69. Mr. President, I should like, first of all, to tender to you the cordial and sincere felicitations of the delegation of Burma, and my own personal congratulations, on your election as President of the twenty-third regular session of the General Assembly. We are confident that your wide experience in the affairs of the community of nations will stand you in good stead in the discharge of the heavy responsibilities which lie before you as President of this Assembly, and that, with the benefit of your wise counsel and able guidance, we shall be able to consider and discuss constructively the very important issues which we as a corporate body are faced with this year, so that the deliberations in this Assembly will take us a step forward in the true interests of international harmony and international co-operation.
70. Mr. President, I should also like to take this opportunity to convey through you our deep and sincere appreciation to His Excellency Corneliu Mănescu, the Foreign Minister of the Socialist Republic of Romania, who, at the twenty-second session of the General Assembly, gave his valued services in the interest of the world community. We are grateful for his reminder that, however difficult and varied the problems may be that lie before us, the one essential element fur their solution is the continuity of effort, and that the necessary basis on which this effort is to be made is respect for the personality and dignity of each and every nation.
71. Concurring in this thought of the President of the Assembly at its twenty-second session, we are glad indeed to welcome into our midst the Kingdom of Swaziland as the 125th Member of the United Nations. We are assured by the admission of Swaziland as a sovereign Member of the United Nations that whatever shifting winds may buffet the course of peaceful, co-operative relations between one State and another, those intemperate moods are but temporary aberrations, and that small nations may yet accede to and retain their proud, dignified and equal status in a just and ordered community of nations, as envisaged in the Charter of the United Nations.
72. My delegation approaches the many issues that confront the General Assembly at this session with the sober, but not pessimistic, realization that, in relations among sovereign States, even though the gains of a decade may be set back in a day, the sustained will and mutual effort of a decade is, nevertheless, not irredeemably lost in a day, and much may be salvaged by a renewal and reorientation of effort.
73. It is necessary, nevertheless, that certain basic principles be reaffirmed and adhered to scrupulously; chief among those principles is that of peaceful coexistence between States. The principle of peaceful coexistence has sometimes in the past been interpreted to mean primarily peaceful coexistence between the major Powers, since any failure in the observance of this principle between them would, it has been hypothesized, mean the sudden annihilation of mankind and the destruction of the world at large. The corollary of this hypothesis is that peaceful coexistence has come to be synonymous with the so-called balance of terror, operating over and in respect of spheres of influence almost formally demarcated by the major armed Powers. This self-denial and self-limitation on the part of the major Powers to their own spheres of influence might have been more commendable had it not also involved the denial and limitation of the rights of the sovereign members of the community of nations which, by accident of geography or the propulsion of history, find themselves incorporated within these spheres of influence. It is, therefore, needless to say that the principle of peaceful coexistence should be reaffirmed not merely between the major Powers or between military blocs but between all nations, large or small, and between those nations militarily potent beyond their frontiers and those merely intent on ensuring for their people a regular meal and a shelter over their heads.
74. Flowing immediately from the foregoing is a thought which I should like to interpose here, on another aspect of peaceful coexistence between all nations, large or small, namely, the need for self-denial and self-limitation on the part of the nuclear-weapon Powers, not merely in a balance of reciprocal terror, when faced with another nuclear-weapon Power, but in a categorical undertaking not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear-weapon nation. It is essential, if the international community is to be reassured, that this assurance from the nuclear-weapon Powers should be forthcoming urgently and without the imposition of conditions on the non-nuclear-weapon nations. From my delegation’s point of view, it is not enough that the nuclear-weapon Powers should seek to screen, by a threat of retaliation, threats of attack by another nuclear-weapon Power against a non-nuclear nation. It would, in fact, be more of a reassurance to all nations, nuclear and non-nuclear, if the nuclear-weapon Powers would make a solemn declaration, under an appropriate aegis, that they would not be the first to use nuclear weapons against any nation.
75. I should like to be permitted to refer briefly to a related matter which has been considered by the Ad Hoc Committee established to study the question, namely, the need to reserve exclusively for peaceful purposes the sea-bed and the ocean floor beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. My delegation hopes that the General Assembly will be able to establish guidelines making it possible for the adoption of principles which will preclude any and all activities of a military nature from the sea-bed and ocean floor beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. My delegation considers that there is a general consensus among all nations, those militarily potent and those merely vulnerable, that the arms race shall not be extended to any sphere and any element from which they are at present free, and that, with the pace of modern technological development, all too readily translatable into channels for death and destruction, the more urgently this prohibition acquires a binding force the better it will be for mankind. My delegation is hopeful that the specifics of this prohibition can be spelt out quickly and clearly during the current session of the General Assembly. |
76. I should like to touch here again on the need, which has long been felt, for assuring universality of membership in the United Nations and the specialized agencies. It is undeniable that the effectiveness of the United Nations in maintaining international peace and security, and in ensuring that it has the goodwill and the co-operation of all nations, depends in large part on seeing that its membership is truly universal. It is equally undeniable that this lack of universality imposes a severe and unwarranted handicap on the United Nations and limits its effectiveness. Today the world’s most populous nation, the People’s Republic of China, continues to be excluded from its rightful seat among the membership of the United Nations. The delegation of Burma considers that discussion of world problems would be more realistic, and the solutions reached would be more lasting, if the People’s Republic of China were to be a party to them as a Member of the United Nations.
77. While we have been able to welcome in Swaziland one more nation from Africa which has acceded to independence and sovereignty, the Assembly cannot forget that in parts of southern Africa, colonialism still flourishes to the detriment of the indigenous African peoples whom it dominates and exploits. Though, seemingly, colonialism in Africa has suffered constant erosion by the achievement of independence by one nation after another, its hard core has nevertheless remained intact, and because it still thrives in significant dimensions it continues to pose a challenge to the United Nations and to the effectiveness with which the principles embodied in the Charter are being applied and implemented.
78. In this respect, the situation in Namibia is particularly disturbing in that the prestige and authority of the United Nations has been challenged openly by a Member of the Organization itself. The Government of South Africa, since 1946, has defiantly flouted world opinion and the collective will of the United Nations, and not merely has refused to acknowledge the international status of Namibia but has taken steps to incorporate the Territory into South Africa. The United Nations cannot overlook the risk of a violent racial conflict over Namibia as a result of this intolerable action of South Africa. It is the right of the people of Namibia that they be enabled to exercise their inalienable right of self-determination, freedom and independence in conditions of peace and harmony. It is essential, therefore, that the United Nations deter the Government of South Africa from the course it has embarked upon over Namibia with the co-ordinated strength of the overwhelming majority of the membership, which desires to see Namibia free and unfettered from the shackles of colonialism and racialism and avoid diluting this strength with condemnations and denunciations of the actions of certain States which have not yet complied fully with the several resolutions adopted by the Organization having a bearing on the situation in Namibia.
79. The prevalence of racial discrimination in parts of southern Africa also continues to cause concern to all nations of goodwill. Apartheid as the official policy of a State would have been a cancerous sore in the life of a nation at any period of history, but for it to persist in this day and age, and even to spread by accretion and example, is one of the major tragedies of our time. The delegation of Burma truly fears that this trend, by which the policy of racial discrimination in a part of southern Africa encourages the maintenance and furtherance of racialist policies in other parts of southern Africa also, will lead only to an increasingly brutal tragedy for all the people of southern Africa.
80. I should like, at this point, to refer to the growing economic gap between the developing and the developed nations and to the disconcerting feeling that this means, in fact, that the poor nations, which can ill afford to, have become poorer. The Secretary-General has referred to this widening gap between the economic development of nations in his report to the General Assembly, and my delegation considers that this economic gap between nations should be as much a matter for concern of the developed as of the developing nations. International machinery intended to help to remove this danger to the ability of the world community to solve economic problems together will have little effect unless a great deal more of international goodwill, at the practical level, is in evidence than there seems to be at the moment.
81. Trade patterns between developing and developed nations continue to operate against the interests of the developing nations as the prices of primary commodities continue to remain low in the face of the rising prices of manufactured goods. Even some of the institutional arrangements intended for the assistance of the developing nations have met with apathy or veiled opposition on the part of the developed countries, and the Capital Development Fund is a case in point. When it is also realized that the developing nations lack, as at present, the industrial and technological capacity to absorb their rapidly growing populations, the immediate prospects of solving the economic difficulties of the developing countries do not appear to be encouraging. Nevertheless, international co-operation, under the aegis of the United Nations, can play a useful role in taking up the technological slack that is part of the problem in all developing countries.
82. The United Nations Development Programme continues to play this greatly needed role, and my Government, therefore, as a token of its appreciation of this programme, has decided to increase its contribution to it by about 33 per cent for 1969. We are, indeed, but one among many Member States which consider that the useful work of the United Nations Development Programme in the interest of the developing nations should be supported and furthered.
83. In conclusion my delegation would like to reiterate its long-felt conviction that what the United Nations is able to achieve in the interest of the community of nations depends very much on what individual nations want or permit it to achieve, and the degree of achievement in turn depends on the degree of international goodwill and international co-operation which nations are prepared to bring to the Organization.