The Ethiopian delegation joins with so many others in extending congratulations to the President on his election. We feel that the Assembly is most fortunate in entering upon its tenth year of work under the guidance of so distinguished a representative of a nation so widely admired for its historic contributions of scholarship, of industry and of tenacity to the great international tasks which are now the responsibility of the United Nations.
2. During the year since my delegation last contributed to the general debate [442nd meeting], my august sovereign, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, on 1 June 1954 officially visited the Headquarters of the United Nations and had occasion to speak here. The Ethiopian delegation was particularly pleased that His Majesty’s solemn reaffirmation of the contributions Ethiopia has made to the development of collective security was so widely appreciated. The Secretary-General, on that occasion, referred to the recent contribution of my country to United Nations policy. In this connexion, it is interesting to note that the Emperor, speaking four months ago on another occasion in New York observed : “It is certain that the basic support of the principle of collective security comes less from the larger States than from the small States, which have more to , gain and more to lose by failure in its application. In this respect, it is significant that the smaller States associated in the United Nations efforts in Korea outnumbered the larger States.”
3. The Secretary-General, in discussing the role of the United Nations in the introduction to his annual report [A/2663], most valuably expressed the concern of many delegations at the proliferation of regional arrangements outside the organizational framework of the United Nations but within its sphere of interest. On this point, the views of my Government, as expressed by His Imperial Majesty on the same occasion, are not without interest. Referring to the system of regional defence pacts, he stated: “For its part, at the Conference of San Francisco which drafted the Charter of the United Nations, Ethiopia was alone to point out the pitfalls of this solution. There are, of course, regional agreements in force in certain restricted areas of the world — the North Atlantic and European Defence Community is so vast as to fall outside this restriction — but present-day events show only too clearly that broader solutions are required and that regionalism, in the final analysis, does a disservice to the principle of collective security. My delegation is profoundly convinced that collective security can alone afford the answer to this problem and that it must be recognized as having, not regional, but universal validity. Otherwise, its deterrent as well as its defensive effect will be of manifestly insufficient force.”
4. My delegation must repeat the hope it has expressed in recent general debates; namely, that the appalling waste of increasing armaments may be checked. The apparent failure of the meetings in London last spring was most disappointing. My Government is most anxious that effective pressure should be maintained upon the Disarmament Commission, so that it will be unrelenting in its efforts to lessen the frightful burden of armament and military preparation.
5. I therefore most cordially welcomed the substantial contribution made to the general debate yesterday [484th meeting] by the Soviet Union delegation, as well as the proposal of the United States Secretary of State for the international development of the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the addition of the resulting item to our agenda. Ethiopia hopes that effective steps forward in this field may lead to a relaxation of tension in the military field. But quite as important is the hope that international consideration of the possible uses of this vast new source of power and energy, in close relation to the development of the power and energy requirements of the industrially under-developed regions of the world, may provide a stimulus to creative thinking and scientific research that could truly usher in a new era of international collaboration and economic development.
6. But, vast and promising as are the vistas opened by the constructive development of the peaceful use of atomic energy in the field of technical assistance and economic development, it is most important that the momentum of the present United Nations Technical Assistance Programme should be maintained. In my own country, significant if limited contributions are being made, with the promise of additional limited programmes. It is, of course, increasingly evident that the full effect of technical assistance projects can be realized only through the establishment and strengthening of the necessary economic instruments and agencies for financing and securing the proposed developments. As the Ethiopian delegation had occasion to note in the general debate last year, a change in the general atmosphere and even a slight change in the rate of economic development in the under-developed countries not only would be of the greatest, psychological importance to the strengthening of the work of the United Nations, but would have an immediate and appreciable practical effect. The Ethiopian delegation will accordingly press for the establishment of effective and substantial international economic instruments and agencies, not only for the expansion of technical assistance, but also for the financing and promotion of the basic economic development of the under-developed areas of the world.
7. My delegation remains convinced that there is the closest connexion between the effectiveness of collective security under the Charter and the climate of economic development throughout the world. The same boldness and willing assumption of great risks that crowned the Organization’s successful application of the principle of collective security must characterize its approach to the interrelated problems of technical assistance and economic development.
8. My delegation has from the earliest discussions at San Francisco lamented the tendency in the Organization to minimize the contribution of international law to the development of international institutions. We hope to see in the second decade of the Organization a greater willingness to restore to international law, and to legal considerations generally, the stabilizing role they have historically enjoyed in international affairs.
9. Several representatives have referred to the sense of discouragement and frustration that accompanies the persistent reappearance of a number of items that have been described as the “hardy perennials.” My delegation particularly regrets that the high hopes of the Organization in carrying out the human rights provisions of the Charter and the efforts to secure the elimination of the problems arising from so-called racial differences should continue to be frustrated; yet it is perhaps the evidence of the Organization’s coming of age, as it moves into its tenth year, that it has not failed to persist in holding us all to the high promise of the Charter.
10. I am confident that in this year of greater calm but higher tension in the affairs of the world we shall make the best possible use of the calm afforded to us and shall at the same time be impelled to our task by the tension that surrounds us.