30. On behalf of the Government of New Zealand and the New Zealand delegation, I should first of all like to extend to the President our sincere congratulations on his election to the high office of President of this Assembly. I want to say that we admire the contributions that he has already made to the United Nations in a number of capacities. We salute his dedication to its principles and purposes, and we are fully confident that his conduct of the proceedings of the twenty-third session will enhance his own prestige and that of his own country and, above all, that of the United Nations.
31. I take this opportunity, too, of paying a tribute to the last President, Mr. Manescu, the Foreign Minister of Romania. The wisdom and dignity with which he guided the Assembly’s twenty-second session won the respect of us all, and of all those interested in the United Nations throughout the world.
32. I also extend our congratulations to the Government and the People of Swaziland as they enter the community of sovereign nations and take their place as an equal partner in this Organization. New Zealand was glad to be one of the sponsors of the resolution admitting Swaziland to membership, and we look forward to that country’s participation in the work of the United Nations.
33. Since I last addressed this Assembly, which was in 1962, many things have changed in the international scene and in the functioning of the United Nations itself. Our Organization has grown from 108 Members to 125. Its budget has expanded from $82 million to $140 million. New agencies have been created and whole new fields of activity have opened up. This growth has reflected new attitudes, new interests, new ambitions and, I think, also new priorities. But, in looking at what has changed, we sometimes, I think, lose sight of what remains the same as it was in 1962 and the years before. In 1945 the need for collective security was paramount, and I believe it also is today.
34. The United Nations has always occupied a central place in New Zealand’s foreign policy, and it will continue to do so, for the United Nations has a vital role to play in all areas of major human concern: peace and security, economic development, decolonization and the promotion and protection of human rights. We have all come to realize, perhaps even more clearly than those who laid down the objectives of our Organization in San Francisco in 1945, that there is no State, be it large or small, that can tackle those tasks alone.
35. The work of this Organization in the field of economic development has expanded rapidly. This is as it should be. One of the purposes set forth in the Charter is to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom and to achieve international co-operation in solving economic problems. Never have those problems been greater; never has the need for solving them been more insistent than it is today.
36. New Zealand has always felt that economic and social progress is the essential foundation of international peace and security. For about twenty years we have been contributing — quite substantially for a smaller country — to the programmes set up, both within the United Nations system and outside it, to assist the developing countries in their efforts to achieve such progress. We have also been one of the foremost advocates of a collective approach to the challenge of a hungry world. We in New Zealand are convinced that one of the best methods of helping to meet that challenge is by organizing more sensibly the distribution of the world’s food resources.
37. However, we appreciate that aid alone cannot solve the problem. To achieve real and sustained economic growth, developing countries must be able to earn — and I stress the word “earn” — increasing amounts of foreign exchange. To do that, they must be able to sell more to the industrialized nations. We know from our own experience that this is no easy task.
38. For many years, New Zealand, along with other countries which produce agricultural products, has faced serious difficulty in gaining access to the markets of the industrialized countries. No matter how efficient our methods or how competitive our prices, we are often denied a fair chance — and sometimes any chance — of selling our products. Nor is this problem diminishing. On the contrary, a number of important trading countries have recently increased their restrictions on agricultural imports and have stimulated their own sometimes uneconomic and subsidized production to the point where it threatens markets throughout the world.
39. This is a problem which demands the attention of the international community. It is not only a problem for those countries like New Zealand which export temperate-climate food-stuffs. It is a problem for all who have an interest in expanding world trade — and I should think that would be the case with all nations. It is a challenge to countries which, although they are Members of the United Nations and major beneficiaries of the present international order, nevertheless are reluctant to accept the fact of inter-
dependence amongst members of the world community.
40. I should not leave the topic of economic development without recalling the great satisfaction with which my Government has observed the spread of United Nations activity and expertise into our immediate neighbourhood — that is, in the South Pacific. This is a very welcome trend. The United Nations Development Programme and the technical services of the agencies are increasingly involved in South Pacific projects. Some of these have been regional in character and have called for the joint participation of the United Nations and the South Pacific Commission and of the other countries in the area. Others have been directed to the needs of particular islands in the area. New Zealand still administers two quite small island Territories: Niue and the Tokelaus. We have been especially gratified that international assistance has been made available to those and other non-self-governing Territories in the South Pacific. We strongly believe that development assistance can do much to hasten the progress of colonial Territories towards self-determination and, if the people concerned choose it, independence.
41. The United Nations has achieved much in the transformation of dependent Territories. New Zealand played a leading part in drafting the provisions of the Charter on this subject. We brought to self-determination the two main Territories for which we were responsible: Western Samoa and the Cook Islands. We voted for the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. We have welcomed the contribution made by this Organization not only to our task but also to the whole process of decolonization.
42. Only a few Territories have yet to exercise their right to self-determination and independence. Each of these, we recognize, presents special difficulties. They are not the same difficulties and they should not be confused. There is no immutable law—indeed, there is not even an adequate rule of thumb—for their solution. We have to keep in mind that we are dealing with people, not with things. At one extreme, there are the dependent Territories in southern Africa, mentioned by the previous speaker. At the other extreme, there are Territories where the obstacle in the way of progress to self-determination lies in such factors as very small size, isolation, lack of resources and very limited scope for development.
43. It is in the latter category that the two remaining New Zealand Territories fall. The special problems of these Territories cannot simply be ignored or impatiently dismissed as evasions of a colonial administration determined to hang on as long as possible. My Government, in considering the pace at which further political advances are to be made, has been and will continue to be guided by the wishes cf the people of the Territories — in this case Niue and the Tokelaus. We have repeatedly made it clear that it is for them to make the fundamental decisions concerning their future at a time that they themselves select. Surely that is the essence of self-determination.
44. In this International Year for Human Rights the Assembly will, of course, review the progress achieved in the twenty years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration. The rights of the individual have long been recognized, and respected, in New Zealand. A few weeks ago we celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the introduction of female suffrage. My Government has played a full part in the celebration of the Year in New Zealand. We have become party to two additional conventions, and others are at present under consideration. Non-governmental organizations in New Zealand, with assistance from the Government, have undertaken a substantial programme of activities over the year. Nineteen-sixty-eight has seen a great deal of progress within many Member nations.
45. But there are a number of countries for which this year has been a much less happy one, reminding us that in drawing up standards of human rights the United Nations has really only made a beginning.
46. We in New Zealand have been deeply distressed to learn of the loss of innocent life and of the terrible hardship and suffering caused by the violent and bloody struggle in Nigeria. We are aware that praiseworthy and painstaking attempts have been made by the Organization of African Unity and by the Commonwealth Secretary-General to bring about a political settlement. We have been disturbed by the fact that those efforts have so far, unhappily, proved unsuccessful. It is our earnest hope — the hope of all the people of New Zealand — that the United Nations will make every effort to assist in mitigating the desperate tribulations of the people in the areas devastated by the fighting.
47. The work of the United Nations in the areas of economic development, decolonization and human rights is of tremendous significance. Yet, we all looked, and we still look, for much more from this Organization. I think the heart of the matter is how the international community deals with the great issues of war and peace. This is the central purpose of the Charter. Those who met in San Francisco hoped to create an organization that would prevent aggression and would establish and maintain international peace and security in every part of the world. That was seen as the first and essential function of the United Nations. Basic rules of conduct were laid down and machinery was set up to ensure the observance of those rules of conduct.
48. The system of collective security created in 1945 was one in which small countries like New Zealand had a large stake. It was not solely, or even largely, idealism that committed us to the system; it was the stark fact that we did not have the means to defend ourselves and to assure our continued existence on our own. We looked to the organized international community to protect us and, in return, we pledged to he!p in its efforts to protect others. So it was New Zealand and countries like it that had most to gain, we felt, from the success of the Charter system and most to lose from its failure. For us this remains still true today.
49. We are all painfully aware that the United Nations has not been able to provide the guarantee of international peace and security that it was meant to provide. In many of the sharpest crises that have arisen since the founding of this Organization it has been unable to play the decisive role expected of it. The people of my country ask just how much security we can expect from an Organization which is sometimes paralysed by conflicting national interests. It is no wonder that States have had to find other means within the framework of the Charter — I emphasize, within the framework of the Charter — of working together to protect ourselves.
50. The failures of the United Nations in this crucial area of its work have, we feel, not resulted solely from the breakdown of co-operation among the great Powers which took place at a very early stage in the life of the Organization. There have been other causes, some of them of much more recent origin. This paralysis, or partial paralysis, has taken different forms. But essentially what is involved is a question of political will on the part of its Members. The Secretary-General — to whom I pay my compliments and tribute — has recently drawn a rather sombre picture of the problems confronting the international community. He has concluded that there has been a serious decline in international standards. He has referred to an increasing tendency for States to use force and violence to settle their international disputes.
51. I repeat, the essential purpose of the United Nations is to maintain international peace and security and to prevent aggression. Yet, we are very conscious that in one country — in several, but I am thinking of one, South Viet-Nam — a bitter war has been going on for some years because, as we see it, another Power is seeking to impose its will by military force. The international community has done little about it. Here is another case where the Members of the Organization might have shown that concern — a concern which is the lifeblood of the Charter — for the fate of countries suffering from the use of force and violence.
52. In common with some other countries, Viet-Nam has for some years been divided into two parts. The fact of division is regrettable, it is very sad, but it is a fact of life — and it exists in Viet-Nam, in Korea and in Germany. We hope the peoples of these divided States will be able to achieve reunification, by their own decision, by self-determination. But until those decisions can be taken, an attempt by one part to achieve reunification by military force can, in our view, be regarded only as an act of aggression.
53. It is sometimes argued that the conflict in Viet-Nam is merely a civil war. But it is much more than that, much more than an armed insurrection of a purely local movement. It is incontrovertible that the Viet-Cong — dominated, directed, sustained and supplied by North Viet-Nam — has been reinforced by organized military units from the north, to the point where its main organized military forces are in fact predominantly North Viet-Namese.
54. New Zealand is more than 5,000 miles from Viet-Nam. We were further still from Korea, but we recognized in 1950 — as did the great majority of the membership of this Organization — that an armed attack, even across the demarcation line of a politically divided country, Korea, was none the less aggression. We in New Zealand were much farther from Ethiopia, from Czechoslovakia, and from Poland, but we found in the 1930s that attacks on those countries had implications for the security of the world and for our own security far down there in the South Pacific. We have learned by experience that aggression anywhere is a threat to the peace everywhere and, as such, is a matter for general concern. I believe that that is why this Organization exists. That is why New Zealand has responded to the request for military as well as economic assistance from the victim of aggression, the Republic of Viet-Nam.
55. The effort in which we have joined is not an ideological crusade. We have never thought of that. Neither New Zealand, nor any of the other countries which are assisting the Republic of Viet-Nam, seeks to impose a government of any type or brand or ideological kind or any régime on the people of that country. Much less still do we seek to destroy the régime which exists in North Viet-Nam. We do not seek to establish a permanent presence in Viet-Nam. Along with our allies we have committed ourselves to leave as soon as the other side withdraws its forces to the north, as soon as infiltration ceases and the level of violence thus subsides.
56. What we do seek is that the people of South Viet-Nam should be free to choose their own Government and to decide their own. political and social system, including their relations with North Viet-Nam, free from the threat of force. If the people of South Viet-Nam were to choose communism we should be surprised: for nowhere — not even in North Viet-Nam — has a people freely shown, by an election offering a genuine choice, that it wants communism. But if the people of South Viet-Nam were so to choose that is their right. If they choose to reject communism and to call, as they have done, for help that is equally their right.
57. Everyone wants to see this tragic conflict in Viet-Nam ended. No one wants to see it more than those who have men fighting and dying in that theatre. My Government has whole-heartedly supported every effort, springing from both within the United Nations Organization and outside it; we have taken part in every possible forum to move the conflict from the battlefield to the conference table. We do not, however, believe that the way to peace is to give in to the aggressor or to call upon one side to make unilateral concessions while leaving the other side free to go on using force to the limit of its capability—a capability which obviously would be greatly increased by the concessions made by the one side. The way to peace is for both sides to scale down the fighting, to come together at the conference table to work out ways of letting the people of South Viet-Nam decide their own future for themselves.
58. My Government deeply regrets that the North Viet-Namese have as yet shown no willingness in the course of preliminary talks in Paris to respond positively to the action of the United States in limiting the bombing of North Viet-Nam or to the suggestion it has made for scaling down the hostilities. There can be little progress until there is an acceptance of the need for a matching restraint and a willingness to seek a reasonable compromise. As we see it, the North Viet-Namese authorities cannot have it both ways. They cannot at the same time call for a cessation of the bombing of North Viet-Nam and refuse to scale down their own military effort in any way whatever. As we see it, they cannot demand in the name of self-determination that allied forces be withdrawn from South Viet-Nam and at the same time refuse to acknowledge the right of the South Viet-Namese people freely to decide their own future.
59. The allies in South Viet-Nam have repeatedly expressed their willingness to see the United Nations play a substantial role in the restoration of peace. My own Government would welcome any assistance whatever that the United Nations could give towards achieving a negotiated settlement and subsequently in making sure that the settlement is properly carried out. In any intervention, however, the United Nations must be prepared to grapple
with all the involved and difficult aspects of this very complex issue. It must also be prepared to uphold the basic principle of self-determination on which this Organization has so long made its stand.
60. In recent years aggression has often taken new and indirect forms, as in Viet-Nam. In other cases we still see it in the classical mould: a vast army crosses a national frontier to impose the will of a great Power on a small nation. It is aggression of this sort, in flagrant and open defiance of international law and morality, that we have recently seen in Czechoslovakia.
61. The invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and its allies was undertaken suddenly and without warning. Hundreds of thousands of troops were poured in. They remain in occupation, and we are told that some of them will apparently remain indefinitely. It seems to us at our distance — perhaps one might judge just as well at a distance — that the leaders of the brave people of Czechoslovakia have been bullied and coerced until they have had to accept demands that they govern their country as the Soviet Union would wish. The whole episode has been a savage set-back to the hopes for maintaining the ordinary principles of decency in relations between nations.
62. The explanations that were given to the countries around the world for the invasion of Czechoslovakia were, as we all know, utterly fictitious. And then they were rather cynically redrafted to meet the unexpected situation which confronted the aggressors after they entered Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union has asserted, I think, a dangerous doctrine of an unlimited right to intervene in what it chooses to regard as its sphere of influence. It seems to us that that doctrine is one of naked power, leading to international lawlessness and ultimately to anarchy. We in New Zealand utterly reject it.
63. What surprises me is that the Soviet Union has gone further. It has claimed that the situation in Czechoslovakia is no concern of this Organization. It has directly challenged the Security Council and then this Assembly not to respond to that situation. I believe that we must give an equally blunt reply. The limits to what this Organization could do to deal with the aggression against Czechoslovakia have been made painfully obvious. But those Warsaw Pact members which took part in this affair should not be left under the illusion that the international community is ready to forget or to ignore their actions. No small State with any faith in the idea of collective security can fail to use this forum to give expression to the dismay and anger caused by a big Power crushing a smaller one.
64. So I am bound to report that the people of New Zealand as a whole, so far as I know, felt a sense of horror and outrage as the story of Soviet perfidy in Czechoslovakia unfolded. We knew that what happened in Czechoslovakia placed a heavy strain on the delicate fabric of world peace and world security. We may be remote from those events, but we cannot be indifferent to them. A threat to or a breach of the peace anywhere is of concern to every Member of this Organization. That is why my country feels involved in the tragedy of Czechoslovakia.
65. There is another and perhaps broader aspect of the Czechoslovakian affair that I have found especially disturbing. On 21 August of this year Soviet representatives around the world called on the Foreign Ministers to whom they were accredited to explain what the Soviet troops were doing in Czechoslovakia. I was told, as I presume other Foreign Ministers were told, that the Soviet troops and other Warsaw forces were in Czechoslovakia on the invitation of the Government of that country. What I was told, what others were told, what the Security Council was told and what the world was told, was clearly not true.
66. In international affairs, as in our domestic affairs, truth and trust, we believe, are not one day important and the next day of no concern. Those of us who have to take part in the making of decisions that may vitally affect the future of our countries must have a certain confidence in those with whom we deal. More often than not, we must put our trust in the pledged word of a great Power. This is very important: our lives could depend upon it. The search for a better and a safer world has, we believe, been sadly set back by this brutal violation of that trust.
67. As we see it, if there is one area of international relations in which progress depends entirely on trust, that surely is disarmament — world disarmament. The time is long overdue for a substantial reduction in the hazards created by the existence, the spread, and the continuing refinement of nuclear and other dreadful weapons of war and their means of delivery. Events in Czechoslovakia will certainly have their damaging repercussions here and elsewhere in the discussion on this vital issue. At the same time, the international community cannot give up; it must pursue this objective. One tragedy would have been compounded by another if those events were allowed to block further progress towards disarmament. But I do want to say to the representative of the Soviet Union that his Government has made it difficult for other countries. Did Mr. Gromyko realize our feelings as, with the Czechoslovak tragedy still unfolding, he advocated new measures of disarmament? Does he realize that we have no choice but to appraise his words with the recent test of Soviet words and Soviet faith still vivid in our minds and our memories?
68. The conclusion of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [see resolution 2373(XXII)] was a crucial step in the control of nuclear weapons. What we now all look for is rapid agreement on further and even more significant measures that will check and turn back the dangerous competition among the Powers that now possess nuclear weapons. We hope devoutly that this path has not been blocked by recent events.
69. For some time now, my Government has believed that a comprehensive ban on all nuclear weapon testing is a matter of the greatest urgency. The continued testing in the atmosphere of French nuclear bombs — including this year thermonuclear weapons — remains a cause of serious concern to New Zealand. Our concern with the French testing is a special one because it is undertaken in the South Pacific, relatively close to New Zealand, but very much closer to other territories with which we are closely associated and for which we are responsible in the international sphere. All care must be taken — and, I know, is taken — and as a result the hazards to health may be slight; but they still exist. The other hazards are considerably greater. We object to both French and Chinese testing in the atmosphere because it runs directly counter to every effort the international community has made in recent years to halt the arms race.
70. Much of what I have said today has related to the capacity of the United Nations to meet its prime purpose under the Charter: that is, collective security. I want now to make a brief quotation from what a New Zealand
representative said on an earlier occasion:
“The League ... is drifting. We have witnessed with consternation its ominous failure in recent years to carry out with any degree of effectiveness its main function — namely, the preservation of the peace of the world — and we cannot stand idly by and watch, unmoved or unprotesting, a course which deprives mankind of any real sense of security. Our hopes lie in a return to those principles ... which alone, in our opinion, offer a sure and certain prospect that the present drift may be arrested.”
71. That was said by the New Zealand representative in the Assembly of the League of Nations on 29 September 1936. The reason I quote it is this: two years after that, the streets and the squares of Prague rang to the heavy tread of a foreign army. And I remind this Assembly that only two months ago, that ominous sound was heard again in Prague — in the same city. In 1938, the world turned its back on Czechoslovakia and, in so doing, marked the end of the League of Nations — an organization in which men at that time, men of vision, has placed their hopes for peace, not only in their time but also for future generations. Today we — in New Zealand, at least — place those same hopes in this Organization, and we must ensure that it does not go the way of its ill-fated predecessor.
72. Whatever the United Nations has so far accomplished — and this is considerable in many spheres — we have to face the fact that it is far from attaining its ultimate goal. It is so far from attaining it that the very possibility of its ever doing so is coming into question in many countries around the world. So I say it is the duty of us all not to lose sight of that goal, and to devote our utmost efforts so that we may fulfil the vision of those men who founded this great and, we believe, indispensable Organization in San Francisco in 1945. If it is to remain a vital force in the life of the international community, the United Nations must return to its first principles. Only by doing this can it become that powerful and effective instrument of collective security that its founders intended it to be.
73. I conclude by saying that their vision was not at fault; there was nothing wrong with what they created; there is no possible substitute for it. What has to be done is to make it work — and first to stop the drift. Because the people of New Zealand believe in the Charter and in the United Nations, I can pledge that my Government will renew its efforts to give life and substance to its principles and to its objectives.