this method cannot be applied, it would seem to be a counsel of wisdom to remember that war is always more costly than peace, even in terms of money. My Government expects that all Members of the United Nations will therefore heed the opinion given by the International Court of Justice and contribute their fair share towards the costs of the Organization's peace-keeping operations. I fully endorse the words which the preceding speaker, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Tunisia, has just said in this respect.
125. I take pleasure in being able to announce that the Netherlands Government, desirous of demonstrating its faith in the peace-restoring- powers of the United Nations, has just informed the Secretary-General that it has now placed a contingent of the Marine Corps of the Royal Netherlands Navy at the disposal of the Organization. This Corps is an élite corps and has a centuries-old tradition of service. It formed part of the first international police force employed by the League of Nations, some thirty years ago; to supervise the peaceful solution, by means of a plebiscite, of one of the problems left over from the first world war.
126. Although some technical details still remain to be worked out, the Netherlands offer can be summed up as follows: first, an initial contingent of about 300 men is held ready for action within twenty-four hours; secondly, this contingent consists of an infantry unit equipped with machine guns, mortars and recoilless guns and supported by reconnaissance, intelligence, medical and communications personnel. In respect of logistics and administration the contingent is self-supporting, within the framework of the United Nations supply organization; thirdly, within a matter of days further contingents will, if necessary, be ready for action; fourthly, qualified staff officers are ready to be attached immediately to the headquarters of a United Nations force of which the Netherlands Marine Corps contingent will form part; fifthly, so long as the units are not in fact placed at the disposal of the United Nations, no costs will be charged to the Organization.
127. My country has previously taken part in various United Nations operations: one of them was the United Nations operation in Lebanon; we are still co-operating in the Truce Supervision Organization in Palestine; and we have a field hospital unit in the Congo.
128. Our experience of, and confidence in, the ability of the Secretary-General and his staff have prompted us to make this new offer.
129. We trust that, with the aid of a wide choice from stand-by forces of as many countries as possible, carefully trained for United Nations tasks, it will be possible to put out political brush fires before they turn into general conflagrations.
130. Necessary as the peace-keeping operations of the United Nations may be, they do not, by themselves, create the conditions under which economic development and growth towards prosperity can take place. It goes without saying that a Marine Corps cannot bring prosperity to underprivileged countries. In the Netherlands, at the beginning of this year, we started training a corps of young volunteers to work in such less developed countries as may wish to make use of their services, and there to share their skills with the inhabitants. The first group are on the point of leaving for Africa, where they will assist the farmers in a valley of Cameroon in the application of agricultural techniques. They will thus play their part in the performance of that immense task, incumbent on us all, which the Charter describes as the promotion of "social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom".
131. The Netherlands Government harbours great expectations from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development which will be held next spring. There we must give a great push forward; together we must analyse where our insight failed and why assistance programmes were sometimes bogged down. It is becoming increasingly evident that one-sided concentration on the transfer of capital is not enough for the promotion of development. It can even be harmful because it tends to obscure the importance of solving the underlying problems of stagnant development. Capital by itself is of no use when the channels through which it has to flow are clogged. In spite of the great needs of the less developed countries, there is a shortage of sound projects into which the available capital could be injected. It is unprofitable to debate whether the donor or the receiver countries are responsible for this state of affairs, but it is a fact that in many cases the conditions for quick and effective use of capital are absent and that too little has been done to create these conditions. Transfer of knowledge and cultivation of the ability to organize are prerequisites for the investment of development capital. This is where the United Nations Special Fund is doing such valuable work, although the need for more remains imperative. The multilateral relationship between more and less developed countries may be adversely affected when the world is caught in a net of tied loans. Such a situation will have its effects on trade policies and it will alter the pattern of the world economy. Finally, the question arises: is there really much point in talking about credits and credit conditions when the foreseeable burden of interest and repayment will eventually be so high as to absorb the entire foreign currency income of the debtor country?
132. Solutions to these problems are being sought by national Governments and by our friend Mr. Prebisch and his advisers. We are intensely interested in the new insights in the problems of development which they will provide. To a large extent these insights will determine the course of the Development Decade.
133. This is the twelfth time that I am privileged to attend the General Assembly as head of the Netherlands delegation. When I spoke in this hall in 1952, I was addressing 60 members; now they number 111. This increase is a reason for rejoicing, because it means that so many more countries have achieved independent status. At the same time it gives us cause to be careful because the sum of all our separate aspirations, aims and ambitions has been doubled. Thus, while our mutual relations have become more inextricably interwoven, the scope left for individual, independent, action has shrunk. There is less room for our national stringings, but this restriction is compensated by the benefits derived from joint action on a plane transcending that of nationalism. The attainment of this benefit, however, is contingent on our ability to moderate our demands and to be content with less than what we might, consider our due. Such self restraint does not come easily, but that we may "live" we must learn to "let live". At the beginning of this eighteenth session of the General Assembly I pray to the Almighty that He may grant us wisdom.