Philippines

I bring to this Assembly the greetings and cordial felicitations of His Excellency, the President of the Philippines, General Manuel Roxas. We are confronted during the present session of the General Assembly with a multitude of grave problems. It is not necessary, I am sure, to inspire in us the sense of earnest dedication which the occasion requires. We have arrived at a crucial moment in the life of the United Nations and in the history of mankind. The task before us is both an opportunity and a challenge, and the manner in which this Assembly will meet it may well prove to be the measure of our success in tiding humanity over the engulfing crisis toward better times. In the face of the insecurity and violence which afflict so many parts of the' world today, it would be difficult to dissemble and most unwise to deceive ourselves. Men everywhere await with anxiety the balm of the peace that is still to be made. Peace, which in due course should have been the fruit of our common victory, continues to lie beyond our reach. What men feel today is something compounded of impatience and fear — impatience with the slow progress that has been achieved in promoting confidence and co-operation among nations, and fear of the final disaster that would attend the failure of our present efforts. One year ago, or two years ago, it was much easier to minimize the social and economic disorganization of many countries and the political conflicts and rivalries between various States by considering these conditions as the inevitable after- math of war. Today we can no longer seek solace in that attitude. It has become clear that we are now faced not simply with the disorganization which normally follows war, but with a calculated confusion which, in the past, has usually led to war. Fortunately, the situation is not without its redeeming aspects. For the long and heavy agenda of the current session accurately reflects the universal anxiety over the deterioration of the social, economic and political conditions of humanity, the general desire to hasten the improvement of these conditions, and, what is even more significant, man’s abiding faith in the United Nations as the chosen instrument for effecting such improvement. It would be impossible to dwell on the threat of failure which hangs over the Organization without reference to the veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council. It is not an exaggeration to affirm that the entire structure of the United Nations Organization must at some time crumble and collapse under the continued sledgehammer blows of the veto. One can make this affirmation — even those among us who have been fighting the Veto since San Francisco—without excitement or passion. Quite calmly and deliberately we say that the world must choose between the United Nations and the veto in its present form. We cannot have both. We may soon have neither. Let the record speak for itself: twenty-two vetoes in the space of two years, twenty of them by only one of the permanent members of the Security Council. Through crisis after crisis the Security Council has been stalemated into virtual inaction. On the Greek question, on the incidents in the Corfu Channel, on the proposals for atomic control, on the Dutch-Indonesian conflict, even on the question of admitting new Members to the United Nations, certain permanent members of the Security Council have seen fit to exercise their privilege of the, veto to prevent decisions calculated to promote international co-operation for the maintenance of peace. In opposing the principle of the veto, my Government is moved by no desire to question the well-merited preponderance of the five permanent Members in the councils of the United Nations. But my country does deny the right of any one of these five States to condemn so important an organ of the United Nations as the Security Council to a condition of permanent paralysis. The main objection to the veto is not that it has been used too often by one of the permanent members. It is rather that the veto is a weapon which any one of the five permanent members may wield, as we have seen it wielded by one other permanent member, whenever such action suits its own conception of its national interest. From this example it is obvious that the veto does not encourage unanimity; it encourages rather the adoption of rigid attitudes and unalterable positions and is bound to result in a condition of alternating challenge and defiance. The principle of unanimity cannot be established by fiat. It can only spring from an inward discipline which is strong enough to dissuade the permanent members from acting on the impulse of naked self-interest, inspired on the one hand by the foreknowledge of substantial majorities, or on the other by the certainty of defeat. Such discipline cannot grow so long as each of the permanent members knows that it has always close at hand the invincible weapon that is the veto. Modify the veto, place it beyond reach and use, except for extraordinary and justifiable occasions, and you open the road towards the methods of compromise and adjustment which constitute the discipline of which I have spoken. In accordance with these views, my Government would support every reasonable proposal to limit or regulate the exercise of the veto, if possible by measures voluntarily accepted by the permanent members, or if necessary by appropriate amendments to Article 27 of the Charter. It used to be said of the opposition to the veto that it was instigated by and solely in the interest of the smaller Powers. Although this may have been true in the beginning, in San Francisco and then later, last year in New York, it is not so any more. The permanent members themselves are no longer unanimous on the principle of unanimity. We heard with satisfaction the Secretary of State of the United States affirm before the Assembly yesterday that the United States would be willing to consider measures for the liberalization of the voting procedure in the Security Council, specifically, by eliminating the requirement of unanimity with respect to matters arising under Chapter VI of the Charter, and such matters as applications for membership. These are concrete proposals which merit careful consideration by all our delegations. Let us re-examine the question in all its aspects. Let the other permanent members come forward with their own proposals and give the world some token of their desire to help remedy this difficult situation. In recent months there has been growing concern over various plans and proposals which, in effect, would result in bypassing the United Nations. Right-thinking people have reason to deplore such a tendency. But not one among us can justly condemn such a tendency, if, by our own deliberate tactics of obstruction, through the exercise of the veto or by other means, we are determined to block every reasonable action which the urgency of a given problem so clearly requires. A stalemate, after all, solves nothing. The problem remains, and if there are methods of solving it other than by or through the United Nations, alternative methods will be employed which the veto cannot prevent. This, then, is the heart of the problem: to enable the Security Council, to perform its vital functions under the Charter by methods of commensurate effectiveness which would require the modification of the veto; or, by keeping the veto in its present form, to condemn the Security Council to complete futility and make virtually necessary those subterfuges and evasions which are almost certain to wreck the United Nations Organization itself. The inability of the Security Council to act decisively on a number of vital matters has, inversely, increased the burden of responsibility which rests upon the Assembly and the importance of the tasks which await it. The Assembly is strong in that it is highly responsive to world opinion and is not hamstrung by the veto. On the other hand, its effectiveness is greatly diminished by the fact that its decisions have not the binding force of the decisions of the Security Council, and by the further fact that, unlike the latter, it is not in continuous session. The United States delegation has proposed to remedy the second of these defects through the establishment of an interim committee on peace and security. The Philippine delegation warmly supports this proposal, not only because it can easily be effected within the framework of the Charter, but because it would facilitate the work of the Assembly by reducing the accumulation of new matters at each session. Even when this has been done, however, the problem of giving added force to the decisions and recommendations of the General Assembly still remains. I have in mind -such decisions as that taken on the complaint of India against the Union of South Africa; that calling on the metropolitan Powers to convoke conferences of representatives of non-self-governing peoples, and other decisions, which have not met with the degree of faithful observance that we all have a right to expect. Those who criticize the abuse of the veto in the Security Council should pause to consider that the act of preventing any decision at all is no more to be condemned than the act of ignoring or impugning a decision that has been made. Indeed, the latter act is in a moral sense the more censurable of the two. The Philippine delegation therefore earnestly calls upon the Members of this body to consider, if not at this session, then at an early moment, measures to be taken with respect to Member States which fail or refuse to observe the mandates of the General Assembly. After long preparation and protracted delays, the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East was finally established this year. Preliminary studies of the economic problems of Asia have been completed, and further surveys are in prospect. While we rejoice over the establishment of this Commission and are happy over the preparatory work that it has already accomplished, we are sobered at the same time by the experience of the Economic Commission for Europe. The work of that Commission had reached a far more advanced stage than that of the Commission for Asia and the Far East, and was in fact ready to move forward from planning to execution. Unfortunately, the Commission for Europe is at the moment in a state of suspended animation. For all practical purposes, its work has been taken over by another body outside the United Nations. What fate awaits the Commission for Asia? We may have an answer by the time that Commission meets in the Philippines, at Baguio, before the end of the year. In the meantime, there has been another significant development in this field. An Economic Commission for Latin America has been established. We can only express the hope that there, as well as in Asia and the Far East, it will be possible to fashion effective modes of economic co-operation and assistance between peoples entirely within the framework of the United Nations. The Philippine delegation rejoices also over the establishment of the trusteeship system and the Trusteeship Council and the evident desire of the administering Powers to observe the obligations they have contracted under the Charter and under the terms of their respective agreements with the United Nations. It is to be regretted, however, that by the same policy which resulted in more liberal provisions being made for Trust Territories than for Non-Self-Governing Territories in the Charter, there still persists a certain disinclination to promote the political progress of the Non-Self-Governing Territories which the Charter calls “a sacred trust”. I would recommend to each and every Member of the General Assembly a careful perusal of the records of the meetings of the Ad Hoc Committee, so ably led by my good friend and distinguished colleague of New Zealand, Sir Carl Berendsen, which was created by the General Assembly last year in order to examine the Secretary-General’s summary of the reports transmitted by the metropolitan Powers under Article 73e of the Charter. You will find the reading of its records a sobering experience. The records will show very clearly the reluctance to which I have already referred. They will show how pathetic, in a sense, and yet how dangerous, too, is the delusion under which some Powers continue to labour when in this enlightened age they insist on refusing to recognize the right of the non-self-governing peoples to freedom and independence. But, fortunately, there are a number of bright spots which relieve the gloomy political picture in the non-self-governing areas. There is the establishment of the Dominions of India and Pakistan. We have before us a proposal to terminate the mandate over Palestine and to recognize its independence. There is the prospect of increased self-government for Burma and Ceylon. And only as recently as yesterday on this floor we heard the solemn pledge of the United States of America to submit the Korean problem to the present session of the General Assembly and to offer suggestions as to how Korean independence might soon be attained. We derive comfort from these concrete evidences of the irresistible advance of freedom, and we pay tribute to both the United States and the United Kingdom for recognizing abroad, in the lives of other peoples, the justice and validity of the self-same principles that have made those nations great at home and honoured among nations. The seed of freedom, hidden from the sun and rain, may lie quiescent for decades or a hundred years, but it never dies. Whether it be in Asia or in Africa, it will strike root and burgeon forth with a vitality which economic exploitation, political control or military domination will eventually find impossible to repress. The examples of the voluntary renunciation of power by certain States have, in recent years, become far too numerous not to have left an indelible impression on the minds of the peoples that are yet to be free. It now remains to be seen whether the enlightened spirit of our Charter and the compelling example of certain metropolitan Powers will lead to the peaceful liquidation of the antiquated system of colonies, or whether the blind determination to preserve that system will result, as it has most unfortunately resulted in some regions, in bloodshed and violence. There exists the alternative method of peace, which has been used by the United States once in the Philippines, and again by other metropolitan Powers in other places; it can and should he applied everywhere. As we begin the work of the present session, we cannot but be struck once again by the great number and serious nature of the problems which have been brought before the General Assembly. This fact can produce a feeling of helplessness or it can create a determination to do all that can reasonably be done with the means at hand. For our agenda is the most eloquent proof of the desperate desire of all nations for social progress and economic survival in a condition of freedom, in a world at peace. This tendency to bring all the woes of mankind, as it were, to the doors of the United Nations has been deplored by some as an unrealistic and dangerous practice. The United Nations, we have been reminded, is not equipped to provide healing for all the maladies of the world. We of the Philippines take a different view and consider this tendency to be a healthy one. For we know that the danger is not in the tendency itself, but that it lies rather in two directions: first, in refusing to give strength and authority to the United Nations anti its organs to accomplish the tasks which it is called upon, under the Charter, to perform; and secondly, in failing to harness the Organization to those tasks which the Charter authorizes it to perform, and for which it provides the means. The work is difficult and long, but we are not dismayed. We must not be dismayed. With patience and good will, with faith in the common purpose which has brought us together, and with a firm determination to exhaust the possibilities of agreement upon the issues before us, we shall overcome the tortured anxieties of the present and set at rest the fear of universal disaster which beleaguers our harassed world.