It is a great honour for me to address my warmest
congratulations to Mr. Hollai, on my own behalf
and on behalf of my delegation, and to express my
great satisfaction that he is presiding over the
thirty seventh session of the General Assembly.
In choosing him, the Assembly was inspired by his
great qualities and his particularly outstanding
diplomatic career. The General Assembly is also
paying a tribute thereby to the dynamic work done
by his country, the People's Republic of Hungary,
within the United Nations. My country has close
relations of friendship and cooperation with his
country. It will thus be understood that the
delegation of Guinea Bissau fully associates
itself with this confirmation by the General
Assembly of his great abilities and his excellent
knowledge of international affairs and is happy
at the prospect of cooperating with him in
seeking solutions to the many problems in
international relations. I should like to express
appreciation to Mr. Hollai's predecessor, Mr.
Kittani, for the dedication, wisdom and great
ability he has demonstrated in the past year. His
tireless efforts and constant work in the United
Nations enabled us to achieve satisfactory
results in our struggle for peace during a
particularly turbulent period in international
life. I take this opportunity also, on behalf of
my country, the Republic of Guinea Bissau, to
congratulate Mr. Javier Perez de Cuellar on his
election to the high office of Secretary General.
I am the more happy to do so because this is the
first time that I have spoken from this rostrum,
and I should also like to express to him my great
appreciation of the tremendous contribution he
has made to solving the many conflicts and
problems which threaten international peace and
security.
I should also like to say to him that the
Government of the Republic of Guinea Bissau
greatly appreciates the excellent report he has
submitted to us. In our view, this report
constitutes a real innovation in that it
courageously and lucidly reflects the main
concerns of the international community as a
whole.
The Secretary General proposes in his report a
concrete and objective approach to improving the
structures and operation of the Organization and
he also suggests measures to strengthen the
United Nations and to make it a truly universal
organization in which all peoples and countries
of the world without distinction will be able to
play their role in the struggle of mankind to
preserve peace and development. The Government of
the Republic of Guinea Bissau will make every
effort to help in the attainment of these
objectives. This session of the Assembly is
taking place at a particularly tense time.
Violence, war, disdain for the principles set
forth in the Charter, systematic violation of the
most basic rules governing international
relations, the genocide of thousands of human
beings and considerable material damage, as well
as innumerable other problems, provide a
threatening background to our debate. In this
Hall we have heard the echoes of the world's
outrage at the atrocities committed in Lebanon by
the Israeli army. The international community has
expressed its feelings of absolute revulsion at
the massacre of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra
and Shatila camps. The General Assembly, in
devoting an emergency special session to those
tragic events, which are a grim reminder of the
darkest days of modem history, wished thus to
express its outrage and to condemn this barbarous
action and the authors of it. Israel, in allowing
the massacre of thousands of Palestinian refugees
and creating the conditions whereby that shameful
act of genocide could take place, made itself
answerable to international public opinion for
one of the most odious crimes against humanity.
The invasion of Lebanon and the mass bombings of
west Beirut clearly showed the world that Israel,
in its craze for power, was capable of the worst
aggression to establish a climate of terror in
the region and remove the Arabs once and for all
from their land. But Israel should have learned
the lessons of history, quiterecent history. The
suffering imposed on the heroic Palestinian
people, far from weakening them, has shown their
true strength, courage, determination and
political maturity. It is political maturity
which, without any doubt, confirms the
representativeness of the PLO as a national
liberation movement which embodies the profound
aspirations of the fraternal Palestinian people
as a whole and guides their fight for freedom. I
should like to pay a glowing tribute to the
leadership of the PLO, and particularly to its
Chairman, Yasser Arafat, for the courage,
vitality and irrepressible determination which
they have demonstrated in their struggle in the
face of the institutionalized terrorism of the
State of Israel and despite the disproportion in
the methods used by the two sides. The people and
Government of Guinea Bissau reaffirm their
unwavering solidarity with and total support for
the fraternal Palestinian people in their
legitimate struggle for the exercise of their
national rights, including their inalienable
right to exist and to create their own State.
Recognition of Namibia's right to independence,
which we have been demanding for many years and
for which the Namibian people, under the
leadership of SWAPO, their sole legitimate
representative have made innumerable sacrifices,
has once again been jeopardized by the delaying
tactics of the racist regime of South Africa. It
is high time that the authors of the United
Nations plan for the settlement of the Namibian
problem reacted more forcefully to the
Machiavellian policies of Pretoria, which wishes
to keep Namibia indefinitely dependent on South
Africa. The Namibian people, Africa, will never
accept a constitutional system which would
perpetuate the existence of a puppet
administration acting in the economic and
geopolitical interests of the racist apartheid
regime. This must be understood and remembered.
Pretoria's intransigence and its manifest
determination to wreck the plan for the
settlement of the Namibian question, thus
jeopardizing the principles of Security Council
resolution 435 (1978), should lead its allies to
be realistic and recognize that a moribund
colonialist regime can never guarantee their long
term interests. The insecurity in which the
racist regime of South Africa maintains the
southern pail of the African continent and its
repeated acts of aggression against the People's
Republic of Angola, the People's Republic of
Mozambique and the other frontline States must
lead the international community to shoulder its
responsibilities more effectively and pay greater
attention to the war which persists in the
People's Republic of Angola because of the
occupation of part of its territory by the racist
apartheid regime. It is wrong and even dangerous
to think that this is an innocuous problem,
because it is in fact the People's Republic of
Angola that is bearing the brunt of the
commitment although it was made by all the States
Members of the United Nations to give the
necessary aid to the SWAPO fighters in their just
struggle for the independence and dignity of the
Namibian people. It is also tolerable to see
certain countries trying to link the question of
Namibian independence to the presence of
internationalist Cuban troops in the People's
Republic of Angola. Such an attitude constitutes
in reality interference in the internal affairs
of a sovereign State and is contrary to the right
of every State freely to choose its
sociopolitical system and to determine in full
sovereignty its domestic and foreign policy. The
heads of State of African countries where
Portuguese is spoken rejected this approach to
the problem at their last summit meeting, in
Praia, in September, and declared their
unwavering solidarity with the Namibian people
and the Angolan and Mozambican peoples in their
just struggle to preserve their national
independence and defend the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of their States. That
meeting also provided the Republic of Guinea
Bissau with an opportunity to reiterate, along
with the other fraternal participants, its total
support for the fighters of the ANC in their
heroic struggle to ensure respect for the most
elementary human rights and for the establishment
of a democratic regime in the Republic of South
Africa. The complete liberation of Africa is a
prerequisite for its development. This is why
independent African States as a whole have
undertaken to make their contribution to the
complete decolonization of Africa. The
Organization of African Unity has since its
creation always provided a political framework
for this historic commitment. Most African
States, today Members of the United Nations,
derived the political strength necessary for
ensuring victory in their national liberation
struggles from the cardinal principles of the OAU
charter, which its members are determined to
respect scrupulously. This explains the
political, material and diplomatic support which
they have enjoyed from the States members of that
continental African organization. The present
difficulties facing the OAU derive from the
imperative need for all independent African
States to show by their actions the commitment
that they have entered into to struggle against
all forms of domination and to support the
struggle of all peoples for self determination
and independence. Guinea Bissau is in favour of
the emancipation of peoples and supports their
national liberation struggle because we intend to
remain faithful to the commitments we have freely
entered into, the very basis of the Organization
that we all belong to. The right of peoples to
self determination, recognized by the
international community as a whole, remains the
guiding principle of our foreign policy. In
recognizing the Sahraoui Arab Democratic Republic
and in supporting its legitimate struggle for the
recognition of its sovereignty, we are guided by
United Nations principles and decisions and
acting with the strictest respect for the ideals
of the founders of the OAU. The African peoples,
in their struggle to regain their rightful place
in the concert of nations and recognition of the
role they can play in international affairs, have
acquired the political maturity to settle their
own problems for themselves. In our view, the
current problems of the OAU are serious but not
insurmountable. The African States are aware of
the need to preserve their continental
organization, which, despite many obstacles, has
managed to deep its unitary character and to
mobilize its energies to achieve the noble
objectives of national liberation and of
development. We believe that with the good will
of all its members the OAU will be able to find a
solution to its current difficulties, a solution
that is based on the principles set forth in its
charter and takes into account the higher
interests of African peoples. I am convinced that
those principles will guide the efforts by the
OAU Mediation Committee to find a peaceful
solution to the disputes between some OAU
members. I should like to speak also about the
situation prevailing in the Horn of Africa, where
the OAU and the international community must take
urgent action to create a climate propitious to
negotiations between the parties to the conflict.
My country has always believed in negotiations as
a means to the peaceful settlement of disputes
between States. That is why we urge the
Governments of the Comoros and France to continue
their efforts to find a swift solution to the
problem of Mayotte and thus enable it to rejoin
the Comoros. Similarly, we support the efforts by
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to
ensure the peaceful reunification of the Korean
homeland and we call on the international
community to create a climate propitious to the
negotiations that are indispensable in that
regard. We have repeatedly expressed our deep
concern over the tragic situation in East Timor,
which was thoroughly analysed at the latest
summit meeting of Portuguese speaking heads of
State. We must note today that, despite the
commitments entered into by the United Nations to
restore the usurped rights of the Maubere people,
no progress has been made since the thirty sixth
session of the General Assembly. The Maubere
people continues to suffer from the horrors of
oppression and the annexation of their national
territory by the Indonesian occupying forces. The
Security Council, immediately following the
Indonesian aggression, unequivocally condemned
that action, which was contrary to the principles
set forth in the Charter and to the rules of
international law, and it remains seized of this
question, which can be solved only with strict
respect for the right of the Maubere people to
self determination and independence, in
accordance with General Assembly resolution 1514
(XV). Thus the Republic of Guinea Bissau welcomes
the statement by the Government of Portugal—the
administering Power of East Timor— that it will
do all it can to ensure that this objective is
achieved; indeed, the whole international
community should join in this. We reiterate our
unwavering solidarity with the Maubere people in
their just struggle, led by their vanguard
movement, FRETILIN, the Frente Revolucionario de
Timor Leste Independente. Despite renewed efforts
by the Secretary General and the international
community to find a negotiated settlement to the
problem of Cyprus, no real result has yet been
obtained. We therefore once again express our
concern over the persistence of this problem and
our hope that urgent action will be taken to
bring the positions closer together and to enable
the Greek and Turkish communities in Cyprus to
live together in peace, understanding and harmony
and to safeguard the independence, the
territorial integrity and the nonaligned
character of Cyprus. Nonalignment, as the
Assembly knows, is the comers tone of the foreign
policy of the Republic of Guinea Bissau. My
Government therefore supports the efforts of the
nonaligned movement to present its unity and
cohesion, the only way to ensure its ability to
take action to promote the maintenance of
national peace and security. We thus feel it
necessary, taking into account the particularly
serious international political situation today,
to reaffirm the fundamental principles of the
policy of nonalignment, especially the principles
of nonintervention and peaceful settlement of
disputes. In this context we therefore repeat our
appeal to our brothers in Iraq and the Islamic
Republic of Iran to find a negotiated settlement
to the dispute between them, in the interest of
their respective peoples, of the Organization of
the Islamic Conference, of the nonaligned
movement and of the international community as a
whole. The many conflicts and tensions that have
been mentioned here could certainly be avoided or
settled if the various members of the
international community implemented the
fundamental principles of noninterference in the
internal affairs of States, nonintervention and
peaceful settlement of disputes. The situation in
South East and South West Asia is of great
concern to Guinea Bissau. In our opinion it is
essential, in order to preserve peace and
stability in those regions, to begin a process of
negotiations where the spirit of understanding
and the interest of the peoples concerned prevail
and thus to create the atmosphere indispensable
to the exercise by each people of those regions
of the right freely to decide its future and to
safeguard its sovereignty and territorial
integrity, free from outside interference. In our
opinion, there should be the same approach to
international relations in regard to the
situation in Central America and the Caribbean.
The current crisis in international relations is
to a large extent the result of the continuing
atmosphere of distrust among States and the
frenzied arms race and its consequences and
logical implications, such as the increase in
militarized areas, in military bases, and in the
production and the acquisition of increasingly
sophisticated and destructive weapons. It is
clear that the final, comprehensive solution to
the problems of disarmament, enabling us to do
away with the serious threats hanging over the
world, cannot depend on only a few members of the
international community, however powerful they
may be economically and militarily on the world
scene. We believe, along with the overwhelming
majority of the international community, that the
desired solution can come only through concerted
action by all the countries of the world. The
worsening of the world economic crisis is the
logical result of structural disparities and of
the continuing inequality and inequity in
international economic relations. The spirit of
multilateral economic cooperation, which in the
first decades after the Second World War was one
of the great hopes of the international
community, and of the developing countries in
particular, is today seriously weakened. It is
clear that this tendency is contrary to the
objectives set forth in the Declaration and the
Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New
International Economic Order and in the
International Development Strategy for the Third
United Nations Development Decade his phenomenon
has serious consequences such as cronic deficits
in the balance of payments of the developing
countries and the continuing deterioration in
terms of trade. The limits and the difficulties
with regard access by third world countries to
international financial markets and to the
required technology, the increasing constraints
placed on financial and technical aid are
additional problems facing the developing
countries. The use of concepts such as
gradualism, selectivity and differentiation by
the developed countries in trade relations with
the developing ones constitutes an obstacle to
the promotion of the economic development of the
latter and further complicates the payment of
external debt servicing and the meeting of import
needs in food, energy and manufactured products.
In this context therefore there is an imperative
need, both for the developing countries and for
the industrialized countries, that the process of
global negotiations be made more dynamic. The
Republic of Guinea Bissau, which belongs to the
group of least developed countries, is not spared
the harmful effects of the present international
economic situation. The new policy of development
advocated by our Government is intended primarily
to reduce such effects by using all international
and external means available to promote the
development of all the economic sectors,
particularly agriculture, and to promote
diversification and an increase in production so
as to ensure food self sufficiency The imbalance
in Guinea Bissau's balance of payments, the
increase in its foreign debt, heavy inflation,
the consequences of the constant increase in the
price of manufactured goods and fuel, the fall in
the prices of its exports as a result of the
deterioration of the terms of trade and its
increased dependence on foreign aid are major
problems facing Guinea Bissau and they justify
the measures taken by the Government within its
national development strategy. In that framework,
a programme for economic and financial
stabilization has been drawn up, arrangements
also having been made for the holding of a
conference of prime lenders during the first half
of 1983 aimed at encouraging implementation of a
four year socioeconomic development plan. The
international community through its agencies and
instruments must shoulder its responsibilities
with regard to the deterioration in the world
economic situation and the constant increase in
inequalities between the developed and the
developing countries, in order to ensure the
enjoyment by all peoples of the right to
development. Interdependence among the nations of
the world makes this an important step, one
calling for the struggle of humanity as a whole
to preserve its common values. It is in that
context that we include the concept of mankind's
common heritage, developed during the Third
United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea,
and appreciate the adoption by a large majority
of the international community of the Convention
on the Law of the Sea which formally establishes
an international legal order and defines, among
others, the regime of the high seas, oceans and
sea beds. We hope that all countries will join in
the signing of the Convention when it is opened
for signature this year in Jamaica, thus
conferring upon that important legal instrument
its universal scope. These are the few points
that it wanted to make at this time. The agenda
shows once again, by the number and relevance of
its items, the gravity of the international
situation. I cannot mention every item. However,
the scope of the debate held since the beginning
of our deliberations clearly states the
determination of States Members of the United
Nations to help solve them all. The measures
advocated are many, as are the means available to
us to preserve international peace and security.
We must just work together to achieve results. In
addressing the Assembly every year, we bring with
us the determination of the Government of the
Republic of Guinea Bissau to work tirelessly to
seek solutions to the problems affecting
international relations. Thus, we should once
again like to express our firm conviction that
the survival and progress of humanity depend on
the efforts that the States Members of the United
Nations will make to implement the decisions
taken by the Organization and on their commitment
to respect the principles set forth in the
Charter to which they voluntarily subscribed.