1. First of all, Mr. President, it is my pleasant duty to convey to you on behalf of the President of my country his most affectionate congratulations. The General Assembly has had the wisdom to entrust the direction of its work to a diplomat of many eminent qualities, the Foreign Minister of a country — the Republic of Guatemala — which pursues with admirable persistence the highest aspiration of Latin America: to combine social and economic progress with the maintenance of democratic institutions and fundamental human rights. Furthermore, for Mexico, our community of origin and of blood and our geographical proximity make your election a special source of satisfaction.
2. I should also like to extend my congratulations to Mr. Manescu, the outgoing President who, with remarkable skill and especial care, led the General Assembly through the long and complicated session that ended a few days ago, and on whose profound knowledge of international affairs representatives were able to rely at all times.
3. This Assembly is beginning a new session at a time when there are contradictory signs on the international scene — a circumstance to be expected in a world in crisis. It is encouraging, therefore, to recognize — and I realize that this has been said many times before — that, whereas the League of Nations, twenty years after its foundation, was unable to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War, our Organization in drawing close to its quarter-century and, with all its flaws, is alive and still growing. It is true. that, as a peace-keeping mechanism, it is far from being even moderately satisfactory, let alone ideal; it has not been able to prevent the outbreak of local conflicts in various parts of the world, and there are other conflicts which are outside its jurisdiction because they involve peoples or States that are not Members of the United Nations. On the other hand, there have been others — I cannot stop to discuss them in the brief statement I intend to make—in which the United Nations has exercised, and continues to exercise, a moderating and constructive influence.
4. Furthermore the United Nations is a forum — or rather a series of forums, since in addition to this Assembly there are specialized and regional bodies — where peoples who, a few quinquennia ago, could play only a passive role in international affairs may now have a hearing.
5. Finally — and this is the decisive argument in its favour — there is no better alternative which might warrant abandoning or weakening this Organization.
6. My Government believes that, of all the highly important objectives set by the San Francisco Charter, the most urgent is the maintenance of peace. If a new world conflagration were to break out, all the other objectives, even the most noble, would become unattainable. In this connexion, despite recent events, Mexico continues to believe that many circumstances combine to render increasingly improbable a nuclear confrontation between the Powers which possess those terrible weapons of mass destruction — weapons already condemned in a memorable resolution of this Assembly in 1961 [resolution 1653 (XVI)] — although it would be unduly optimistic to think that the danger has passed.
7. As the spokesman for a nation of no great economic or political power and still less military might, I declare here, in the highest forum of the international community, that we desire peace above all else but are convinced that, if such peace is to be stable, lasting and just, it must be based on respect for the rights of all peoples—especially the right to self-determination, which is the basis of the others. Self-determination requires, in turn, the observance by all States — big, medium and small — of the principle of non-intervention, which was defined so clearly, and so consistently with the problems of our time, in the historic Declaration made by this Assembly in December 1965 [resolution 2131 (XX)]. The reaction which, transcending ideologies or political commitments, has been aroused whenever these principles have been flouted shows that those principles are becoming ever more deeply rooted in the soil from which, in the final analysis, the rules governing co-existence between nations draw their substance — the conscience of mankind.
8. At the stage now reached by the United Nations as a result of the liquidation of the old empires and the admission of many new States to membership in the Organization, everything points to the fact that understanding among the great Powers — to which the Charter of San Francisco, with unexceptionable realism, entrusted the main responsibility for the maintenance of peace, giving them special rights and responsibilities in the Security Council — is necessary but not sufficient to prevent war.
9. For several years now, the tensions between East and West have been accompanied — as the New Delhi Conference, to which I shall refer later, confirmed once again — by tensions between North and South, between the prosperous and the poor peoples: tensions that have little or nothing to do with ideological conflicts, although ideologies often take it upon themselves to make such clashes more serious and more acute. Furthermore the Geneva meeting which has just ended made it clear that a kind of impatient solidarity is developing among the non-nuclear States which — again regardless of ideological lines — may eventually divide the world into two heterogeneous blocs, one of States having nothing in common but the sad privilege of possessing nuclear weapons and the other of States having nothing in common but the mistrust which stems from the fear of having to accept whatever formulae may be agreed upon between the super-Powers, whether reasonable or not.
10. Mexico is conscious of its obligations to the Organization and acknowledges that the Security Council has a vital task to perform in maintaining international peace and security. However, it also believes that, with the changes made in the composition of the Security Council by the new text of Article 23 of the Charter, the Council can and should make a more effective contribution to understanding among the Member States, in the knowledge that, as Mr. Arenales, the President, said in his inaugural speech [1674th meeting, para. 56], the United Nations is not a super-State; that we do not wish it to be a super-State; and that consequently its weaknesses and limitations will, in the final analysis, always be the responsibility of its Member States.
11. For that reason, having acknowledged that our Organization was created with a clear awareness of the special role to be played by the great Powers, I now draw attention to the necessity that, in matters relating to the settlement of disputes, the permanent members of the Security Council should make more use of abstention as a formula in the service of peace, in accordance with the interpretation given over the past twenty years to Article 27 (3) of the Charter. Abstention from voting on certain resolutions would leave the door open to many possibilities in whose favour the great Powers would not be in a position to vote on account of their commitments, or for reasons of prestige, or for any other reason other than the defence of their own supreme interests. Thus the Security Council would proceed on the lines of constant bold experiment, outside which we can never hope to keep political solutions adjusted to the
requirements of such a rapidly changing world.
12. The formula which my Government suggests does not entail any change in the provisions of the Charter; it is simply an appeal to the super-Powers to realize with healthy realism that in this latter part of the twentieth century no State, however powerful, can claim that all disputes should be settled in accordance with its views. I repeat: we do not claim — for it would be absurd to do so — that a super-Power should allow the Security Council to impose on it solutions detrimental to its supreme interests. That would unleash war, and we have agreed that the basic aspiration of the United Nations is to maintain peace.
13. Again on the subject of the peaceful settlement of disputes, Mexico shares the view of the Secretary-General that States should endeavour to have wider recourse to the services of the International Court of Justice in dealing with problems which fall within its competence [A/7201/Add.1, para. 168].
14. In a year in which the international situation has undeniably worsened gravely, perhaps the most positive and encouraging event has been the conclusion of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [General Assembly resolution 2373 (XXII), annex] after patient efforts, in which my country diligently took part, to reconcile often-opposing interests and to resolve situations of antagonism. The number of States which have signed the Treaty is considerable, but it is still far from becoming a working reality. Mexico, which has signed the Treaty and submitted it to its Senate for approval, considers that recent events, although they may have damped our earlier hopes of having entered a phase of lessening international tensions, do not justify abandoning or postponing the steps needed to bring the Treaty into force. The more acute the tensions become, the more urgent and imperative it is to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
15. Nevertheless, we may affirm, as Mexico has affirmed already at the Conference of the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament and at the Conference of Non-Nuclear-Weapon States, that it would be intolerable if the Treaty on Non-Proliferation served only to institutionalize and prolong indefinitely the present situation in which certain States have the monopoly of those evil weapons. Furthermore—as I said when we were honoured by a visit from the Secretary-General, U Thant, to Mexico in August 1966 — by a fortunate paradox, such weapons, like poison gas during the Second World War, have become useless, for no State will dare to use them in the future, not only because it would be condemned by humanity but for another reason; after a non-nuclear war the vanquished States can make a spectacular recovery, and some have done so, but in a nuclear conflict no one knows whether there will even be a victor.
16. We must acknowledge that, if urgent negotiations are not begun with a view to reducing, or at least slowing down the nuclear arms. race, it will be very difficult for the Treaty on Non-Proliferation to become a reality, despite the goodwill of the many countries, such as my own, which, regardless of the decisions taken by others, have unconditionally renounced the right ever to possess such weapons.
17. For this reason, Mexico, while not exaggerating what Latin America can do, accords priority interest to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America, or the Treaty of Tlatelolco — named after the old quarter of my country’s capital city where it was opened for signature in February 1967 — which my delegation had the privilege of submitting to this Assembly last year.
18. It will be recalled that the General Assembly [resolution 2286 (XXII)] welcomed that instrument “with special satisfaction” and proclaimed that it “constitutes an event of historic significance in the efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and to promote international peace and security”. The General Assembly, furthermore, called upon all States to co-operate in order to ensure that the Treaty speedily obtained the widest possible application and the régime laid down in it enjoyed “the universal observance to which its lofty principles and noble aims entitle it".
19. So far, five ratifications, in addition to that of Mexico, have been received — from Brazil, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Honduras. Some other States have announced their intention to ratify it shortly and I am happy to inform the Assembly that in Mexico and the last four of the countries just mentioned the Treaty is already in force.
20. With regard to the additional protocols to the Treaty, Additional Protocol I — open to extra-continental States which are responsible for certain territories in our region — was signed by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Additional Protocol II — wherein nuclear Powers undertake to respect the status of denuclearization of Latin America — was signed by the United Kingdom and the United States. The Soviet Union, at the time of my visit to Moscow in May 1968 at the kind invitation of my colleague, Mr. Gromyko, declared its willingness — which the Government of Mexico greatly appreciates — to respect the status of denuclearization already in force in my country, as part of a general policy which supports the creation of a denuclearized zone covering one or more countries. I said at the time, and I repeat, that my Government, ready to accept whatever assurances are offered to our nation by the nuclear Powers, will continue in its endeavours to convince the two which are at present represented in the United Nations that the signing of the Protocol in question is in no way harmful to their interests and indeed would be a gesture welcomed throughout Latin America. Since such signature is — except for any States which renounce it — a prerequisite for the entry into force of the Treaty, it would make possible the effective denuclearization of a sub-continent in which more than 250 million human beings live.
21. I do not intend to deal with the many items which are on the agenda of the present session; that is not the purpose of the general debate. Accordingly, on economic questions I shall merely say that in the so-called developing countries there are increasingly grave symptoms of disquiet arising from profound causes which could create new threats to peace.
22. The decade of 1960-1969 is drawing to a close in an atmosphere of frustration; it is a period which the United Nations, at a time which we thought was auspicious, called the “Development Decade”. Without underestimating the gravity of a number of conflicts which are causing us concern at the present time, we are all convinced that the key to peace for this generation—and unquestionably for the next one—is the finding of formulas that will meet the elementary aspirations of communities which have scarcely begun to feel the benefits of today’s astounding technology.
23. These formulas, while taking into account the differences which exist between the poorer countries themselves, should, in our opinion, cover at least the following questions:
(1) The modernization of social structures — the task of each nation, but one in which the international community can co-operate by providing guidance, when so requested;
(2) The implementation of projects necessary to raise productivity and improve standards of living, with the attendant transfer — under conditions which do not imply any anachronistic subordination — of resources and technology from the developed to the developing areas;
(3) The opening up or expansion or guarantee of markets — in conditions of reasonable stability and fair prices — for the products of the developing countries;
(4) If we may take a longer-term and perhaps Utopian view — a system of world-wide social security, which would reproduce at the international level a process which, on a national scale, has enabled urban economies to guarantee to country-dwellers a certain income level in keeping with the minimum earnings generally obtained in the towns.
24. The results of the second session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development were, as the Secretary-General aptly noted [A/7201/Add.1, para. 84], below expectations, since the negotiation stage was not reached; several agreements of particular significance were, however, reached. In particular, the Conference agreed in principle that non-reciprocal preferences should be granted to the poor countries under a system which would start at the beginning of 1970, and that the flow of financial assistance from high-income to low-income countries should be increased up to a minimum net total equivalent to 1 per cent of the gross national product of the former. Although those agreements, important though they may be, are not so vitally significant — for reasons which I need not enter into now — for our country as for others, Mexico nevertheless reiterates its hope that they will be complied with.
25. Even though they have different concepts of the relations between man and the community, the world’s two great economic and political systems have shown - and why should this not be acknowledged? — that they can be effective in promoting the extraordinary technological progress and consequent economic development which has taken place in many countries. What has not yet been achieved — perhaps because the States which are the most representative of the systems concerned have not been able to develop any fruitful co-operation among themselves — is the extension of the benefits of such progress to the countries which are often euphemistically referred to as “developing” and which account for the majority of mankind.
26. However, we prefer to believe — and no one can believe unless he wishes to do so — that there are signs on the horizon of the co-operation which is to come. As a specific instance, I would refer to the joint United States-Soviet proposal, submitted only a few weeks ago in the Economic and Social Council, that all States, large and small, rich and poor, take part in the study and possible utilization of the resources of the sea-bed and ocean floor beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. We can only hope that the same spirit, and the spirit which made possible the treaty on the peaceful uses of outer space [resolution 2222 (XXI), annex] , could be extended to other regions.
27. In conclusion, I should like to make, on instructions from the President of Mexico, a brief final statement.
28. Next week, in my country’s capital city, the nineteenth Olympic Games will begin. Young men and women of more than 100 countries, without distinction as to race, belief or ideology — a point which acquires a symbolic value in this International Year for Human Rights — will be meeting in clean competition for the honour of returning home, some bearing honours, the rest with the satisfaction of having tried their utmost to set the youth of the entire world an example which may encourage future generations to attain better physical and spiritual standards than those of the present generation. As a parallel celebration, a very successful “Cultural Olympics” has been in progress for a number of months. Thanks to the generous participation of the majority of nations, we have been able to exhibit on the plain of Anáhuac, to the delight and admiration of the inhabitants and foreign visitors, many of mankind’s finest achievements in his constant search for beauty in all forms, animate or inanimate, plastic or immaterial, from the earliest times up to the present.
29. In reiterating its thanks, from this rostrum, to the nations which have contributed to the events now taking place, Mexico pledges that it will live up to the commitment which has been assumed. We likewise feel sure that everyone, participants and spectators, when they return home from my country at the close of the games, will be able to bear witness to having lived, even if only for a short time, in a community which, while not isolated from the problems and tensions of these days of transition and crisis, of challenge and hope, has long taken pride in seeking to establish friendly ties with all peoples, races and shades of opinion throughout the world, provided that they love peace and are prepared to help towards bringing equality among men to an every-day reality.