I wish first of all to associate myself with the other representatives who have congratulated you, Mr. President, on your election to the presidency of this General Assembly and to express to you my sincerest wishes for the success of your work. I should also like to take this opportunity of telling Mrs. Pandit how much we appreciate and admire the tact and efficiency with which she conducted the discussions of the last session of the Assembly.
116. For the first time in the nine years of the existence of the United Nations, the General Assembly is meeting without having to consider problems of armed hostilities in any part of the world. This apparent calm, however, rather reminds us of a temporary lull before a storm, since it is, unfortunately, true that never has there been such a cleavage of opinion or such a clear-cut assumption of positions in the ideological conflict which divides the peoples of the world.
117. Every day we are drawing nearer to that culminating period of crisis, to that parting of the ways when the inescapable choice must be made between the way of peace and the way of adventure. It is the duty of the United Nations, by discussions like this, to take stock and to reflect whether it has been able to fulfill the primary duty with which it was charged at San Francisco, the duty to maintain peace.
118. I personally share the Secretary-General’s anxiety and concern over the fact that in recent months many countries have preferred to seek solutions of their problems outside of the United Nations and I think that we must investigate and remove the causes which have led them to adopt procedures different from those originally provided by the Charter.
119. I also agree with my old and valued friend, General Romulo, on the points which he has just raised. I think it would be absurd for us to close our eyes to the facts or to harbour illusions. The problem is there and if we are to solve it we must face it openly and seek its causes, so that we may remove them.
120. It is an over-simplification to ascribe the paralysis of the Security Council entirely to the matter of the veto or to delude ourselves that the political inertia of the United Nations is due only to that paralysis. I believe we must now recognize that that is not the only cause of our failures.
121. We may say of the United Nations, what Dr. Alberto Lleras said a few months ago in Caracas when he resigned his office as Secretary of the Organization of American States. The Organization is what its Members wish it to be. They can help to strengthen it or they can undermine its prestige in many ways, either by bringing before it questions which by its very nature it is not fitted to- consider and which it is consequently unable to solve, or by not bringing before it problems which can and should be solved in accordance with its Charter. Thus, we cannot lay the success or failure of our Organization at any particular door. We must realize that we are all to a greater or lesser extent responsible for what happens to the United Nations. The Organization reflects our conduct as States.
122. An organization of this kind easily tends to become a new state-like entity, a super-government with powers greater than those conferred by its constitution, and it must not be forgotten that such an arbitrary assumption of power has repercussions which could culminate in the extinction of the international body, with all the consequences attendant on such a failure, nor must we forget that because of this inordinate assumption of powers we have to witness a struggle for control of the organization which, with its extended powers, might be an effective instrument of intervention or of peaceful penetration.
123. Let us examine more closely how individual States, by their conduct, may wittingly or unwittingly help to undermine the authority of the United Nations.
124. An international organization is but the culmination of the general process of integration of social groups throughout history. If we had a clear understanding of our task, we could hasten the achievement of the fundamental unity of mankind. We could not expect that in ten years nations would organize themselves into a perfect international society, but we all feel that we might perhaps have better directed our efforts.
125. It would be entirely unjust, however, to say that in the process of integrating international organization the United Nations has not helped towards the rapprochement of the various countries. Year by year the bases for an improved international organization are becoming clearer and firmer, although we often come up against the embarrassing fact that some nations, probably because of a laudable striving towards human solidarity, require of our Organization a course of conduct of which it will only be capable when all its constituent parts are firmly co-ordinated.
126. For example, the United Nations has been entrusted with the task of drawing up conventions on such problems as respect for human rights or the right of peoples to self-determination; but until those conventions have been signed the international Organization cannot be asked to intervene in the same way as it would if they had already been ratified. We must not confuse ideals with positive legislation. We cannot ask the United Nations, to intervene in problems unless it has previously been given sufficient authority to deal with them. Recourse to the United Nations in such cases is one of the main factors impeding the progressive development of that body towards the ideal international organization to which we all aspire.
127. Another hindrance arises not in the Organization itself but in the Foreign Ministries of Member States. In the present century foreign relations are extended to fields which were not previously held to be within the competence of foreign ministries or state departments. Whether we call them state departments, chancelleries or ministries of foreign affairs, however, it is none the less true that they have not been given the powers which they should have within the framework of the administration of each. country if they are to steer their way through the problems for which they bear responsibility.
128. An international body is not the product of a capricious desire on the part of nations to establish communication with one another, but the logical consequence of a more compact and homogeneous world, in the sense that there are very few matters which are still strictly and absolutely of national concern. No country could enact legislation today without taking into account the standards which govern the other nations of the world. Isolation is regarded now only as a sanction to be applied against countries which try to ignore the rules of international co-operation. Present-day civilization cannot tolerate any such obstacle in its path as might be caused by a nation claiming the exclusive use of its air, land and sea territory. Public health, for example, must be administered with reference not merely to the individual but also to neighbouring States. The United Nations has been unable to deal, as it would have wished, with those and many other problems, not owing to any deficiencies in its Charter but because delegations receive instructions from foreign ministries which lag behind progress and whose own organization has not developed to the same extent as that of international organization. The narrow official channel constituted by the sections formed in many chancelleries or state departments to handle matters connected with international organizations, and through which passes the stream of reports and documents of all kinds, cannot deal with any matter thoroughly and is consequently unable to direct a policy in harmony with the march of progress. Hence, such ministries often instruct their delegations to avoid as far as possible any decision in the international body which they might later have to defend in their national parliaments. While the foreign ministries show paralysing inaction and indecision in the political sphere, the technical experts, without any regard for the views of their ministries, become the only channel through which the foreign relations of nations are conducted: the technical experts meet at international assemblies and endeavour to pledge the policies and resources of States; they speak for their countries and accept obligations for which in most cases the ministries are unable to obtain ratification by national parliaments. Sometimes the reverse is the case. In economic matters, for example, ministries have realized the futility of envisaging any political cooperation not supported by full economic co-operation. Yet, unfortunately, it has been impossible to ensure that the technical ministries, those, for example, concerned with finance, the exchequer or commerce, particularly among the great Powers, would uphold the suggestions or recommendations of those foreign ministries or state departments which have realized that the desire of nations for justice and economic and social security must be achieved as well as their aspiration towards international peace and security.
129. The consequence of all this has been timidity and indecision on the part of delegations to the United Nations regarding the solution of the great economic and social problems which confront the so-called underdeveloped countries. The study of economic development as a means of endowing peoples with worthy living conditions, better adapted to the preservation of ethnic and national interest, has been carried over from one General Assembly to another without our having taken any important decision on a matter of such supreme significance for the destiny of our countries. We can therefore state that the firmness with which our Governments pursue their policy towards this international Organization, in accordance with their position in the far-reaching ideological dispute of the present time, has not always kept pace with the collective feeling of our peoples who believe, and perhaps with reason, that it is of fundamental importance to make an all-out attack on the complex problem of their economic development.
130. Failure to understand the necessity for greater economic co-operation has resulted in an anomalous situation in which governments, chancelleries and state departments have reached an understanding among themselves, but at the price of being obliged to run counter to public opinion in their own countries, while that public opinion, surrounded by evidence of dire poverty, cannot understand why international diplomacy is powerless to forge an instrument for the solution of its economic problems.
131. To quote one example, the question of a special fund for economic development and an international finance corporation has been included in our agenda for the last three or four years. The Latin American States have felt that bodies of this kind would greatly assist their Governments in carrying out projects of supreme importance for the increased well-being of their peoples. Yet at every session a definite decision on this matter has been postponed and consequently, as Mr. Maza, the Chilean representative, so brilliantly pointed out last Thursday [475th meeting], the Latin American countries have now decided to study the matter on a regional level, that is to say outside of the United Nations.
132. These observations lead me to conclude that our present frustration is due to the fact that Governments have lost confidence in the United Nations, because they have not had the ability or skill to use the Organization for the purposes for which it was founded. They have been unable to use the United Nations because they have not succeeded in granting their foreign ministries sufficient authority.
133. Having heard General Romulo’s excellent speech I ask: what would we gain by a reform of the Charter if in future years foreign ministries still did not understand how to make use of it? Why seek representation for Asia on the Security Council, as General Romulo suggested, when he himself said that the Security Council is now useless? It is my belief, that the problem does not lie within the United Nations but in our own Governments and our own foreign ministries.
134. All the organs of the United Nations, all its bodies for international co-operation, all the measures for security will fade into the background and become subsidiary and secondary until such time as the authority which the foreign ministry should hold in every country has been re-established. Such authority is essential in order to re-establish the confidence of the nations in the authority of the United Nations; armed with that trust, we can regain the confidence of all the peoples of the world in our Organization.