1. We all take pleasure in paying tribute to the new President of the Assembly and to the outgoing President. My country is privileged to know well and to think very high!y of both these statesmen, one of whom today succeeds the other in one of the highest posts attainable for the successful guidance of world affairs.
2. Consequently, Mr. President, the good wishes that we address to you are accompanied by a fervent belief. You represent a nation like our own, destined by its size, history and geography to moderate its ambitions so as to devote its best efforts to its progress, to support of the principles of the Charter, and to the rule of justice in international life. We know that those ideals guide you in carrying out the all-important office you have assumed.
3. At the same time I want to pay a sincere tribute to the President of the twenty-second session of the General Assembly, my colleague and friend Mr. Manescu. In a stormy international climate he presided with firm and calm authority over our discussions; the unanimous respect he inspired redounded to the benefit of the United Nations; the esteem and gratitude that we had already felt for him have grown even greater.
4. If, following the example set by the Secretary-General in the introduction to his annual report [A/7201/Add.1], we were to evaluate which of the items in our work is of the greatest importance in establishing a new order of justice and thus for world peace, I should have to mention here the contributions that each of our States must make towards co-operation between countries at different levels of development; and I should be obliged to devote my whole statement to that subject.
5. This year, however, Belgium has already twice expressed its views in detail, first at the Conference at New Delhi and then during the Economic and Social Council’s session at Geneva. Suffice it therefore for me to state solemnly that the Belgian people intends to devote an ever-increasing part of its national effort to solving the human, commercial and financial problems created by the inequality of opportunities among countries.
6. This year my Government has once again increased — for 1969 — its contribution to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). That is an increase of 25 per cent over two fiscal periods; but it is only a token. If further proof were needed of the determination I have just mentioned, I would recall that the Belgian Government has just made provision for one of its most qualified members to devote his entire time to those problems. I am referring to Mr. Scheyven, former President of our Economic and Social Council.
7. Consequently, I wanted to mention that fundamental question of development co-operation at the beginning of my statement in order to stress the importance our country attaches to it — for it is vital — and our determination to make a firm contribution within the Second Committee to the planning of the Second United Nations Development Decade.
8. The Ministers for Foreign Affairs who have spoken one after the other from this rostrum have stressed, following your example, Mr. Secretary-General, the negative and disappointing aspects of the developments that have occurred in international life over the past twelve months. How cam we deny the facts? The Belgian delegation’s disappointment is all the greater since in several important areas it had seen evidence that its hopes might be fulfilled.
9. Last year we were concerned with three international conflicts: Cyprus, the Middle East, and South East Asia. During the past year discussions have at least been started with regard to each of them. Over the delicate problem of Cyprus the Turkish and Greek leaders have wisely begun a reconciliation; their accomplishment is all the greater considering the heat of the passions that were aroused. Similarly, with regard to the Middle East we are still grateful to the authors of the Security Council resolution of 22 November last [242(1967)] for the course of international justice they marked out, although they have unfortunately not yet evoked any suitable response. I want to say how disappointed would be our expectation if our colleagues from the countries concerned were to fail to arrive at some preliminary understanding during the current session.
10. Lastly, with regard to the third subject, hope was aroused for the pacification of South-East Asia. President Johnson stopped the bombing of the greater part of North Viet-Nam and intended to devote his last months in office to the search for peace. The Paris talks opened and gave us reason to hope that, by further generous acts inspired by political insight, that distressing conflict might soon be ended for good. I cannot refrain from recalling that three years have already gone by since the world’s conscience
spoke here [1347th meeting] with the illustrious voice of Pope Paul VI and we heard his appeal to desist and negotiate.
11. Since no favourable event that has occurred during this year must be overlooked, let us then recall the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international Conference held at Teheran which solemnly reminded us that, as members of the human family, every nation and every one of its citizens has equal, inalienable and inviolable rights. And on that occasion everyone — and who could be more pleased than my own country? — could note that an increasing number of States were acceding to our Organization’s international agreements concerning civil, political, economic and social rights.
12. Lastly, a further step seemed to have been taken on the road to disarmament: the Treaty on the NonProliferation of Nuclear Weapons [see resolution 2373 (XXII)], drawn up at the special instance of the two intercontinental nuclear Powers, has already been signed by more than eighty States. At the same time Europe seemed prepared to take a step towards acting in such a way that each State, whatever its régime, would respect the others. The path to peaceful coexistence and détente was being seriously and effectively marked out, to such an extent that at the Reykjavik Conference in June 1968 fifteen Western States concluded that mutual and balanced reductions of forces could lead to the creation of new confidence in Europe. They asked the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries to join in that project.
13. We took a resolute part in all those events, even when they were only a timid promise of progress; and we can even say that Belgium put forth its best efforts on the international level.
14. And now it is Europe’s turn to throw away its chances. We deplore and condemn in equal measure all that has recently occurred on our continent to frustrate that progress. The military occupation of Czechoslovakia, the pressures brought to bear on other States, the presence of Soviet divisions on the borders of the Federal Republic of Germany, the threat to invoke against it texts that are no longer applicable, the unrest concerning Berlin: those are never-admissible acts of force that, in the present context of our work, appear to us irreconcilable with the role the USSR has chosen for itself in the world.
15. Consequently we wondered what we were supposed to accomplish here in such deplorable circumstances. Having taken thought we decided to say as clearly as possible what we believe we can expect from the great States. I shall now describe what in our view we must urgently accomplish together, all our nations jointly, in order if possible to advance along the road to peace.
16. Everyone well knows why the States that signed the United Nations Charter twenty-three years ago invested the victors in the Second World War with a permanent primary responsibility within the Security Council. Since that time two of those States have acquired an intercontinental nuclear destructive power whose use would be devastating. It was principally those two States that proposed for our signature the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and promised us to come to the assistance of whomever might be attacked or even merely threatened by atomic weapons if we renounced their manufacture and possession.
17. Thus in twenty-four years we shall have twice recognized, in law, the special status of the very great Powers by endowing them with an extraordinary authority and power and thereby with an extraordinary responsibility. In return, we feel we have the right to obtain an unequivocal commitment that there shall be no abuse of power. That is why the principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other States, of non-interference, of unwarranted intervention, must in face of the facts be respected with special strictness by those who have asked the rest of the world to sanction their power and to repose special confidence in them. History teaches that strength which is not tempered by moderation and respect for law can easily turn into tyranny.
18. We considered that the principle of non-interference had been defined and agreed to once and for all in December 1965, when our General Assembly resolution [2131(XX)] on the inadmissibility of interference in the domestic affairs of States was adopted by 109 votes to none. That unanimous resolution clearly stated:
"...all peoples have an inalienable right to complete freedom, the exercise of their sovereignty ...”
It added:
"...armed intervention is synonymous with aggression...”
In it our Assembly declared:
“No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State.”
And the Assembly further declared:
"The strict observance of these obligations is an essential condition to ensure that nations live together in peace with one another ...”.
In short, we considered that that resolution as a whole adequately defined what was, in the unanimous opinion of the community of nations, the duty of non-intervention.
19. Yet some other theories are appearing. It is said that the Yalta agreements of 1945 authorize and legitimize intervention by the great Powers within their spheres of influence. We read that the principles of international law are not applicable among socialist countries, or that they are not applicable to States that were defeated in 1945. We must declare that those are alarming and dangerous theories, which I should like to examine with you.
20. First, the Yalta agreements. Is it true that they sanctioned the system of spheres of influence and that by tacit agreement the great Powers left each other a free hand with the States in their respective spheres? For our part we must very loudly declare that this interpretation of the Yalta agreements is historically false, as the United States Government has not failed to point out. I think we have to say that many myths have grown up around the Yalta Conference. Must we prove that to ourselves by re-reading here the joint statement made by the three Governments on the results of the Crimean Conference, expressly mentioning the right of all European peoples “to choose the form of government under which they will live” and “the restoration of sovereign rights and self-government to those peoples who have been forcibly deprived of them by the aggressor nations”? Yalta thus grants no State a privileged right over another State.
21. It is true that since Yalta the principles I have just mentioned have often been ignored and that spheres of influence have been created by acts of power and force, while our nations, which had disarmed, were forced to form an alliance in order to build a protective wall against them. It is also true that our efforts in Europe in recent years have been devoted to replacing relations based on the mere balance of power by a system based on stability that can bring peace. The Atlantic Alliance has clearly indicated that, along with legitimate security considerations, its member States were guided by a desire for relaxation of tension. In other words, in Europe we want a system of relations founded not on fear but on regional security agreements and reciprocal commitments that will include disarmament. That also means that in those relations there is no room for policies based on spheres of influence.
22. On the other side it has been contended — and I am thinking in particular of an article that appeared in Pravda on 26 September 1968 and whose philosophy seems to be echoed in the recent statement made by my colleague from the Soviet Union [1679th meeting] — that all the classical concepts of non-aggression, non-intervention, sovereignty and independence are valueless in relations among socialist countries because they are abstract and devoid of class content. In that connexion I should like to say two things.
23. First: this is, so far as we know, the first time the Soviet Union has made such a clear statement of that thesis. I would recall that the statement on non-intervention which I mentioned earlier was adopted by our Assembly at the suggestion of the Soviet Union. I would further recall that the initial draft submitted by the USSR to the first Committee contained an article inviting “all States to be guided in their international relations by the principles of mutual respect and of non-intervention in domestic affairs
for any reason” — and the proposal was very clear: “whether economic, political or ideological".
24. I should like to recall that at the twenty-first session, returning to this question of non-intervention, the USSR representative, Mr. Kuznetzov, stated: "We should recognize that every State has the inalienable right to settle for itself without any foreign intervention, questions concerning its future". He added that that was “a fundamental principle of the United Nations Charter”.
25. Those statements are categorical. They make no mention of a special law existing among socialist countries.
26. Belgium is of the opinion that the only interpretation compatible with the decision taken at the twentieth session is that those principles thenceforward have a universal meaning. They must be acknowledged to apply among States with different political, economic and social systems as well as among States adhering to the same system. Any other interpretation must inevitably mean that within a given system there are no legal relationships but only relationships based on submission, dependency and inequality and typical of a colonial system that the Organization is doing its utmost to eliminate.
27. Lastly, in another context, it has been maintained that Articles 53 and 107 of the Charter, together or separately, would allow a unilateral intervention in the domestic affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany. In our opinion those articles, which we have re-examined, have no relevance to present world conditions. No one can ignore that their unforeseen and unilateral invocation is in itself a source of tension. I should like to state very clearly that the German people has as much right as other peoples to protection from foreign pressures and threats. Having regretted on several occasions the absence of the largest Asiatic Power from this Assembly, I feel no awkwardness at saying that we deeply regret the absence of one of the great European countries, the world’s fourth largest economic power, namely the Federal Republic of Germany.
28. What conclusions are we to draw from this survey? It is that the path of peace, in other words our own path, lies through scrupulous respect for the principle of non-intervention as set forth by our Assembly. That principle cannot be applied to operations like the one we have witnessed around Czechoslovakia; along with very many of our colleagues, Belgium is asking that it be terminated in the interest of everyone. Security will be continuously endangered if the Powers persist in creating exceptions to the most widely accepted and most solemnly enshrined principles of the law of nations.
29. However, if the Assembly will allow me, I should like to go further and to say this: the great States are well aware that non-interference is not enough; the world expects from them, and welcomes when they offer, positive contributions to the cause of peace, which are necessary if they want to increase — or, if need be, restore — the serene authority that is expected from those to whom an exclusive power has been granted.
30. In submitting the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons the great Powers there and then accepted a solemn primary obligation: to take resolutely and without delay the road to nuclear disarmament. However, we should like to express three further ideas.
31. The first involves the right to veto and, Mr. Secretary-General, echoes wholeheartedly a recommendation you formulated in the introduction to your annual report. For our part we would state that if the great Powers, whether rightly or wrongly, feel obliged to follow the policy of the balance of power in order to protect world peace, they must at least refrain from acting in place of United Nations bodies; they must not present those bodies with faits accomplis, and they must, in certain cases at least, agree to the rule of supranationality that other States accepted in 1945. We believe that the increased trust for which the great States have just asked other States by opening to signature the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons constrains them to make a comparable act of increased trust in the Security Council.
32. Would it not be logical for the possessors of the right of veto to refrain from employing it when, owing to their acts, the sovereignty and independence of a State are in issue before the Security Council? I recall that we have seen the Government of the United States abstain from exercising the veto in the matter of the Dominican Republic — a good example. We trust that the question we are thus putting to the permanent members of the Security Council will not be left unexamined or, we hope, unanswered.
33. Our second suggestion is that the great States shall make a joint examination and submit to us as soon as possible immediate plans for reconstruction and economic development in the troubled areas of South East Asia, the Middle East and Nigeria. Here I want to repeat the proposal of my eminent compatriot the President of the Belgian Senate, Mr. Paul Straye, who rightly recommended to the Assembly of the Council of Europe a type of Marshall Plan that would assist the millions of Middle East refugees through a programme of land irrigation and fertilization. If the great States jointly made a similar proposal, they know that they would meet with eager co-operation throughout the world - in other words, within our Assembly.
34. The third idea has to do with the same areas: that, in the areas of recent conflict the great States should themselves propose, and call forth from the other States, acceptance of a limitation of the supply of conventional weapons and their means of delivery. Belgium has already modified its national legislation in anticipation of that move.
35. That is what seems to me natural and normal to ask of the great States: strict respect for what Mr. Debré called the prime safeguard of human rights [1683rd meeting], namely the principle of non-intervention; and positive contributions to the strengthening of our institutions, to economic development and to disarmament. If the great States could commit themselves jointly to the goals I have just mentioned, we believe that not only would they erase the lamentable picture of spheres of influence, but also that this would be of great consequence for the cause of peace.
36. I have until now spoken of the role of the great States because we are prepared to grant them a special authority and responsibility. However, that does not mean that other States — and my own country certainly — are prepared to abandon initiative within the United Nations. In that connexion I shall restrict my remarks to the efforts that we consider basic and positive, and by means of which we, for our part, wish to bind ourselves to the community of nations.
37. At the present time — and this is my first comment — eighty specialized scientific agencies all over the world are devoting themselves to studies on peace; UNESCO is assisting them. All of us, in thoughtful moments, have of course wondered how and why in one case peace has led to war, and how and why, in some other case conflict has been resolved or avoided. So now a new science is attempting to provide objective and valid answers to those questions; its goals are these of the Charter; in fact, its very object is a search for ways to achieve United Nations goals.
38. How, then, is our Organization going to demonstrate its interest in those studies? There we see scientists from all countries attempting to establish, without prejudice or passion, how and why conflicts arise and end. Here politicians and diplomats from all countries meet throughout the year to study how to resolve some conflicts and avoid others. Would it not be ridiculous — and, given the importance of what is at stake, unforgivable — to pretend that the studies of the former have no bearing on the efforts of the latter?
39. For that reason we believe that our Organization can and must co-ordinate those studies and provide an exchange of information among their makers, who have up to now often worked in isolation from one another. Our Organization can and must see to it that those studies turn from the abstract to the concrete in order that the science of survival may become a technology of peace that we may all employ.
40. I should like to propose that we ask our Secretary-General to make an annual summary report on the studies of the eighty-odd centres scattered throughout the world. We should hope that the United Nations might request those institutions to study matters of special benefit to us. In a word, I wish that a current of mutual exchange could be established between those theoretical research centres and our Organization for the greater good of all; and I know that in saying this I am once again repeating proposals that were submitted here by the Secretary-General two years ago.
41. We also feel a duty towards the universality of the United Nations. Several States are still absent from our international community, and a few moments ago I stated how much we regret the absence of Germany. From this very rostrum two years ago [1432nd meeting] I shared with you our hope that the voluntary or imposed isolation of mainland China would cease; it does net seem right to us that a nation which is the most populous on earth and
possesses one of the world’s oldest civilizations should remain apart.
42. Mainland China’s participation in the work of the international agencies poses a serious problem, which must be seriously studied without delay. For its part, Belgium is raising that problem in the interests of peace and of our Organization, with the political determination that a positive response shall be given to two connected preliminary questions that everyone is asking and to which no one yet knows the answer.
43. You all know what those questions are: Does mainland China desire to participate in the work of our Organization and observe its rules and principles? Further, how can we make sure that the Republic of China, which has been seated in the United Nations since its inception, can remain a full Member with all the rights of Membership? Belgium is asking that those two questions be examined by an ad hoc United Nations body set up for that purpose. That body should be guided in its conclusions by the opinion of all the parties concerned, who must therefore be consulted.
44. Allow me to conclude with some brief remarks concerning the continent of which my country is a part, Europe. Indeed, and this is perhaps paradoxical, the United Nations is the only place where for the present all European nations can speak amongst themselves, whether they be committed or neutral, aligned or non-aligned. It is here that we, for example, have forged bonds with men from European States whose opinions we do not share; they have always listened to us attentively, and we have also tried clearly to understand them.
45. Now that Europe is once again being buffeted, that many of its peoples are being tested, that it is threatened by a new phase of the cold war, it seems necessary to us to restate how, in our opinion, peace and due understanding among European nations can be established.
46. First — and this has been the main burden of my statement — normal and stable relations can exist only between States that are equal in law. Consequently inter-European relations cannot be those of power for some and subservience for others.
47. Next, because history has created a large number of European States, many of which occupy small areas, those States must seek to form among themselves all kinds of solidarity that can enable them, in the twentieth century, to deal as larger aggregates with the problems they cannot solve in isolation. In Western Europe it is normal that interdependencies should be created where feasible among countries with the same market economy, the same concept of democracy, the same defence requirements and the same degree of technological development. However in forming those interdependencies we are careful to maintain a balance of powers and rules protecting each State, so that integration may not bring about either the hegemony of some or the subservience of others. Consequently we think it would be highly hypocritical to pretend to be shocked at our associations of countries or to speak of them as blocs, as tools for reciprocal confrontation and combat. In the state of affairs that has begun and must continue to evolve, fragments of Europe are drawing closer together in accordance with their interests. That is legitimate, natural and necessary; and for our part we shall continue to strive for the establishment of the broadest union among the Western European countries.
48. What I have just said is in no way inconsistent with our previous careful investigation of every feasible relationship of peaceful coexistence with countries having different régimes. Belgium has been working in that direction for years and does not propose to stop doing so. We have never attempted to introduce into those relationships a Trojan horse in the guise of détente to destroy fellowship among other nations that have adopted political or economic systems different from our own. Our concepts and prescriptions can prevail only by their merit and by the example they offer. However, the Europe which Belgium wants to see “wherever possible” will have a better economic understanding through bilateral relations and the European Economic Commission, a better military understanding through a parallel and balanced regional disarmament by every European State, and a better European political understanding. In pursuit of that aim to which we are committed, however, nothing can be accomplished before equality of rights among States is re-established.
49. Belgium’s contribution to the general debate of the General Assembly’s twenty-third session has had but one object, to state what we consider essential: that is, to set up the machinery for economic and social exchanges to ensure the development of the still less favoured nations; to restore international order based on the equal and sovereign rights of all States; to accept the strength of the largest States and their special responsibility when their actions embody the spirit of the Charter and take the form of projects beneficial to distressed regions; to reinforce the search for peace, and to start building it where we should start — in Europe.
50. A year that has been a painful one in many ways has made us realize that when that prospect vanishes we fall back on old recipes — the balance of forces, power, desire to dominate. Then come violence and discouragement. Then the men who embody a great ideal—the Kennedys, Martin Luther King — are sacrificed; then armies march again and their noise precedes the silence of death for hundreds of thousands of innocent people, today in Viet-Nam and Biafra, tomorrow perhaps elsewhere. Then, above all, the youth of our nations revolt because we are taking from them their reason for living and their reason for hope. If it is the role of the small countries to speak up in this Assembly with the voice of-moderation and sincerity, for what we have expressed here, and if. here we must undertake to act in conformity with our ideals, then I also can make that promise to you on behalf of Belgium.