Since this is my first public appearance before you, Mr. President, please permit me to congratulate you most warmly and very sincerely on your election to the Presidency of this body. It is a source of great satisfaction to me that, if I had to bow, I bowed to so formidable and revered a figure as you have come to be regarded in the highest organs of the international community.
97. My delegation also wishes to extend a warm welcome to the new States which have joined as new Members — Rwanda, Burundi, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. It was one of the greatest privileges of my life to be present at the ceremonies which inaugurated the new States of our Caribbean colleagues and to see the spirit of jubilation which attended the birth of freedom. We eagerly wait to welcome Uganda to this family of free nations in the forthcoming weeks, when that country becomes independent, and also the representatives of the people of Algeria, who covered themselves with immortal glory in their long struggle for freedom from colonization. It is our fervent hope that they will achieve speedy success in the mighty task of national reconstruction which now awaits them.
98. My Government is happy that two of the dangerous situations in South East Asia have been brought under control in a way that satisfies the parties concerned. I refer to Laos and West Irian. This happy outcome was possible only when the realities of the problems were fully recognized. But we cannot hastily conclude therefrom that there is peace and quiet in that region of the world, because the situation in South Viet-Nam causes deep anxiety to all of us. It is not for my delegation to suggest any specific solutions, but we do feel and we want to say that military solutions cannot and will not succeed.
99. Now on the question of the agenda. We have a formidable agenda and I shall not attempt to weary this busy forum with a repetition of our position on the individual items. We shall have ample occasion to deal with them as they arise. The items are many but, broadly speaking, they encompass three main categories: colonialism, economic development, and disarmament. The basic principles in each of these categories are crucial and these principles are well known to all of us. We know the problems and we also know that somehow, in some way, this body is expected, by logic or by magic, to produce the solutions. In a manner of speaking we are like the astronauts. They know their goals, they also know what problems are involved in reaching their goals. They are aware that it is up to them to solve these problems however intractable they may appear. And, in order to do this, with every experimental flight they explore ways and means of how best to use their machinery. The whole world has marvelled at their skill in utilizing their space-ships and their techniques and the success that has attended their efforts to open up for man the era of space.
100. Our task as delegations to the United Nations is not dissimilar. In all the three categories I have mentioned, colonialism, economic development and disarmament, we also are continually opening up new vistas, not in space but here on earth. We are not astronauts; but we are like navigators. We have to deal with the revolutionary forces in the world which, like all forces in a state of revolution, are primitive and destructive unless they are given planning, purpose and direction. Ours is not a space-ship, it is an earth-ship, and just as astronauts can get nowhere without using their machines with the maximum skill, so shall we too fall short of our task unless we use this machine we have here, the United Nations Assembly, with equal ingenuity. This is the challenge that confronts us.
101. This Assembly is essentially a parliament, and every delegate knows from his experience that each session of a parliamentary body has its own mood and temper, its purpose and psychology. This is equally true of this seventeenth session which carries with it the legacy of sixteen previous sessions. Some of these previous sessions merely marked time while the winds of change blew past them, others boldly took up the full burden of their responsibility, courageously met the challenge of the times and, as for example in the declarations on disarmament and on colonialism, anticipated the dictates of history and became dynamic forces, almost relentless in their forward surge.
102. What is going to be the character of this seventeenth Assembly? That is the query in the eyes of the world which gaze so intensely upon our deliberations and it is also the question in the minds of those who must report and comment upon our discussions and our conclusions. Too often we have been written off as just a talking marathon, all talk and no action; on the other hand, we have sometimes been charged with an excess of ambition and super-abundance of energy, even with irresponsibility.
103. Already three different views have been expressed in the brief period of this general debate. One view has written us off as a failure, a view which, I think, may be dismissed with the utter disdain which it deserves. Another view counsels us to move cautiously, to act slowly, and yet, others and these I think constitute the majority, have touched upon the crucial issues of our time and the desperate urgency to face them with confidence and with the maximum determination at our command.
104. My delegation is one of those that believe that this is no time to drift. Like the famous figures in the "Inferno" of Dante's immortal epic, we are carried on the blast of a great wind, but unlike these tragic figures, we are not yet in the inferno. We are here, happily, still on earth and the choice is still ours whether we shall be puppets or captains of our fate in the age-long challenge that awaits mankind.
105. The question of war or peace hangs over our heads and over the peoples of the world; when we see the peace in Laos we may incline to see the situation with perhaps undue optimism, and when we watch the struggle in Berlin we may feel an equally exaggerated pessimism. Like a feverish patient the world is shaken between the anguish of the cold war and the terror and the imminence of a hot one. In this delirium the world turns to the dubious and addictive medicine of more and yet more arms, and, as happens in any addiction, it steps up its dosage with more powerful and yet more deadly weapons. In this malarial agony it is futile to expect the world either to build or to rest. This state of affairs is reaching a stage of saturation, and there is now no organ available to mankind which can come to grips with this problem on the international plane except this world Organization.
106. This is true also with the peoples still fighting in the colonies for their freedom. Information coming from many parts of the world shows that this problem, too, is not merely a matter of juggling with constitutional processes. The issue of colonialism no longer brooks leisurely solutions. It has now become an issue of war or peace involving millions of impatient, angry human beings. Men and women can be as explosive as bombs, sometimes even more so.
107. So it is with the economic disparity of nations and peoples. That too is reaching a point of boiling saturation. That too is shaping up into a force of war and struggle. It would be a great hoax to convey the impression, as we sometimes see being done, that the sole danger of war in our time is ideological. The danger is no less colonial; it is no less economic. These three forces — military, colonial and economic — are now the indivisible components of war, and what we are seeing today, at this hour, is the peril-point at which they are merging, like some evil amalgam, into a single force; either we must master it or it will master us.
108. This is the diagnosis as my delegation sees it. The diagnosis is not different from those we have heard from other far more distinguished representatives. Western, Eastern and non-aligned. As a small nation, who along with other small nations find our best shelter in the world Organization, we heard with genuine satisfaction the words of the representative of the United States, Mr. Adlai Stevenson, when he said: "To meet these challenges, we need not just the strong but a still stronger United Nations." [1125th meeting, para. 48.]
109. It is this diagnosis which for us dictates the temper of what we feel this Assembly should be. In our view, if this Assembly is to escape the charge of impotence, nay of betrayal of its trust, it must stir itself to become a forum of action, a parliament of accomplishment commensurate with the challenge that faces it. This Assembly must mobilize its mighty forces — and, let there be no mistake, we have much strength at our disposal. Under the managerial genius of our President, an ability he has already so ably demonstrated, this Assembly must press forward as a powerful catalyst to persevere with the unfinished business of its sixteen predecessors.
110. We have no apology to make to those who accuse us of being an organ for words, a talkathon, because we think that words are important, that words are ideas; and they were most important especially in the formative stage when this Organization was hammering out questions of principles. But now we have gone much further. In the case of the three categories I have mentioned — colonialism, economic development, and disarmament — what is striking about all three is that they have progressed beyond the stage of dispute on principles.
111. For example, there is no longer any difference of opinion that colonialism must go. By its historic Declaration [resolution 1514 (XV)], this Assembly has already decreed the complete liquidation of this festering anachronism. The problems before us now are those of ways and means, of methods and procedures. Views may differ on tempo, but we all know where we are going. As for my delegation, we favour a stepped-up tempo, a stepped-up pace, a double tempo. We have heard many excuses for delays but not a single good reason, and we find that the excuses are mostly evasions of one kind or another of the principles of the Declaration. But even if we are inclined to temporize, is the choice completely ours? Every morning's newspaper tells us that the peoples in the colonies are on the march, many of them under the banners of militant political parties, behind leaders whose precious qualities and undoubted genius, now dissipated in political gaols and police persecutions, could well be used and should be used in the building of new nations, and, as our new Members have so ably demonstrated here in this Assembly, can be used for the veritable strengthening of our own Organization. Either this Assembly will grasp the historical meaning of this struggle against colonialism and direct its forces to constructive goals, or it must be prepared to face another crop of Congos and Angolas, with their potential threat to regional peace, international security and even the very existence of the United Nations itself.
112. For this task the Assembly has before it a monumental mass of information from the Special Committee established under paragraph 3 of resolution 1699 (XVI), the Sub-Committee on the Situation in Angola, the Committee on South West Africa, the Committee on Information from Non-Self-Governing Territories, and the Special Committee established under paragraph 3 of resolution 1654 (XVI), whose prodigious labours and remarkable results have given us a pattern of action for the earliest liberation of all non-free peoples. As I have stated before in the Committee of Information, of which I was Chairman, if we move with dispatch we shall see for the first time, and even within the lifetime of most of us, a world of peoples who will all be self-governing,
113. Similarly with the Decade of Development. Here, there is even less differences of principles. Like the Declaration on colonialism, the Decade enjoys the unanimous decision of the Assembly, and here there are minimum differences even as regards method. In addition, we have the excellent guidance contained in the many constructive statements and reports made in recent months by our Secretary-General, U Thant.
114. Our problem in this respect can be summed up as one of correcting the danger of imbalances — imbalances in the price of primary and manufactured commodities, in development, in the flow of development capital, in the techniques of administration, and, most dangerous of all, imbalances in standards of living.
115. And now, when the world needs balance most, there arise new hazards in the growth of the common markets. My Government, as a member of the Commonwealth, shares the anxiety of all our sister dominions in regard to the Common Market as we see it shaping up in West Europe. Much of the economy of my own country of Ceylon rests, as with most developing countries, on foreign trade. Our economies are in a formative period. We still depend Largely on the export of a limited number of products, mainly agricultural, to pay for our essential imports of capital and consumption goods. Not too infrequently we have suffered from the fluctuation of the prices of our products, over which we have no control. Will the dividing of the world into economic blocs corresponding to the political blocs aggravate our difficulties? Shall we be left entirely at the mercy of economic giants? Will these internationally co-ordinated economic plans result in indirect political penetration and neo-colonialism in our small countries? These are genuine apprehensions, and due notice must be taken of them.
116. It would be a gross misrepresentation to portray the European Common Market as a headache of the Commonwealth only. The anxieties which the proposal has aroused have been expressed also by the Latin American States, by most African States, by the European non-aligned States, by States of the Middle East, by the socialist States, even by many circles in Britain, and, I might add, also by many American statesmen who, while seeing virtue in the rise of the European Common Market, never fail to express, with a detectable note of misgiving, the hope that the market will not be "inward looking" but "outward looking". But it is not America so much as the Six who will have the power to decide how they will deal with world trade, and indeed they have already laid down the rules by which others must bargain with them.
117. My delegation would like to make itself very clear on this issue. We are not against common markets. They are probably an inevitable chapter in the growing regionalism of the world, as the next step in history beyond the unicellular sovereign State, and we might welcome this development. In some areas of the world the grouping of States, as in the case of Central and Latin American States and also as seen in Africa, may be the only solution for accelerating the rate of economic development.
118. But, as regards the European Common Market, there is nothing common about it. How can there be any such thing when six of the most developed countries in the world have pooled their resources in a combination which has not only economic implications but political and perhaps even military implications? This Common Market may well presage the rise of a new empire since it reaches out far beyond the economic components of a marketing organization.
119. Last year I had the opportunity to express from this rostrum some thoughts on the regional, political organizations and the danger that they may gradually evolve beyond the. control of the United Nations Charter. The same warning might be raised also with regard to regional economic organizations. It is for us to ponder whether the trade of the world which involves the livelihood of peoples should become a war of the regions.
120. It is in this light that my delegation welcomes the recommendation of the Economic and Social Council for the holding of a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 1963, which is none too soon. When the agenda of that Conference comes up, my Government will support those principles of economic development which have been so ably formulated this year in the Cairo Conference on the Problems of Economic Development in which Ceylon was privileged to participate. It will also support giving the broadest possible scope to deal with the problems arising from common market practices. This important development, if it is not to deteriorate into bitter economic warfare, must be brought within the principles of the Charter and, we hope eventually within the United Nations itself, possibly under a special agency.
121. Finally, there is the question of disarmament. Here, too, we have unanimity at least on basic principles and even on diagnosis. It is interesting to note that in each of the major statements made before this Assembly, by the United States and the Soviet Union, we have a "leitmotif" which stresses that the current runaway arms race is folly and madness, and yet the solution appears to evade these two great countries.
122. In Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, faced with a problem which was beyond him, lapsed, as you will recall, into madness, and in this condition found a solution indeed, but one which destroyed all, including himself. Therefore, to engage in self-laceration would not in itself contribute to the solution any more than to engage in the castigation of the other side. But we must not under-estimate this confession of folly on their part. It does connote a change of heart, a laudable measure of self-criticism and a new state of mind. The Assembly must therefore press forward at this psychological moment, for a possible break-through, on the important progress already made on the halting of nuclear tests. In such a push, the Assembly has the encouraging example of the great contribution made in Geneva by the eight non-aligned nations, which have forever destroyed the arguments of the doubting Thomases on the powers of non-alignment. The Assembly also has, in addition, the tremendous force of world public opinion behind it, and its expressed revulsion against the continuation of an armaments race, which has lost all semblance of even the remotest value as a factor in the security of States. We believe with Acting Secretary-General U Thant that the peoples of the world are becoming more and more impatient with failure to find a way out of the dangerous impasse we have now reached.
123. Thus, armed with the moral influence which can come to a Parliament, this Assembly, with its membership of 108 States, enjoys the rare opportunity of being able to mobilize all its energies in order to push this crucial problem of the age to some kind of a breakthrough. In fact, all the three categories of colonialism, economics and armaments are now ripe for a breakthrough. So much so that, it being customary to dub each session with a symbolic title, this seventeenth session might well be called the "break-through Assembly".
124. In this effort the ordinary resolutions of the past, enunciating and re-enunciating already accepted principles on disarmament, will fall short of what is needed. There is, in fact, as the Secretary of State for External Affairs of Canada, Mr. Howard Green, stated, little left for this Assembly to do than to admonish, with some prodding, the Committee of Eighteen in Geneva to continue its deliberations. But I suspect that the wise Minister of Canada had some doubt in his own mind about leaving it entirely to the negotiators, and it is probably for this reason that he added: "This Assembly should bring to bear the full force of world opinion to ensure more rapid progress in disarmament." [1130th meeting, para. 61]. In this connexion, my delegation feels that the proposed Soviet declaration [A/5233] on the conversion of arms expenditure to peaceful purposes commands considerable merit. The economics of siphoning such savings for reconstruction are not new and were first proposed by the late representative of India, Sir Benegal Rau. But the grand dimensions in which it is now formulated are new and carry great impact within the context of the current picture in the arms situation. The proposal commands attention because it states the reconversion of military to civilian uses, not in mere negative terms, but in positive terms of realizable achievements. It is basically sound because it is built on the findings of the United Nations Committee on the Economic and Social Consequences of Disarmament, which was itself the outcome of the initiative of the Pakistani delegation, be it said to its glory. Not only does it appeal to the depressed masses of the world, but it also allays the fears of those millions of workers whose livelihood, civilian and military, is so closely tied to the world productive forces which now, alas, are too closely harnessed to engines of destruction. It can, therefore, be a psychological break-through of the greatest impact at this auspicious juncture of events and, in the light of the unanimous approval the proposal received at the 150th meeting of the General Committee only yesterday, my delegation would express the hope that the Soviet delegation would invite all great industrial and military Powers to co-sponsor this declaration so that it might completely escape the taint of propaganda and become a document worthy of unanimous acclaim by this Assembly.
125. It is now almost fashionable in certain political and journalist circles to talk of a crisis facing the United Nations. It is true that the United Nations has many problems, its financial difficulties, structural and organizational weaknesses and imbalances. But these are merely the reflection of the unsatisfactory world situation. The real crisis, as we see it, is in the hearts of men, and it is there that we must overcome it by unflinching courage, by bold action and by enlightened and firm determination. The crisis is due chiefly to our failure to take account of the realities of the world situation and to have our actions conform with those realities. We are often asked to be practical, but, when it comes to dealing with practical problems — for example, that of the recognition of the rightful position of the People's Republic of China — what is our reaction?
126. We would therefore counsel an Assembly of action, as the first logical step toward the stronger United Nations which we all desire and which Mr. Stevenson called for. Here we have an Assembly that is a unique democracy, representing the greatest number of people ever represented in any body in history. Let this be a session that will mobilize the best resources of the men and women who now constitute its record membership. We agree with Lord Home's wise counsel, given to us at the last meeting, for moderation and conciliation, but we must not allow moderation and conciliation to be made synonymous with inaction. So we say: let this be a dynamic session, an Assembly worthy of its historic mission in these revolutionary times. When that great French leader, Danton, was asked to give a formula for the mood of an Assembly coping with revolutionary forces, as indeed we are ourselves doing today, his immortal reply was: "de l'audace, encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace". Let his words be our slogan as well.