88. Allow me, Mr. President, to convey to you my sincere congratulations, and those of my Government and delegation, on your election to the office of President of the General Assembly. Your eminent qualities and your unceasing activity in the service of the Organization are the main assurance of the success which all of us here earnestly wish you in the interest of a peace that will, we trust, be based on better understanding among peoples; to the achievement, of such better understanding the country which I, have the honour to represent, proud to have made its modest contribution.
89. Syria, as a founding Member of the United Nations, has always upheld the purposes and principles of the Charter, The records of the various United Nations bodies fully confirm, this. Although a small country, the Syrian Arab Republic has, since the first days of its independence, held it an urgent necessity to work towards a basic goal dear to the hearts of all the Arab peoples — namely, the achievement of their unity, which has its roots in history and in the deep yearnings for economic development as a means to sound social justice. The Syrian people, although less numerous than others, has always taken an advanced position in efforts to fulfill this historic task, which is fully consonant with the purposes of the United Nations.
90. Thus we rejoice in seeing newly liberated countries join us here. As early as 1947 and 1948, when it was a member of the Security Council, Syria vigorously upheld the universal character of our Organization — the universality which the Charter had consecrated in 1945. I should therefore like to address a welcome to those new Members which the General Assembly has already admitted in the course of this session, namely Rwanda, Burundi, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. And I should especially like to express the happiness of my people and Government at witnessing the achievement of one of the aspirations of the Arab nations — the proclamation of the independence of Algeria, and that country's admission to the United Nations.
91. This is a historic, moment, reached through the heroic efforts and untold suffering of the Algerian people that have won the admiration of the entire world. Spurred on by an indomitable faith, the people of Algeria waged an unequal struggle with an iron will, an unquenchable ardour and a fierce courage the Tikes of which are unknown in the annals of national liberation struggles. I wish also to take this opportunity of congratulating the French Government and people, which fully understood that an independent Algeria was the best guarantee of sound and durable relations between the two countries; The France of Descartes, Diderot, Rousseau, Victor Hugo and others, the France of the French Revolution, has won an undisputed victory over the false and odious image which an insignificant minority of Frenchmen wished to give of the country in the course of a brutally savage war.
92. Yet while we witness the admission of new States to our Organization, we are still haunted by a shadow — that of the People's Republic of China. Years pass and a Government representing one fourth of the world's population is still denied its natural right to speak here on behalf of China, a country holding a permanent seat in the Security Council. This is an anomalous and an abnormal situation which it is our duty to rectify as quickly as possible in the interests of peace and security.
93. We must also redouble our efforts to secure implementation of the well-known Declaration of 1960 in which the General Assembly resolved that the colonial system must come to an end. Last year, a Special Committee of seventeen nations, including my own, was established to give effect to the Declaration [see resolution 1654 (XVI)]. All our efforts must be directed towards facilitating the task of the Special Committee, whose report [A/5238] we will, I hope, study very carefully. To grant independence to all countries that are not yet independent is one of the essential duties we are called upon under the Charter to fulfil.
94. In this connexion we wish to express our profound satisfaction at the Agreement concerning West Irian reached between Indonesia and the Netherlands [see A/517Q, annex]. This Agreement proves that colonial problems can be solved on the basis of good faith and realism — and upon this a great many Powers would do well to meditate. We can only praise, on this occasion, the untiring efforts of the Secretary-General, U Thant, who did everything to secure the signing of the Agreement.
95. While noting this fact, we must also observe that the liberation of a host of colonial territories has already been accomplished. Thus we warmly greet the African brethren who have now joined our ranks. At the same time, our thoughts go out to those who are still fighting, either to obtain their full liberation in territories still under the rule of European Powers, or to free themselves from the inhuman policy of racial discrimination in the Republic of South Africa.
96. Nor should we forget that the valiant people of Oman continues its uncompromising struggle. From that struggle it will emerge victorious, for the existence of oil deposits cannot serve to justify the perpetuation of a system that is in process of liquidation. Nor can the perpetuation of this system be secured by the creation of the Federation of South Arabia, which does not meet the basic aspirations of the Arab people of that area.
97. Indeed, all traces of colonialism have not yet disappeared, and they will remain until certain conditions which today exist in the world are removed.
98. The first of these conditions relates to the distinction commonly drawn between developed and developing countries. The rapid progress of technology, the development of means of communication, and the expansion of international trade are not, unfortunately, operating in favour of those who are seeking to build up their economies; these latter countries thus become an easy prey to the very Powers which yesterday grew rich at their expense. So we have witnessed the rise of neo-colonialism, particularly in the form of economic blocs created to offset the effects of the loss of the previously dominated territories.
99. We can even now estimate the adverse effect which these economic blocs will produce at a future, and we believe not too distant date. Instead of reducing the social and economic differences which continue to separate the two groups of countries, they will serve only to reinforce them. The peoples of the less developed countries will continue to suffer, and one day they will reach the point of resorting to extreme measures in order to secure the necessary changes. Coexistence between the ill-fed majority and the prosperous minority can be achieved only if we are all convinced of the need to preserve the human race without regard to colour or ethnic differences.
100. To obtain this we must recognize that the safer guarding of peace and the economic betterment of the developing countries are indivisible notions. Technical assistance rendered by the richer to the poorer countries should not be tainted by any speculative self-interest. It should be based on a broader and more generous view of the future of man; a thorough understanding of all the factors that go to make up human existence quite often leads to reason and prudence. If the richer countries played the game of increasing their wealth at the expense of the less favoured nations, the latter would become poorer still, and this in turn would foster crises and depression in the richer lands. Some say that crises and depression are but the normal consequences of the operation of the laws of classical political economy. We fear, however, that the operation may this time become a mortal one owing to lack of foresight and good faith on the part of those who not so long ago chose to give lessons in civic virtue and morality to the whole world.
101. The developing countries need help in the building of their economies; but they require not so much daily bread as new industries, a body of trained personnel and higher cultural levels, in order that the differences between richer and poorer countries may begin to decrease, and finally fade away altogether, as advocated by the Secretary-General in the Introduction to his Annual Report to the General Assembly [A/5201/Add.l]. It is beyond all doubt that this long-term task can be accomplished only hi a climate of peace. That is why the new countries regard disarmament and the prohibition of the use of nuclear weapons as a solution to their problems.
102. While it is true that peace is in the hands of those who possess weapons, world opinion has clearly declared itself in favour of maintaining life on our planet. It is in our common interest to ensure that the negotiations for disarmament and the prohibition of nuclear tests yield concrete and positive results as early as possible. We often hear it said that the peace we enjoy today is based on a balance of terror. One day this pessimistic attitude must be replaced by the more optimistic and human one of mutual understanding — the corollary of peaceful coexistence.
103. My country was one of the first to express its warm support of the principles of coexistence during the Bandung Conference held in 1955. Needless to say, coexistence lies at the basis of non-intervention. How many problems would have been avoided, and how many vexing issues settled, had we tried to understand these basic notions thoroughly.
104. If we could place coexistence in its proper framework and provide the fundamental guarantees for it, we might then legitimately boast of having removed the causes of tension and eliminated what we now commonly call the "cold war". The East and the West, instead of fighting between themselves, would be freed of their present obsessions and could devote themselves to raising the standards of the developing countries. The millions upon millions in money today invested in unproductive and possibly destructive endeavours might be redirected into more normal channels. These sums would find use in the construction of schools, clinics, hospitals, roads, tractors and homes. They would allow an increase in cultural exchanges. They would ensure that man was not a wolf to his fellow-man, as a certain blind and hateful propaganda would have us believe.
105. When I speak of unproductive endeavours, I know very well what is involved. A very grave act of injustice has been committed against the Arab nation. For the first time in history, in 1947, a people was denied the right to be master in its own land, on its own territory. Arab Palestine was torn asunder through the intrigues of Zionism, which long ago placed itself at the service of imperialism and international finance. One million Palestine Arabs were expelled from their homes and now live in precarious conditions while waiting for their legitimate right to return to their homes to be respected at last. In its resolution of 11 December 1948 [194 (111)3, the General Assembly fully recognized the validity of this sacred right. But so far as respect for it is concerned, no headway has been made. Matters remain as they were.
106. Zionism found the means of creating what it has styled the State of Israel with the help it received from imperialism in both its old and its new forms. Dr. Weizmann wrote in his posthumous memoirs that, in the conversations he held with Lloyd George and Lord Balfour during the First World War, he made a point of stressing that a Jewish Palestine would best serve the imperial interests of Great Britain. From this emerged the, famous Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917. After the Second World War, the Zionist movement, having shifted its centre of operations from the United Kingdom to the United States, succeeded in convincing Americans that it would support them in their short and long-term political designs and that they could not count on similar support from the Arabs of the Middle East. Thus everything conceivable was done to prevent the Arabs of Palestine from living in peace in their own homos, on the very land that had witnessed the birth of their ancestors. And thus the gravest injustice in the annals of history was committed.
107. Not content with having expelled the Arabs, the Israel authorities have gone farther and threatened the peace of our region. Their expansionist plans, their obstinate refused to comply with the resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council, the aggressive actions, they have undertaken in daily violation of the general armistice agreements which the Arabs agreed to sign with them, the part they played in the treacherous attack upon Egypt in 1956, their constant use of intimidation and pressure, their permanent collusion with; forces alien to the region — all these reprehensible actions are proof that Arab Palestine was torn apart in order to be delivered into the hands of those who are, and remain alien to it. This fact is undeniable.
108. Most unfortunately, however, it is a fact still not understood by the West, which persists in relying upon Israel and in placing it at the centre of the cold war in the Middle East, thus preventing the Arab countries from completing their economic reconstruction and charting the course for their future. So long as the Palestine problem has not been justly and equitably solved, the Arabs will continue to feel that their lives and destiny are endangered. They will continue to build trenches instead of schools; they will be forced to go on diverting a considerable part of their national income to expenditure on arms.
109. The Arab countries assign substantial amounts to, their defence, because they hold their existence to be. threatened by the proximity and aggressiveness of the Israel authorities. These authorities, moreover, receive considerable outside assistance, which enables them, to increase, their military potential. Their expansionist plans and the influx of immigrants have made the Arab people determined to accept any sacrifice called for by the situation, since they are resolved to live on their own soil and not to accept the status of refugees.
110. Far from seeking to reduce tension-, the Government of the United States recently decided to deliver to Israel missiles and other arms that it usually furnishes only to members of the military pacts to which the United States belongs. The pretext for this decision is apparently that three Arab countries have already received considerable supplies from the Soviet Union, it thus being feared that the balance is no longer in favour of Israel.
111. The logic of this reasoning is hard to follow. If the United States Government was really alarmed by the strengthening of the Arabs' military potential, it should have started by asking itself the following four questions: First, why did the Arabs feel the need to increase their forces? Secondly, do the official records of the Security Council and the General Assembly contain a single condemnation of an Arab country for acts of aggression? Thirdly, how many times has Israel not been condemned for attacks upon the Arab countries? Fourthly, has not Israel already received considerable supplies of weapons which constitute a threat to the Arab world?
112. Only after finding the answer to each of these questions would the United States have been entitled to adopt, if necessary, a given attitude. We quite understand that its Government may have thought it was acting on the basis of what it regarded as compatible with the interests of its strategy or tactics, whether domestic or foreign. The Arab peoples too have their own interests — interests which, moreover, are in conformity with those of peace in general. The Arab peoples do not wish to become involved in the cold war. But they are being pushed into it by the attitude taken in regard to them by a West which has not yet realized that the theories of the "vacuum" are now completely out of date and that henceforth it is only the peoples which count. Such behaviour will certainly not break the will of the Arab countries.
113. Furthermore, Palestine belongs to its people. Only a tiny minority of that people has remained in its homeland, where it is at the mercy of a harsh military administration; the great majority is scattered throughout the neighbouring Arab countries. To endorse artificial solutions aimed only at maintaining a status quo based on usurpation and injustice would be to betray the destiny, of this suffering people, which has a right to be heard — not through individual interrogations and whispered interviews, as some advocate, but through a thorough airing of the question and a frank and fair discussion addressed to the settlement of the Palestine problem and not to the question of Arab-Israel relations, which is alleged by some quarters to be the issue.
114. May I recall, in the interests of a clear understanding of the subject, that in the eyes of the Arabs, the essential problem at issue is that of Palestine. This problem was created on the day when the British Government, in the person of Lord Baifour, made its famous Declaration of 2 November 1917 in which it undertook, to permit the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine. It should be noted that this promise was vitiated by the following two defects: first, Palestine was not under British jurisdiction — it formed part of the Ottoman Empire but had been occupied by the British forces as territory seized from the enemy; secondly, the Palestinian people had not been consulted in advance in accordance with the elementary concepts of the right of self-determination.
115. It is regrettable that such a situation should have persisted throughout the period during which Palestine was subjected by the League of Nations to the British Mandate. The Palestine Mandate was associated with Zionist expansion from abroad, a movement basically favoured by the Mandatory Power.
116. This is why we consider that the Palestinian people has not yet received satisfaction. It has the right to express itself clearly, without having to take into account any obstacle originating abroad. To try to reverse the roles by propagating the idea of what is described as the settlement of Arab-Israel relations is to depart from reality in order to perpetrate injustice. It is true that Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria successively signed general armistice agreements in 1949, but they did so only in order to comply with the resolutions adopted by the Security Council on 15 July and 16 November 1948. Moreover, each of the agreements in question includes a final clause in accordance with which the armistice is to remain in force until a peaceful settlement of the Palestine question has been achieved.
117. Owing to the circumstances which I have recalled, Syria's geographical position and the essentially democratic and pan-Arab aspirations of its people, the latter has had to carry on a relentless struggle against all foreign intervention in its affairs. It has struggled to assert its legitimate right to adopt a policy of positive neutrality without being challenged. It has also struggled to prevent inter-Arab relations from, being exploited for sinister purposes by a desperate foreign propaganda which sees all situations exclusively in terms of a so-called ratio of strength between East and West.
118. In reality the movement for Arab unity, a goal to which the whole, of Syria unceasingly aspires, concerns only the Arab countries themselves. Any attempt to deflect it from its fundamental objective and to make of it an instrument of political hegemony or of the cold war is doomed to failure.
119. Our positive neutralism is based on comprehension and co-operation. We seek to preserve our national independence by protecting it from all outside intervention. That does not prevent us from establishing economic and cultural ties with all countries, regardless of the ideology they profess, provided they exact no price other than friendship and mutual benefit.
120. It is interesting to note that the concept of neutralism has made headway since Bandung. We have come far since the time when it was regarded a sin. If that is acknowledged, so much the better for the cause of world peace. The Conference held at Belgrade took note of a state of affairs which was already coming into being. It performed a worthy task by putting non-alignment at the service of those who were and continue to be sincerely interested in the lessening of international tension.
121. On the credit side of this policy we can now enter the agreement on the neutrality of Laos. We rejoice that it has been possible to conclude such an agreement, which proves that no problem concerning peace is insoluble if the rules of justice are respected.
122. The agenda of the General Assembly's seventeenth session is a heavy one. It includes a variety of items. Moreover, the session has opened in rather difficult circumstances. At various points of the globe, such as Berlin, Cuba and South-East Asia, we find situations which may become explosive. I should therefore like to express the hope that everything will be done to prevent the "inevitable" and to enable our Organization to do whatever lies in its power to ensure that it will not be said that mankind, having discovered space, renounced its human values and fell back into a darkness unworthy of its genius and of the progress built up through centuries of hard and unremitting toil. We should be renouncing a civilization achieved at the cost of struggle, suffering and tears were we to persist in dangerous adventures at a time like this, when the conflicts confronting us, if subjected to the analysis of history, appear small indeed compared with the great destiny of a world whose dimensions have been shrunk by science.