25. My delegation offers Mr. Arenales its warmest congratulations on his election to the presidency of the General Assembly of the United Nations. His election as the head of this great international tribunal is evidence of the growing importance of the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, and of their sincere desire to be present wherever the community of free nations demonstrates its will to strengthen peace and establish justice through understanding among peoples. My delegation welcomes this election because it knows that Guatemala is devoted to the cause of peaceful coexistence based on mutual respect, and to co-operation among States, and also because that country is a declared advocate of regional organizations as a means of restoring to Latin America the feeling for its own destiny, thereby following the same path as that taken by the young African States, which have organized themselves into regional groups and embarked on a process of progressive integration in an endeavour to fulfil their aspirations through organization.
26. In an Africa which is rediscovering its identity, the Government and people of Senegal wish to welcome the accession to independence of the Kingdom of Swaziland. This independence is of course a source of satisfaction to the United Nations, but it also gives us food for thought and grounds for hope. It is a source of satisfaction in the first place for the people of Swaziland and also for the community of freedom-loving nations which always feel encouraged whenever a new State freely takes its place among the independent Members of the United Nations.
27. But beyond the Kingdom of Swaziland, to which today full external and internal sovereignty has been restored, the international community faces once again the problem of countries, peoples and men still subject to foreign domination. This problem is a challenge to the conscience of us all, and especially of those States which have subscribed to the principles of the United Nations.
28. Since the Charter was signed in San Francisco, 1,000 million human beings have recovered the right to settle their own fate. They have recovered it by various means and in various ways, assisted in many cases by the efforts of the United Nations, and also by the developments following the last war, of a more acute awareness of the human state. Where men have regained their human dignity, colonial repression and dependence have been replaced by free and open co-operation based on mutual respect for national sovereignty and legitimate interests.
29. We are confounded by the apparently blind obstinacy of those who oppose the great liberation movement of the African peoples—the peoples who are subjected to Portuguese extortion and repression in Guinea (Bissau), Angola and Mozambique where they are fighting and dying to wrest back their freedom or who are fighting in Namibia and Rhodesia to obtain the right to govern themselves.
30. My delegation does not recall these problems merely in order to deplore yet again the bitter incomprehension attending them, nor even in order to add to the numerous condemnations of Portugal and of the Pretoria and Salisbury régimes. From the United Nations we all expect more than that. Did the United Nations affirm that its role was to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, did it proclaim its faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small and did it inscribe these principles in its Charter like a motto—merely in order to watch resignedly the summary execution of Rhodesian patriots, the humiliating practice of apartheid in South Africa and a war of colonial reconquest and domination in Guinea (Bissau), Mozambique and Angola?
31. The law of the United Nations can only mean the law of respect for the human person, of respect for the right of peoples — all peoples — to self-determination, and of justice as the formation of peaceful social order. If relations among nations and people were to be governed by the iniquitous law of violence and force, the brutal law of force which violates all freedoms, then the prospect would be dismal for all, even for those who now uphold colonial oppression, apartheid and racial discrimination.
32. But already, on the threshold of the twenty-third session of the General Assembly, the international community has grave causes for concern: an alarming situation in the Middle East; seething tension elsewhere; an ever-growing accumulation of weapons of destruction with the almost inconceivable spectre of their destructive power; the intolerable pauperization cf the countries of the third world which are now the proletarians of the international community.
33. In the Middle East, we cannot view the disquieting developments in the Arab-Israel crisis without deep misgivings. Violations by Israel of the cease-fire have increased; the refugee situation, which was already difficult, has deteriorated; the city of Jerusalem has been de facto annexed by Israel; Arab territories are still occupied by Israel troops; the mission of Ambassador Jarring, to whom we wish to pay tribute, is based essentially on faith in the mission of the United Nations.
34. The Government of Senegal has already defined its position on this complex and distressing situation. It is against all war or use of force as a means of settlement of disputes between nations, and wishes to reaffirm its opposition to all military occupation or annexation of the territory of one country by another. In its opinion, the solution to the Arab-Israel crises lies essentially in compliance with United Nations resolutions. These call for the withdrawal of Israel troops from the occupied territories, for respect for the territorial integrity and the sovereignty of the contending States, for a just settlement of the refugee problem, for restoration of the international status of the city of Jerusalem, and for freedom of navigation in the international waterways of the region.
35. In my Government’s view, the best guarantee of a stable and firm peace in the Middle East is to be sought in the guarantee — after the withdrawal of the Israeli troops — of the frontiers of the States of the region — Israel and the Arab States — by the United Nations in general, and by the four great Powers in particular. My Government considers that negotiations should be undertaken under United Nations auspices because — and it should not be forgotten — it was under United Nations auspices that Israel was created.
36. Having thus restated its position, my Government appeals with the utmost earnestness for peace in the Middle East, in that land from which have issued so many messages of peace and brotherhood. For the world has not yet forgotten the atrocities of the Hitler régime or the recent tribulations of the Jewish people. The black world remembers them still more clearly, because it shared with the Jews, not, of course, the Nazi concentration camps, but the same Nazi opprobrium and hatred.
37. Our solidarity with the Arab people is in consequence even stronger because the Arab-Israel problem is not an ethnic or religious problem; it is a political problem of peaceful coexistence. We are bound to the Arab people by many ties — geographical, historical and political. It is a fact that of 100 million Arabs all told, 80 million live in Africa. It is a second fact that they are members of the Organization of African Unity. It is a third fact that it is they who today are being put to the test. And it is for all
these reasons — geographical, moral and political—that we stand today by the Arab people, and hope to achieve with them a just and lasting peace.
38. Peace in the Middle East and in the Far East, a peace long anxiously awaited. Peace in Viet-Nam, a country which has experienced one of the most grievous situations of the post-war era, Viet-Nam which has revealed a new face of South-East Asia — a face of undaunted courage. Tenacity, heroism and poignant sacrifice have transformed the Viet-Nam war, no matter how we look at it, into the martyrdom of an entire nation. That is why the whole world was relieved to learn of the opening of negotiations in Paris between Viet-Nam and the United States, with the hope that the dialogue thus initiated would lead to peace and put an end to the omnipresent spectacle of devastation and sacrifice.
39. The world awaits and hopes for a halt to the bombing of North Viet-Nara, as a decisive contribution to the cause of peace and to the success of negotiations.
40. Nevertheless, the events in stricken South-East Asia, in still partly unliberated Africa, and in the ravaged Middle East cannot mask in Europe the vestiges and aftermath of the Second — one would like to say the last - World War. Spheres of influence, opposing blocs, the resurgence now and then of the cold war — in this strange situation the third world States realize their tragic weakness with feelings of anguish.
41. The leaders of these young States feel that the only way to achieve harmony and understanding among peoples is by respecting their right to self-determination, and to the full and free development of their own particular genius. My Government has always considered that the internal régimes of States, their political, cultural, social and economic choices, must be determined by the free play of their institutions, without any external interference. It is convinced that this must be so for the young States of
Africa.
42. Could it be that it was otherwise in Western Europe, which has the singular privilege of being the birthplace of one of the most illustrious of cultures — the German culture — and the breeding-ground of the two most destructive wars ever known? Peace then for all, through the confrontation and exchange of ideas and experience, through free discussion, through consultation and a patient Will to reach an understanding, and through social justice, in the service of the secure development of all States, or rather perhaps of the less-developed States. For are not armed conflicts, like conflicts of interest, struggles for influence, and are not ideological conflicts often based on economic factors?
43. Thus, while progress, trade and development have become a vital need for the third world States, they also represent a factor of peace and stability for the international community. For how can we hope for lasting stability so long as the general economic imbalance persists?
44. On the one hand, we have the industrial world, equipped with human resources, admittedly, its highly skilled and efficient personnel, its industries, its infrastructure, its capital, its substantial accumulation of goods and services.
45. On the other hand, we. have countries with more limited resources — often agricultural — whose mineral industries, when they exist, are generally extractive and usually supply industries situated elsewhere, whose road, social, economic and industrial infrastructures are mostly still very incomplete, if they exist at all, and whose capital and investment resources are scarce because income and savings are scanty. That is the all-too-familiar picture of the third world and the coming States, particularly those which have just acceded to independence. Of course, there are islands of prosperity, but in reality it is only a relative prosperity in the general desolation.
46. The causes? Backwardness, partly due no doubt to physical factors, but partly also to historical and political factors which have left their mark on the economies of those countries. The long strands of a web of economic dependence and specialization integrated into the modern economic system, mostly under the colonial régime, and woven over the years to meet the needs of a system foreign to their natural conditions, and sometimes to their interests, have in many cases turned over young states into open markets for the industrial countries and producers almost exclusively of raw materials.
47. The results can be seen today from the statistics and studies prepared by the United Nations itself. Nearly half the world population, excluding mainland China, accounts for only one eighth of the world production of goods and services. A third of that population accounts for 80 per cent of the world’s exports. The gross product per capita in the market-economy industrial countries is about eleven times higher than in the developing countries.
48. It is easy to understand why the developing countries had such high hopes of the United Nations Development Decade and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. It has already been sufficiently stressed that the results have not come up to our expectations. But it is very disturbing for the two thirds of the world’s population who live in countries where per capita output is still below $100. For stability and equilibrium are not affected so much by political tensions, the periodic emergence of danger spots and outbreaks of violence as by the difficult conditions of life in the developing countries.
49. What in fact is lacking is a positive feeling of solidarity between the third world States and the countries which, in the words of the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic Affairs “bear the main responsibility for the world economic order” [cf.A/C.2/L.1002] — and I would add, for world peace. It would be easier to find a solution, compatible with our common destiny, to problems of investment, aid, technical assistance, structural equipment and trade preferences, if these problems were envisaged in the perspective of a common strategy. With those words I will conclude, a common strategy, to build, to achieve, to consolidate peace through the participation of the strong in the efforts of the weak, through mutual assistance, fraternal co-operation, through social justice, applied to the redress of a grossly distorted economic system.
50. That is the profound aspiration of the countries of the Third World, ever ready to welcome any measures which may improve their economic condition. And tomorrow, perhaps, as new ideas, methods and concepts of trade and development emerge, the resources now expended on the arms race may eventually be released for peaceful endeavours. That is the ardent desire of Senegal, as of all countries which cherish no ambitions of leadership. That is its desire because reason and wisdom dictate it. That is why Senegal has now acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [General Assembly resolution 2373 (XXII), annex] because its only desire is for peace, because we cannot be and do not wish to become a threat to any nation in the world.
51. In conclusion I should like to say a few words about Nigeria. Ali the African States are deeply shocked at the tragedy of Nigeria. Because Nigeria with its human and material resources, its potential, its extent, has always been an object of pride and a source of hope for all of us. Nigeria, with its different races and languages, its peoples and beliefs, its social structures and even its political institutions, embraces within its frontiers all the factors which are to be found in our own States. The fratricidal struggle now tearing it apart must leave its mark not. only on Nigeria, but on the future of Africa itself.
52. Our States have turned to the Organization of African Unity for a solution to this bitter conflict. That is the purpose of the mission entrusted by the CAU to the Heads of State of Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria. The immediate objective is to obtain an unconditional cease-fire so that negotiations can be undertaken, under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity, for the safety and protection of persons and property under conditions which will, we hope, safeguard the integrity of a Nigeria reconciled with itself.