179. Mr. President, in the name of Nigeria I offer you the heartiest congratulations on your richly deserved election as President of the twenty-first session of the General Assembly. As one who has had the privilege of previous intimate collaboration with you, I know that your occupancy of that Chair will be a great credit to your own country, enhance African-Asian standing and reputation in this Organization, and greatly improve the chances of the success of our work during this memorable session.
180. Nigeria warmly associates itself with the tribute that has been paid by so many speakers to the performance of the Foreign Minister of Italy as President of the twentieth session. That session was by no means a comfortable one to pilot, and we recall what a difference it meant to our proceedings that Signor Fanfani was the captain on the bridge.
181. The Nigerian delegation heartily congratulates the State of Guyana on its admission to the membership of this Organization. Both its Prime Minister and its Opposition Leader know with what genuine and sympathetic and, I may add, active interest we followed their passage from the period of struggle with the United Kingdom for recognition of the right of the Guyanese people to rule themselves, through the period of struggle among the Guyanese themselves to achieve the degree of consensus essential for a promising entry into independence, and on to the period immediately preceding 26 May 1966, the day that the Guyanese, regardless of political party affiliation, will always remember, as Nigerians remember the first of October.
182. The road to independence is usually long and hard, but the road to national unity, political stability and economic well-being is harder still and could be much longer. Its negotiation calls for the highest skill, sound Judgement, and; above all, statesmanship. The Nigerian delegation can speak with some experience in this regard; for, like other new nations of Africa, Nigeria has been on this latter road for some six years now.
183. I should like to take this opportunity to address an appeal to those developed countries which seem to revel in judging events in the developing countries in isolation and not in the context of world history. The transition to independence and the development of democratic institutions have always been accompanied by stresses and strains. The present political stability in the developed countries was not achieved overnight, but after years of experimentation, internal strife and, often, bloodshed. To pontificate therefore about political stability and to talk of an "inherent" inability of the new nation to attain it shows at best a shocking lack of the sense of history and, at worst, downright chicanery, accompanied by undertones of racial superiority.
184. We welcome our brothers and sisters of Guyana into this great community of nations with especial warmth, because we know that, as Prime Minister Burnham promised in his remarks to this Assembly [1409th meeting] and as he already demonstrated at the recent Conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers in London, Guyana will be a stout partner with us in the defence of the principles of the United Nations Charter and against manifestations of man's inhumanity to man everywhere.
185. We would also at this point express our gratification at the decision of the Government of Indonesia to resume its activities in the United Nations. Indonesia was always a valuable member of our African- Asian group, as well as of our non-aligned group of countries, and we look forward to a resumption of our happy oo-operation with it in this Organization.
186. By the laws or conventions of most of our countries, an individual attains his majority at the age of twenty-one, a point in his life when he is expected to have acquired a maturity sufficient to enable him to look after himself with reasonable success. Some individuals never even succeed in reaching that age; of those who attain it, some do so full of wisdom and sagacity and vitality, but some continue to require after that age the tender guidance of the parents that begot them. As with individuals, so with institutions. Twenty-one years ago, a world which had just experienced the scourge and large- scale destruction of the most devastating war in history decided to establish an Organization which would uphold fundamental human rights, promote international peace and Justice, eliminate all forms of discrimination and ensure economic and social progress among States. That Organization, the United Nations, attains its majority in this year of our Lord 1966, and it would seem to be "meet, right and our bounden duty* to try to assess the present state of the child that was born amid great expectations at San Francisco twenty-one years ago and that has been nursed amid considerable vicissitudes ever since.
187. The Secretary-General's statement of 1 September 1966 and the introduction to his annual report on the work of the Organization covering the past year contain his considered answer to that question. Because of his close interest in and dedication to the United Nations, which interest and dedication antedate his appointment as Secretary-General of the Organization and even his previous service as Permanent Representative of his own country at the United Nations, the views of U Thant on this subject must carry very great weight indeed. The Nigerian delegation shares most of those views. We feel that the founders of the United Nations are to be commended for the initiative they took in establishing this Organization and for achieving the degree of consensus that enabled them to agree to the present Charter, imperfect though some of its provisions undoubtedly are. We feel that the Organization cannot be written off as a failure. We feel this because, in the field of economic co-operation, in the field of technological co-operation, even in the field of political understanding and the maintenance of peace and security, it has within the twenty-one years of its existence marked up a significant record of achievement. But we are as conscious as anybody else of its failures or weaknesses in every one of these fields; for instance, its failure to remove the last strongholds of colonialism and racial domination from our own continent of Africa and elsewhere in the world; Its degeneration from an Organization for the maintenance of peace and security into an Organization for the maintenance of cease-fires; its Incapacity to deal with glaring cases of international misbehaviour by countries, great or small; its failure to solve the problem of increasing poverty and want suffered by the greater part of humanity in a world which is, by and large, getting increasingly richer; its failure to persuade the world to follow a policy of a gradual subordination of narrow national interests and prestige to the larger interests of humanity as a whole.
188. This, of course, is what the question raised here and there of the survival of the United Nations is all about. This, let us face it, is what our difficulty in retaining the services of our admired and respected Secretary-General is about. There must be very few mortals whose praise has been sung so lustily by so many people to his ewn face as this remarkable man. The Foreign Minister of Canada clinched it all when. In his speech from this rostrum the other day, he said:
"He has done much to inspire our joint efforts during these past five years. He has stated that no one is Indispensable in the office which he holds with such distinction. Yet — despite the difficulties he has pointed out — the guidance he has given to our work, the sense of responsibility he has demonstrated, his gifts of compassion and understanding and, above all, his ability to speak and act on behalf of mankind, are all indispensable to the United Nations." [1413th meeting, para. 54.]
Mr. Martin was but echoing the sentiments of all of us.
189. But U Thant is not an ordinary mortal. In all this exercise, he is more concerned with the future of Viet-Nam, he is more concerned with the future of the mass of suffering, oppressed and underprivileged people all over the world, he is more concerned with the future of the United Nations itself, than he is concerned with what we think of him. For that reason, praise for U Thant will not suffice to get him to change his mind. We have, in addition, to demonstrate that we share these great concerns of his and that we propose to do something about them. We are glad to note that many delegations are, happily, doing precisely that.
190. The major Powers, of course, have a bigger responsibility in this matter than the rest of us. It is they who possess the bulk of the economic and military resources of the world. It is they whose citizens most often display the arrogance of claiming to have the right to do what they please, regardless of the opinion of the rest of the world. It is they whose cold-war attitude makes international understanding and the restoration of international confidence, which is a prerequisite of that understanding, very difficult. It is they who set bad examples for the less developed countries to follow.
191. But Nigeria recognizes that it and the class of countries to which it belongs also have a responsibility in improving the performance of the United Nations. Do not some small countries also take, or endeavour to take, the law into their own hands? Do not some small countries also act as though they wished to be judges in their own cause? Do not some small countries sometimes act in a manner calculated to instill fear into their neighbours? And sometimes we wonder whether, as small countries, or as non- aligned countries, we have taken all the initiatives that we might have taken in the last couple of years, at least, to force the major Powers away from their cold-war mentality. In short, the Nigerian delegation considers that the admonitions of the Secretary- General were addressed as much to Nigeria, as much to other small countries of our class, as they were to the major Powers in particular. The Nigerian delegation hereby offers a solemn assurance to the Secretary-General and to you, Mr. President, that Nigeria will in the coming weeks, months and years do all in its power, in co-operation with our friends in the African group, in the African-Asian group, in the African-Asian-Caribbean-Latin American fraternity, and with all other groups in the United Nations, to make the Organization a better instrument for the achievement of the purposes enshrined in its Charter.
192. The twenty-first session of the United Nations meets under the most ominous clouds. The international situation is as tense and dangerous today as it ever has been at any time since 1945, except at the height of the 1962 Cuban crisis; a war is raging which may develop into a global conflict; the United Nations has yet to establish an effective system for peace-keeping; in spite of the United Nations, the Ian Smith regime continues in Rhodesia and South Africa not only pursues its policy of apartheid more relentlessly, but bluntly refuses to carry out its sacred international obligations in respect of South West Africa; the International Court of Justice now stands discredited and the confidence, particularly of the developing countries, in the international judiciary has been seriously undermined; the discussion on disarmament is practically at a standstill, while the spread of nuclear weapons with its concomitant dangers seems to be gaining momentum, and the avowed determination to help the developing countries to overcome their development problems has yet to
be matched, in several fields, by practical action, as was pointed out in the recent address by the head of the Brazilian delegation [1412th meeting]. Negotiations for an international price stabilization scheme for cocoa started over ten years ago. In spite of the helpful work done by the Food and Agriculture Organization in the form of technical and other studies, in spite of professions of belief in such schemes by the Government of the largest consumer country, in spite of consistent support over these many years by a number of other consumer countries, notably France, in spite of the renewed drive for an agreement generated by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development since its establishment, in spite of continuous pressure for it by all the producer countries, up to this moment no agreement has materialized.
193. To make progress with these issues will require very hard work on the part of us all. It will also call for great courage and the readiness to face up to critical challenges. Take the case of South West Africa, a case that has been under consideration by the United Nations for so many years. When over five years ago two African countries, acting for the rest and themselves, took the case to the International Court of Justice, it became a test case for the integrity of that international judicial body. Those of us who, in spite of its defects of composition and its appearing to be wedded to old-fashioned juridical concepts and to the status quo in international relationships, believed in the acceptance of the Court as an instrument for the maintenance of international law, and believed that we should seek to improve rather than destroy it, were praying that the Court might pass this test with honour. Instead, the majority opinion recently given by the Court in the case of South West Africa has been such as to confound its advocates and to give joy to its opponents. It is a most lamentable development; but I shall say no further about it in this context, since it is the subject of a separate debate by the General Assembly.
194. Next on the list of unfinished business of the United Nations in regard to Africa is the question of Southern Rhodesia. Nigeria has maintained from the first, and continues to hold, that some force will be inevitable in order to bring Ian Smith to his knees. Speaking last year from this rostrum, the Nigerian representative stated in connexion with Southern Rhodesia:
"The British Government has asserted its intention to apply economic sanctions against Southern Rhodesia in the event of a unilateral declaration of Independence. Nigeria does not think that this is enough. The British Government must live up to its full responsibility in this matter, including the responsibility to apply as much force — especially military force — as may be warranted by the situation." [1348th meeting, para, 23.]
We have consistently held that, sooner or later, the use of some force will be necessary in this case, in spite of our national preference for peaceful means for the settlement of disputes, because we are dealing here with people who have shown themselves to be quite impervious to reason, because voluntary sanctions cannot be effective if some people are determined to ignore them, and mandatory sanctions necessarily imply the threat of force. We say that the sanctions should be made mandatory, and we are told that this would bring us into conflict with South Africa, which is known to be determined to flout the sanctions order in any event. As one eminent Journal pointed out recently, this case reminds one of the criticism by Mr. — as he then was — Winston Churchill of the similarly ambivalent position of the then United Kingdom Prime Minister on the occasion of the half-hearted decision of the League of Nations to impose economic sanctions against one of its members. Mr. Churchill spoke as follows:
"First, the Prime Minister had declared that sanctions meant war; secondly, he was resolved that there must be no war; and thirdly, he decided upon sanctions. It was evidently impossible to comply with these three conditions."
Needless to add, the sanctions effort on that occasion came to nothing.
195. At the recent Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in London it was decided that the United Kingdom should be given a little more time to persuade Smith to back down. Nigeria, in common with other African Governments represented at the Conference, accepted this compromise only with the greatest reluctance. Well, we wish Prime Minister Wilson the best of luck, but we hope that, if he fails, he will feel in honour bound to co-operate in promoting the application, on a mandatory basis, of sanctions sufficient in scope to meet the case effectively. We also fervently hope that the United Kingdom Government will live up to its promise that independence will not be granted to Rhodesia before majority rule is granted, unless the peoples of Southern Rhodesia as a whole wish otherwise.
196. This year we shall again be discussing apartheid and colonialism. The Nigerian delegation will reserve its full comments on these subjects for the appropriate Committee sessions. Meanwhile, in regard to apartheid, we should like, in our capacity as one of the trustees of the United Nations Trust Fund for South Africa established last year [General Assembly resolution 2054 B (XX)], to appeal to those countries which have been remiss in that connexion to be good enough to come along with their contributions. Nigeria, I am glad to be able to say, has done this, and so have a number of other countries.
197. Before leaving African questions, the Nigerian delegation would like to thank the Secretary-General for establishing appropriate channels of co-operation with our regional organization, the Organization of African Unity, in consonance with the resolution [2011 (XX)] to that end adopted by the General Assembly last year. The OAU, like other regional organizations, and like the United Nations itself, has its problems. But we will overcome them. Nigeria, which had the privilege and the honour of playing a substantial role along with others in founding the OAU, will contribute all it can, again in concert with our fellow-members, in ensuring that it is continued and strengthened to bring to fulfilment the aspirations of all Africans for unity.
198. Nigeria has always taken great interest in United Nations peace-keeping efforts. We were a member of the Working Group of Twenty-One, which at one time was charged with the working out of proposals for the financing of peace-keeping operations and did succeed in getting adopted by the General Assembly, in resolution 1874 (S-IV) of 27 June 1963, a set of general principles which have been of some value to the Organization. We are also a member of the Special Committee on Peace-keeping Operations, which inherited the too-limited mandate of the old Working Group, but along with the broader mandate to examine the subject of peace-keeping in all its aspects. We have also been a member of the Ad Hoc Committee of Fourteen, which was entrusted with the task of examining the whole of the financial operations of the United Nations.
199. We have therefore had plenty of opportunity of putting on record our views on the financial problems of the United Nations, their causes and the possible solutions to them. We have proclaimed, times without number, our firm belief in the principle of collective responsibility, subject, however, to certain other and equally vital principles, namely, the accountability of the aggressor for the consequences of his action, the principle of equitable apportionment of expenses, the principle of compliance with the provisions of the United Nations Charter. Within the context of these principles, Nigeria has consistently co-operated in the search for a set of arrangements which would be acceptable as a compromise aimed to enable the Organization, not only to function normally in the sense of being able to debate and to vote, but also in the sense of being able to discharge its practical obligation of helping to put out "brush-fires" wherever they might occur and to minimize such occurrences. We would also add, in all humility, since our contribution is not in absolute terms among the largest, that Nigeria has faithfully lived up to its profession of support for the United Nations by meeting all its financial obligations and, in addition. Joining from time to time in responses to appeals for voluntary contributions. Finally, we pledge our co-operation in seeking some way at this session of advancing the search for at least a temporary solution to this complicated problem of peace-keeping authorization, administration and finance.
200. Nigeria remains attached to the principle of universality of membership of the United Nations. We have never been in doubt that the exclusion from membership of a country which contains within its territory about one quarter of the population of all the world does the world no good, We appreciate the difficulty of finding appropriate modalities for remedying a situation that has been made uncomfortably complex by the passage of time, but we hold that to delay further the tackling of the problem is to allow it to become even more complex.
201. It may sound like a cliche, but it is only too true that the survival of humanity today hangs, so to speak, upon a threat. All the world recognizes that the way to survival lies through complete and universal disarmament. To be fair, one must admit that many countries have been expending a lot of energy, both by Individual Initiatives and by collective action, to try to bring about complete and universal disarmament. One result of such collective action was the establishment of the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament, of which our own country is a member. Unfortunately, owing to the impossibility of reconciling the widely differing views of the two super-Powers of the world, only very little progress has been achieved by that Committee. Because of long and direct involvement in the negotiation proceedings, Nigeria appreciates that the problems to be solved are more complicated than is commonly realized by those not involved. The chief of those problems is, of course, the lack of confidence, between the great Powers, resulting in what sometimes seems to us to reflect a lack — in some measure — of even the will to agree. The Nigerian delegation respectfully submits for the consideration of the other members of the Committee on Disarmament, outside the major Power category, that a bolder approach on our part, in the form of pressing with greater vigour what we ourselves believe, whether or not that approach offends one or the other bloc of great Powers, would be advisable in the future. In this connexion, we hope that we shall be able, to secure endorsement of the suggestion by the Secretary-General that:
"... an appropriate body of the United Nations" should be appointed "to explore and weigh the impact and implications of all aspects of nuclear weapons, including problems of a military, political, economic and social nature relating to the manufacture, acquisition, deployment and development of these weapons and their possible use" [see A/6301/ Add.1, p. 4].
As the Secretary-General correctly points out in putting forward the suggestion:
"To know the true nature of the danger we face may be a most important first step towards averting it." [Ibid.]
202. I have touched upon a number of items which are on our agenda. May I, like others who have preceded me on this rostrum, venture a word or two upon one that 1b not on that agenda but one which in fact will, more than any other subject in the world, affect the results of this session? I refer, of course, to the question of Viet-Nam, The cold war was in the process of thawing until the aggravation of the conflict in Viet-Nam began in real earnest. In the opinion of the Nigerian delegation, there is little prospect of putting the United Nations back on its feet, financially or in any other respect, until we have found an answer to that unfortunate problem. Because several of the parties to the conflict are not represented, in the United Nations, that dispute is better tackled, as the Secretary-General has time and again pointed out, outside the formal organs of the United Nations. Nevertheless, the United Nations can hardly ignore an issue which has already caused untold suffering to so many and which, if not successfully tackled within a reasonably short time, could lead to human massacre on an unspeakable scale and prove to be the beginning of the end for mankind as we know it today. It is therefore not surprising that this issue
fills a premier place in the thoughts of all of us assembled here, small or great, and figures so prominently in our contributions to the general debate. It is clear from those contributions what the great bulk of the world's population represented here feels on that issue. We are all putting on record the indisputably world-wide sentiment for a de-escalation of the conflict in Viet-Nam, for its peaceful settlement without delay, for restoration to the Viet-Namese of the right to determine their own future and their own way of life, free from foreign military presence, free from foreign interference of any kind, from any source whatsoever.
203. How should that happy state of affairs be brought about? In the view of the Nigerian delegation it cannot be done by the "trading" of proposals and counterproposals in public. The present spokesman for the Nigerian delegation was asked the other day by a member of an audience that he had just addressed what his proposals for solving the Viet-Nam dispute were. He replied that if he had any that he felt were good enough to try out, the last thing he would do was to blurt them out in a public forum. In the opinion of the Nigerian delegation, the settlement of this most dangerous and most delicate issue can only be accomplished by "quiet and confidential diplomacy". There must be at least one country in this world, there must be at least one world statesman, or a group of such, whom the parties to this dispute can trust for the purpose of helping to secure agreement between them on the modalities preliminary to the peaceful negotiation of a complete settlement. The fact that so many efforts of this kind have failed is no reason for not trying again, for some of them would appear to have been frustrated in their purpose by premature publicity.
204. In brief, we of the Nigerian delegation feel that when the different delegations have in this debate made their different comments on the general nature of the settlement they would like to see of the Viet-Nam dispute, the United Nations as such will have done its bit and, in our view, rendered quite a useful service. Thereafter what we have called "quiet and confidential diplomacy" should take over again, but we trust that then the international Press will do us the kindness to co-operate in furthering it by refraining from all harmful speculation on the matter.
205. Mr. President, the Nigerian delegation believes that if our deliberations during this session continue to be informed and governed by the spirit which, under your experienced leadership and the inspiration provided by the recent statements of our Secretary-General, has shown itself in the contributions made by most delegations to this general debate, the twenty-first session of the General Assembly could be a phenomenal success.