71. First of all, I want to join the speakers who have preceded me at this rostrum in offering my warm congratulations to Mr. Arenales, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Guatemala, on his election to the office of President of the twenty-third regular session of the General Assembly. His long experience in serving the United Nations is for us an especially valuable assurance at this juncture when he is succeeding our Romanian colleague Mr. Corneliu Manescu, who led with impartiality, tact and skill the arduous and lengthy discussions held in the Assembly over the past year.
72. I should like next to pay an admiring and sympathetic tribute to the Secretary-General, U Thant. His untiring efforts to bring about an understanding among nations have unfortunately not been met with the eagerly-awaited success.
73. The representatives of the States that drafted the United Nations Charter at San Francisco in June 1945 intended it in the first place to safeguard international peace and security. However, notwithstanding the hopes that have been formulated by all the Governments represented in this Hall today, war continues to rage throughout the world. The bloody tragedies that are rending Viet-Nam, the Middle East and Nigeria conceal unspeakable human sufferings. An extremely serious situation has been brought about in Czechoslovakia.
74. Only one of those problems—that of the Middle East—is explicitly included in the agenda of the current session. Now, despite the unfailingly patient efforts made by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative in the Middle East, Mr. Gunnar Jarring, no visible progress whatsoever has yet been achieved since the Security Council’s unanimous adoption on 22 November 1967 of the resolution [242(1967)] enumerating the few principles that can lead to a final settlement, it being understood that no territorial gain achieved by force can be condoned.
75. That resolution has the dual advantage of providing at the outset for an equitable solution and of defining the goals that the interested parties themselves, I believe, no longer question. On the contrary, they unfortunately remain in disagreement as to the practical way in which that resolution can be implemented. After more than a year of equivocations, acts of violence, surprise attacks and reprisals on both sides, the differences of opinion between Israel and the Arab countries are as deep and explosive as
ever.
76. In those circumstances it is the bounden duty and in the vital interest of the countries directly concerned to co-operate constructively with the efforts being made by Mr. Jarring towards finally establishing a method of reaching a common ground of understanding. Repeated resort to force will only delay and ultimately endanger peace.
77. In Viet-Nam, too, human sufferings and material destruction have gone on ever since the General Assembly last met a year ago. The Vietnamese people, already so sorely tried, is still suffering the awful consequences of pitiless military confrontation.
78. It is true that the United States made an important move towards peace when on 31 March it limited the bombing of North Viet—Nam. That courageous political action enabled the Paris talks to get under way; and we are hopeful that those talks will soon lead to genuine negotiations.
79. The Government of Luxembourg remains convinced that only a negotiated solution of the conflict can bring a just peace to that sorely-tried region. That is why I am renewing my appeal to the United Nations to exert all its influence towards speeding a political settlement of the war.
80. Whereas the conflicts in Viet-Nam and in the Middle East have been going on for many years, two no less grievous tragedies have saddened the world in the past few months.
81. Although the civil war that is raging in Nigeria most closely affects all the African States, the world conscience cannot remain silent in the face of that terrible internecine struggle. It is unthinkable that the United Nations should turn its back on the humanitarian task of bringing to an end the nameless sufferings being wrought upon civilian populations, even if to do so it must bring up the matter at this very meeting.
82. A large number of countries and international organizations have provided generous assistance. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Red Cross have played an important and valuable part in procuring food and medical supplies for the victims under extremely difficult conditions. It is our duty to appeal to the Federal Government of Nigeria to facilitate the direct shipment of that assistance and to guarantee the personal safety of all inhabitants, especially women and children. However, in addition to humanitarian assistance, the efforts recently and so courageously undertaken under the auspices of the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, to end the armed struggle must be continued. The United Nations must in its turn exert all its influence towards the working out of a lasting solution with which all the population can agree.
83. However, of all the events that have occurred in recent years the invasion of Czechoslovakia is the one that may deal the hardest blow to the cause of peace. That invasion is a flagrant violation of the law of nations and of the United Nations Charter. The illegal occupation of Czechoslovakia has provoked an international crisis, both politically and military, of extreme gravity. Affecting as it does the atmosphere of trust that has been developing in Europe for the past several years, that crisis can only be relieved by the withdrawal of the occupation troops and by the complete re-establishment of Czechoslovakian independence. The operation by the Warsaw Pact countries has rent the veil of illusions and has at one blow destroyed many hopes that had been built up over the long years of untiring efforts towards détente and towards a better understanding between East and West.
84. Faced with what is known as the “balance of terror”, mankind has no choice. Despite some events that take us back to the most sombre days of the past, we, along with countries that share our ideals, want to continue with patience and firmness along the only practicable road, the road to détente, We remain convinced that the reduction of tensions, along with the widening of areas of understanding and agreement, can in time bring about the conditions in which settlement of the great problems dividing the world
will at last become possible. Mankind’s survival will depend on that settlement.
85. Luxembourg signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [resolution 2373 (XXII)], despite its serious imperfections and omissions, precisely because it is an important forward step towards disarmament and is consistent with the strengthening of security and peace. We sincerely hope that events in Czechoslovakia will not compromise the entry of the Treaty into force.
86. However, the Treaty on non-proliferation, if it is ratified and implemented by a sufficient number of States, particularly those States that are already on the threshold of nuclear development, can only be a beginning. The final responsibility still rests with the nuclear Powers. We therefore fully support the initiatives taken during the recent Conference of Non-Nuclear-Weapon States to invite the atomic Powers to enter without delay into talks designed to put an end to nuclear weapons tests and to halt the development of those weapons.
87. Given the present state of affairs, however, we must guard against undue hope. The Conference of the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament, which has just ended its summer session at Geneva, did not achieve any concrete results. How can any progress in that particular area be achieved in an atmosphere of destruction and fear?
88. The Soviet Union holds the key to the problem. The hope for a return to trust through a reduction of tension will be a vain hope so long as the occupation troops remain in Czechoslovakia and so long as the Soviet Union continues to bring the threat of intervention to bear on other countries as well. In that connexion I should like to join those who, following the example of our Secretary-General, have refused to accept the thesis according to which certain provisions of the United Nations Charter provide the Soviet Union with the right to intervene unilaterally by force in the Federal Republic of Germany. I feel impelled also to denounce the biased defamation campaign being waged against the Federal Government with the all too evident intention of turning it into both a scapegoat and a scarecrow. Such procedures can only revive old bitterness and thereby perpetuate discord and distrust in Europe.
89. Therefore I cannot refrain from joining my voice with those of so many others in addressing a solemn appeal to the great Powers to reconsider their policy and to decide deliberately in favour of law and freedom. That is the sole attitude worthy of those who are alive to their immense responsibilities towards all mankind. In recent years we in Europe — in the East and in the West — have come a long and difficult way to bring our peoples together. The great development in human and political contacts, in cultural and economic exchanges, seemed to mark the beginning of relations of greater trust among States. It would be a tragedy for Europe as well as for the entire world if the fruit of so many arduous efforts were destroyed.
90. However, the concern we feel at the deterioration of the international situation must not distract us from the other great task incumbent on the United Nations, that of building with perseverance a better world. Here, assistance to developing countries has pride of place. The struggle against poverty and the efforts to create everywhere living conditions more in keeping with human dignity, the establishment of a greater social justice among all nations, both rich and poor — those, in the long run, are what my
Government sees as the basic conditions for the safeguarding of peace in the world.
91. Its difficult financial situation notwithstanding, the Government of Luxembourg this year made a considerable effort to increase substantially its contribution to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). We intend to continue along that path during the coming years, taking into account, of course, our limited means. However, we are aware that the formidable problem of the under-privileged awaits a solution towards which every industrialized country is in duty bound to make an increasing contribution, taking heart from the determination of the developing countries to make the best use of that assistance for economic, technical and cultural purposes.
92. Of course, it must be agreed that the immediate results obtained by the second session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development have been rather modest. The instances in which the requests formulated in the Charter of Algiers by the developing countries have become concrete facts are all too few. However, I believe it would be an exaggeration to maintain that the Conference accomplished nothing but a more solemn exposition of what had already for some time been recognized as necessary.
93. Although it had no immediate spectacular results, it is to the credit of the Conference that it recognized the need to situate the problem before it within the framework of a world-wide development strategy and to define more clearly both the responsibilities of the industrialized countries and those of the developing countries.
94. Last year, speaking from this rostrum before this nearly world-wide audience, and rising above a semi-tacit pessimism, I attempted to set forth the guiding principles that embody the still undisputed value of our Organization. Am I not today impelled to recant and deny my words, since obviously all my hopes have been dashed by the violent events that have occurred in defiance of our Charter and of the humanism of which we ate so proud?
95. Since those who have preceded me have done so very well, I shall not repaint a picture of the gloomy events that have marked the year’s passage and are so out of key with the high status mankind pretends to have attained intellectually, technically, socially and spiritually. In obvious regression, the tank with its guns has come forth to make the decisive argument for brutal violence; it has not been and it will never be the profound embodiment of a nobly human stand. Quite the contrary.
96. That being said, we must unfortunately expect to hear it answered in a language full of double meanings, a language that some speakers employ in an attempt to have the political last word whenever their duplicity is mentioned. For decades now we have been forced to witness the progressive debasement of truth, whose meaning is being continually adulterated by distorting the real state of affairs by means of ideological trickery and by the foisting, by force, of a false view of reality on people doomed to suffer the disastrous effects of incessantly repeated misrepresentation.
97. That ideology conceives of itself as absolute and therefore predominant. While preserving a political strategy that has been rigidly defined from its inception, it enjoys posing as a constantly evolving dynamism whereas, by means of a continually-shifting tactic based on distortion of facts, it only interprets data in a partial way and thereby lays traps that are incessantly being reset to ensnare honest men, who will always be men of good will.
98. Since words are becoming increasingly devoid of meaning, it seems to me natural that public opinion should have little faith in those who employ words; for the public rather quickly discovers that actions completely concealed by words are the direct opposite of what those words try to make them. Need I recall those actions here?
99. Human rights! What rights are involved when important men are kidnapped and when the route they have chosen to travel is changed and passengers, with their pilots, are constrained to play the dangerous game of a unique kind of piracy, under threat of arms?
100. Disarmament! What is the real meaning of the term in that region of the world where the stronger party is increasing its war potential and where, backed by tanks, planes and machine guns, it uses the word in its basic sense, depriving the weaker party of all means of resistance?
101. Peace! Coexistence! How in the light of these words can we explain the myriad attempts at intimidation, the enormous political and military blackmail, the increasingly frantic preparations for war — to be waged preferably by third parties — and the acts of aggression that are ostensibly undertaken, to guard against any eventuality by creating a buffer zone that will tomorrow become the graveyard of the subjugated peoples?
102. Socialist friendship and solidarity! What is that friendship whose bonds are devoid of spontaneity and sincerity? What is an obviously imposed solidarity worth? And who would still dare compare it to a chain from which, we are informed, not one link can be removed, when it concerns still living nations and not dead things? Is not that metaphor of nations forged into a single chain a revolting illustration of the status of those nations, welded
together in so-called solidarity?
103. In that double-talk, the concept of imperialism has in truth completely changed its content, since it has become a sort of alibi for those who have learnt to replace open genocide by a slow and effective kind of asphyxiation that enables territorial aggrandizement to take place by wiping from the map certain small nations until they have completely vanished from men’s memory. In that case, is not the neologism “bolshe-tsarism” apt for precisely describing the actual situation in that part of the world where the neo-colonialism used against evolved nation is aimed at making the boundaries of what it calls its “sphere of influence” congruent with its national political borders?
104. Spheres of influence! An open sesame that entails the treatment of many regions of the world as no more than the protectorates and expected legacies of one particular super-Power. However, we do not want to be influenced from either the right or the left, since that kind of influence means nothing but dependency, supervised freedom, and solidarity in political misdeeds that are manifested by cannon fire and the building of gallows.
105. I shall refrain from citing those whom I might wish to declare guilty. In that chain of deeds and misdeeds the guilt seems to me to be equally divided. But I feel it my duty to denounce any ideology that inspires outrages against humanity; to indict the hand that arms itself the better to annihilate; to indict the hand that arms another so that it can take part in the warfare of third parties; to indict the speculators who bring about the deaths of millions by dabbling in poverty and misfortune; to blame our own shortcomings within this great United Nations family and to warn those who, albeit Members in good standing, respect neither the principles nor the decisions of the Organization; to shame those who, by refusing to fulfil all the necessary conditions for membership, risk crushing the Organization under the weight of the disdain they create among men already prepared to see United Nations impotence as the disgrace of the final years of the twentieth century.
106. That is the stand taken by a very small nation whose words may seem bold, but whose vocation is as evident as its impartiality in the conduct of world affairs is absolute. That vocation leads us from time to time, along with all other small nations, to become the voice of conscience for the great Powers. Unfortunately it does not spare us from being compelled at times to feel that shame which the strong too readily ignore; nor does it mean that, when the influence of the great Powers takes the form of a prevailing
humanism, achieved peace and guaranteed freedom, we shall eschew that influence. We are countering that motto which those same great Powers are too prone to apply - “Might is right” — with the motto that very humbly says to all the prideful: “One often needs someone smaller than oneself”.
107. I am deliberately referring here to a well-known fable of La Fontaine — or, if you prefer, of Aesop — to remind you of certain tendencies to exclude the very small, the too small, from this Organization in order to reserve the exercise of the right of membership solely for the great nations. However, if henceforth that right were to be based on the criterion of size alone — defined by geographical dimensions, by population, or even by national income per caput — we should be venturing into the realm of despotism, of that despotism that could very easily endanger the fundamental principle of our Organization.
108. That fundamental principle was mentioned this morning [1687th meeting] by Mr. Medici, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy: it is the principle of our Organization’s universality, a principle to which must be joined that of the autonomy of peoples who have attained independence.
109. It would be highly dangerous to make admission to the United Nations depend upon some numbers, agreed to by a majority of Members, setting the low limit of size; since some interested countries could always change that limit. The figure of one million inhabitants, for example, might perhaps be found insufficient by some nation with 20 million; the figure of 20 million might be too small for another with 50 million; and again 50 million, according to the circumstances, would be too small in the eyes of a great nation with a population of 200 million.
110. Since in the end the law or relativity always takes effect, the United Nations would eventually consist only of some large nations that would settle among themselves the fate of all those who had been left out.
111. That is why I say that within this Hall the small, the very small, the smallest, are important, even if their importance is only derived from human values and from the spiritual wealth created by outstanding personalities, rather than from a large mass of less gifted inhabitants. For we must not forget that on what we might call here the “great scales of peace or war" those poor nations somehow represent the few ounces that can quite naturally tip the balance in favour of well-being for all mankind.
112. To return to our vocation: it will be fulfilled through a mission in which we are determined not to fail: that of permanently fostering natural impulses towards goodness and greatness wherever they may spring up; that of proclaiming that, since fear of the freedom of others destroys oppressors, hope will always inspire those whom oppression seeks to crush; that of joining with those who grant the greatest degree of real freedom in order to bring an end to the present dangerous situation in which there is neither real peace nor open war; and lastly that of refuting the contention of those who preach the Organization’s total incapacity to reform its institutions and to adapt them to the demands of those great basic principles.
113. Firm in that faith, we find it inconceivable that the fate meted out by the League of Nations in 1921 to a humane suggestion made by Fridtjof Nansen regarding five million pounds sterling intended to relieve several million starving people can recur in the United Nations in 1968 with regard to a suggestion made by a great-hearted man and once again concerning the world’s poor and disinherited.
114. If such were the case, I should have to ask again the question I asked last year [1568th meeting]: "What use is the United Nations?", and answer it with a reply that would be the opposite of the hope I had tried to manifest.
115. The United Nations: the voice of mankind, the voice of man, the universal voice, the voice of justice and of peace. That is the voice we want to hear, and that is the voice that we should like to hear again speaking with all the brilliance of its great deeds.