The unanimous election of Mr. Hollai to the
presidency of the Assembly is a tribute to the
People's Republic of Hungary, a country with
which Madagascar is glad to have very cordial
relations based on our common aspiration to
social progress, and if I can speak as a former
colleague I must say that we also see in this
election recognition of his personal qualities
and his unceasing contributions to the
deliberations and work of the United Nations. To
his predecessor, Mr. Kittani, we would address
fraternal thanks for the exemplary and
responsible way in which he carried out his
mandate. It is also fitting for us again to
express the confidence of the Malagasy Government
in the Secretary General and to assure him of the
full cooperation of our delegation.
At the last session, when analyzing the
international situation, the Foreign Minister of
the Democratic Republic of Madagascar highlighted
three points: the failure of the system of
collective security drawn up in the Charter in
rather special circumstances; the widespread
insecurity in international relations; and the
need for a multilateral approach to both the
assessment and the solution of world problems.
That analysis is still valid today, particularly
now that we are so bitter and disconcerted to see
that despite the numerous meetings, the
succession of conferences and the numerous
consultations we still cannot manage to emerge
from the world political and economic crisis. How
could it be otherwise, when real or potential
conflicts are constantly on the increase, and
when, through neglect or of necessity or
inadvertently, the determination of priorities is
governed by one law only, the law of confusion,
and when we are virtually helpless in the face of
the return of the primacy of national interests?
The most pessimistic among us are quite willing
to say that we have tried all remedies, that
nothing can be done about this problem, that all
we can do is remain content with a short lived
respite from time to time. We are tempted to
agree with them, because the notions on which the
hopes of a just and equitable redefinition of
international relations were based have been
discarded. What happened to detente? What about
peaceful coexistence? Is it now obsolete? And
what happened to the right of peoples and nations
to independent development? Are we still bound by
international solidarity? The generous enthusiasm
of the 1970s is no longer with us, and we are
witnessing the erosion of the collective
responsibility necessary for vision and the
management of a world that obviously can no
longer be what it was 37 years ago.
The vast majority of the countries of the third
world were not present at the time of the
drafting of the Charter, the limits and even the
imperfections of which we recognize. But in
joining the Organization we were determined to
remain as faithful as possible to the precepts of
the Charter. In that respect we were idealists,
because, for example, we thought that by
brandishing the Charter we would be able to rid
the world of. But at the end of the twentieth
century Apartheid remains at the center of our
concerns. It is an inhuman and retrograde policy
if ever there was one. The racial segregation
practiced in South Africa is detrimental not only
to the dignity and well being of the non white
population of that country; it poisons the
political life of the continent as a whole, and
its persistence makes it impossible for us to
talk about true stability or peace in either the
short term or the long term.
The regime presupposes the use of force,
because no ethnic group can willingly submit to
domination and exploitation by another group. To
stay in power this regime has to ensure that its
victims will stop being inspired by the example
of the independent African countries. It has to
undermine and destroy the network of solidarity
which the South African liberation movement,
essentially the African National Congress, enjoys
or may enjoy beyond the frontiers of South
Africa. That is why the Pretoria authorities do
not hesitate to show their anti African nature
by increasing their acts of aggression,
interference and destabilization against their
immediate or more distant neighbors, in
particular those of southern and eastern Africa.
The sister Republic of Seychelles will take a
long time to recover economically from the
mercenary aggression of 25 November 1981 and to
regain the security it needs to press ahead with
its policies and the development that should be
promoted by enabling the Special Fund set up
under resolution 3202 to become operational.
The racist regime sends into action mercenaries
and bandits, which it trains, finances, leads and
commands, in order to challenge the socialist
course followed by Mozambique.
Angola, which has suffered several acts of
aggression since independence in 1975, has had
part of its territory occupied for more than a
year by South African troops; its airspace is
constantly violated, and its civilian population
and installations are constantly at the mercy of
bombardments and airborne troops.
Was that provided for in the Charter? Is it
tolerable? The only answer can be no, but when we
Africans who are in our flesh and in our dignity
victims of the system of Apartheid and the
extortion that accompanies it ask for sanctions
against Pretoria or compliance with and the
strengthening of the arms embargo decreed by the
Security Council, all we get is unwillingness to
act and vetoes.
In Namibia, which South Africa still considers to
be one of its provinces, Pretoria has done
nothing to break the infernal cycle of injustice,
turmoil and repression through voluntary
renunciation of a policy that is constantly
challenged. Instead, the racist regime continues
to rely on force to suppress or at least to
thwart the desire for emancipation of those who
disagree with it and continues to maintain the
illegal occupation of the Territory.
It is regrettable that certain circles,
disregarding this aspect, refuse to recognize
SWAPO as the authentic and sole representative of
the Namibian people and continue to treat it as a
terrorist organization, showing a lack of
sensitivity towards the large scale physical
liquidation of SWAPO militants. Those same
circles have been the most zealous advocates of
the need to shore up confidence in the racist
regime and to keep it secure, as if injustice and
illegal occupation needed comfort or
consolidation.
Recently those same circles have not hesitated to
go beyond South African requests by reimposing a
conditional link between the independence of
Namibia and the withdrawal of the Cuban
internationalist troops that are in Angola at the
request of the Angolan Government. Leaving aside
the fact that this would constitute a flagrant
intervention in the internal affairs of a
sovereign independent State, this proposed link
is truly surprising. It seems to be forgotten
that it was South Africa that committed
aggression against Angola and not the other way
round. Now it is South Africa that needs to be
protected against the combined forces of Angola
and Cuba. Instead of internationalist or why not
multinational troops being brought in to provide
protection for that country, those that are there
are being asked to leave.
For this reason we support the terms of the
communique of the summit meeting of the front
line States held in Lusaka on 4 September 1982.
Reaffirming that Security Council resolutions 386
(1976) and 435 (1978) are the sole valid basis
for a negotiated settlement of the Namibian
question, we subscribe to the position of the non
aligned countries that the United Nations has the
prime responsibility for the solution of this
question, with a view to the rapid transition of
the Territory to independence. If that
independence is further delayed, the Organization
should shoulder its responsibility and proclaim
Namibia independent, with all the consequences
which that might have, particularly for South
Africa, whose rights in the matter we challenge,
for the Member States, which cannot with impunity
abandon the Namibians to their fate and, lastly,
for the Organization itself, one of whose primary
objectives is after all the liberation of peoples.
The unanimity of the African States on the
political liberation of Africa, particularly of
its southern part, we should have liked to see
manifested in a positive manner in respect of
Western Sahara. For us, the admission of the
Sahraoui Arab Democratic Republic as the fifty
first member of the Organization of African Unity
is irreversible because it represents an
important stage in the struggle of the Sahraoui
people to put an end to the Moroccan occupation,
which we continue to denounce, and to enjoy fully
independence, sovereignty and their inalienable
national rights. Last year, in Nairobi, at the
eighteenth session of the Assembly of Heads of
State and Government of the OAU, a consensus
emerged ' in respect of the framework in which
the exercise of those rights could take place and
no divergence of views manifested itself as to
the need for a ceasefire and negotiations between
the parties to the conflict, which in our opinion
can only be Morocco and POLISARIO,
The crisis experienced by the OAU does not date
from the admission of the Sahraoui Arab
Democratic Republic to that organization but it
is evident that
its solution depends to a great extent on the
commencement and successful outcome of
negotiations on Western Sahara. The error in this
matter, if there has been an error, does not lie
in the existence of divergent views, but may
derive from the belief that unity can be achieved
at any price and on any conditions. The African
determination to overcome this crisis is still as
firm as ever and we shall achieve our aims and be
even more strengthened in our principles and
convictions, if only to confound those who have
counted on a temporarily disunited Africa in
order to promote certain interests which will
never be ours.
On the Middle East, there are those who would
like to calm our apprehensions by suggesting that
the recent Israeli aggression against Lebanon and
the Palestinian people ended in political defeat.
In Israel itself something seems to have changed,
something resembling the qualms of a conscience
which had long been accustomed to accept the
double talk of the Government; while among the
most fervent defenders of the Zionist regime
there are those who complain they have been led
astray by Begin and Sharon and now seem to
recognize the dangers of unconditional support
for Israel and the virtues of a more critical and
objective attitude to its crimes.
Although salutary those reactions have come
rather late and we cannot forget what a great
price has been paid by the Palestinian people in
order to bring about these modest movements in
public opinion. Israel is now its own rejection
front. It is the only country which has rejected
in tum the United Nations plan, the Fahd plan,
the Reagan plan, the Brezhnev plan and the Fez
plan. In its isolation, and even though it is in
the wrong, none the less Israel in fact, however
wrongly, holds positions of strength which enable
it to veto any proposed solution. Its supplies of
weapons, munitions and military hardware continue
to be assured. It occupies Jerusalem, Lebanon and
the Golan Heights. The West Bank and the Gaza
Strip are under relentless control. The
settlements are solidly established and do not
seem to be threatened. The liquidation of the
Palestinian resistance continues, with the use of
methods the horror of which transcends
imagination, including as they do genocide.
In this connection the President of my country
wrote as follows in a message to the Secretary
General dated 19 September: from now on, the word
genocide will bring to mind not Oradour, but
Beirut... the holocaust, the concentration camps
and systematic massacres at Dachau and Buchenwald
are eclipsed, as we near the end of the twentieth
century, by the final solution perpetrated by
Beginís and Sharon's executioners. Now, after the
genocide in west Beirut, we feel bound to declare
to the world that verbal condemnations and United
Nations resolutions are no longer enough but that
it is time for action. I therefore have the honor
to request you: To call upon all the great Powers
to impose an economic, commercial, diplomatic and
military embargo on Begin's Fascist and extremist
Israel; in particular, that the great Powers
which boycotted Argentina at the time of the
Malvinas affair should desist immediately from
supplying Israel with arms, munitions and
petroleum. To consider the possibility of
organizing an international tribunal along the
lines of the Nuremberg Tribunal against the
Israeli Fascist war criminals and their Lebanese
accomplices. To demand the immediate and
unconditional withdrawal of Israeli troops from
Lebanon. It is high time for a review of history,
geography and frontiers in this explosive region
of the world and to give the martyred Palestinian
people a State, a homeland, a nation of their
own. In the absence of urgent, concrete and
decisive action, we greatly fear that the peace
of the whole world will be very seriously
threatened. In another part of the world a
deplorable conflict has been taking place for
more than two years between two countries which,
like my country, belong to the non aligned
movement. We have no more ardent desire than to
see the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq resolve
their conflict in a peaceful manner, bringing the
hostilities to an end as soon as possible,
because their own interests and the interests of
the rest of the world are at stake. En this
respect we are encouraged to see that, within the
framework of the current meeting of Foreign
Ministers of non aligned countries, the two
parties have agreed to accept a consensus text
reaffirming the principles of the movement and
those of the Charter, principles which can and
must serve to bring about a just and lasting
settlement of this dispute. The armed conflict
which broke out this spring in respect of the
Malvinas was a source of great consternation to
the world because of its intensity and its
ramifications, involving regional alliances. Was
this confrontation inevitable, once the
negotiations between Argentina and the United
Kingdom had remained too long in a state of
uncertainty? As the General Assembly now intends
to invite the parties to resume their talks, it
is important in our opinion to learn from the
past, and in particular from the recent past. We
may wonder, among other things, whether the idea
of self determination should constitute a
relevant factor in these negotiations. Just as
the Jewish settlers living in the settlements set
up by Israel do not acquire the right to take
part in a referendum on self determination
concerning the future of the occupied Arab and
Palestinian territories, so in the same way the
personnel transferred by the Falkland Islands
Company for the purposes of the colonial
exploitation of the islands cannot determine by
their vote the question of sovereignty over those
islands.
Although it is not on the agenda, the question of
Korea is none the less of concern to Member
States. We do not believe that the solution lies
in the endorsement of the division of the country
and the admission of two Korean entities into the
Organization. How will that resolve the problems
posed by the abuse of the United Nations flag and
the introduction of atomic weapons into the
peninsula? Direct negotiations between the two
parties is inevitable if there is a real desire
to make progress towards the settlement of this
crisis and they are all the more called for since
the joint communique of 4 July 1972 has defined
the basis for negotiations. We would add only
that the principles of that communique are in no
way incompatible with the establishment of the
great Koryo confederation which we very much look
forward to.
Other hotbeds of tension exist in Asia, Central
America and the Caribbean and we are concerned by
them because they do violence to the principles
which we cherish, particularly the right to self
determination, respect for sovereignty,
independence and territorial integrity of States,
the right of peoples to choose freely without
interference of any kind their political, social
and economic regime, and the right of nations to
preserve by all possible means the gains of their
revolution. We will not repeat our position,
which is constant and well known. We wish to
assure our friends and comrades from those
regions that our solidarity is with them, as it
is with all the victims of destabilization,
injustice and imperia list domination.
Before proceeding to consider the world economic
situation, I should like fairly briefly to touch
upon disarmament. At the second special session
of the General Assembly devoted to disarmament,
we tried to maintain the impetus of the first
special session and despite some rather
unfavorable factors we felt that the time had
come to promote further a multilateral approach
to disarmament, particularly in view of the risks
attendant upon the bilateral negotiations. We did
not succeed in our aims, but this is no reason
for us to abandon the comprehensive programme for
disarmament, the complete prohibition of nuclear
weapons tests, the control of strategic nuclear
weapons, or the strengthening of the nuclear non
proliferation regime, particularly as regards
negative security guarantees.
We still believe that the two approaches,
bilateral and multilateral, strengthen and
complement each other, particularly in the case
of nuclear weapon free zones, zones where the
limitation of conventional weapons is envisaged,
and zones of peace such as the Indian Ocean,
which, for our own security and for the sake
world peace, should become a demilitarized,
denuclearized zone. On this matter the proposals
of the non aligned countries are blocked, but an
Indian Ocean treaty remains our final objective
and we once again urge the great Powers to reduce
their military presence in the Indian Ocean area
as a first step towards the eventual elimination
of the great Power presence and the
implementation of the Declaration of the Indian
Ocean as a Zone of Peace. Such was the unanimous
position of the non aligned countries at the
ministerial meeting of their Coordinating Bureau
at Havana last June. I should now like to refer
to the economic situation and first to point out
that the deterioration of the situation, which is
a manifestation of a structural crisis, has
become one of the most serious political problems
of our age, since it is a potential source of
instability and insecurity for all countries,
both the developing countries, which already have
negative growth rates, and the developed
countries, where the recession is continually
getting worse and unemployment rates have become
uncontrollable The crisis is widespread: it is
global and it will remain with us for a long time
because of the deterioration of the international
economic climate and the emergence of trends
which are not favorable to integrated development
based on solidarity.
Although the consequences of the crisis have been
felt grievously by the international community as
a whole, its bad effects have hit much harder at
the developing countries. The repercussions of
this are manifold, but some of them need to be
emphasized. The developing countries have a large
trade deficit, mainly due to unequal terms of
trade and stagnant production. Despite their
producers' associations, they have no control
over commodity prices on international markets,
or over the rising prices of capital goods; they
are therefore subjected to inflated import prices
and reductions in the prices of their exports,
which lead in turn to a net reduction in
investment, forcing them to sacrifice part of
their development programme.
The deficit in their balance of payments,
resulting from the increase in their financial
obligations in the private capital markets and
the high level of interest rates have led to an
unprecedented increase in the external debt of
those countries, to about $540 billion at the end
of 1981. The servicing of that debt alone absorbs
an average of 25 per cent in some cases over 40
per cent of their export earnings.
Moreover, in the field of multilateral
cooperation, despite the encouraging indications,
official assistance for development is slowing
down. The financing of the programmes and funds
of the UnitedNations system is becoming more and
more uncertain, while support for multilateral
financial institutions is crumbling and the
massive transfer of resources remains illusory.
In the quest for solutions to these problems, we
should like simply to take up again the following
points which have already been discussed many
times by the States members of the Group of 77.
First, interdependent economic relations as they
are in the present day world are still unbalanced
and reflect inequalities of development. The aim
can no longer be the recovery of the world
economy on the basis of an undifferentiated
process of growth; there must be development of
the countries of the third world fully in keeping
with their options.
Secondly, the problems posed by world trade, the
financing of development and the international
monetary system require concerted action and
cannot be dealt with without a recognition of the
harmful effects of certain national policies on
the world economy, and particularly the economy
of the developing countries. We have not
adequately grasped these effects because of the
distance between the decision making centers;
that is why we consider it essential that the
sixth session of UNCTAD should provide Member
States with an opportunity to deal in an
integrated manner with development issues.
Finally, the third aspect of joint endeavor is
required to restore an economic environment
favorable to development and the recovery of the
world economy, with due regard for the objectives
of the new international economic order. These
few considerations confirm the value of global
negotiations and we look forward to seeing these
negotiations open as soon as possible. Desirous
of being considered as equal partners in the
reform of international economic relations, the
third world countries have proposed an agenda and
a procedure for these negotiations which reflect
their belief that equity and justice alone can
assure a reorganization of relations governing
countries which have long been categorized on the
basis of an incorrect understanding of the
international division of labor. At the beginning
of my statement, I referred to the erosion of
collective responsibility which is not only due
to the fact that each one of us wishes to propose
or, in the worst of situations, to impose its own
solution. In this respect we must first of all
revitalize and strengthen what should properly be
called the pillars of the Organization, that is
to say, all the organs or machinery for
consultation and decision making at the regional
and intergovernmental levels, taking care,
however, to avoid further polarizing positions,
and adopting convergent approaches in the
interest of security for all in all spheres. The
solution of conflicts will thus be made easier
and one can even hope that conflicts will even be
avoided. This requires, however, that we examine
our priorities in the light of the permanent
interdependence of problems which will continue
to confront a world of increasing solidarity. In
our view, it is not too late to check
confrontation hither between East and West, North
and South or even between countries of the South
in order to make mutual recognition of interests
the comer stone of cooperation and coexistence.
In short, as Members of the Organization we must,
in facing the crises before us, be open minded
and positive, resist temptations towards
fragmentation and maintain the common principles
to which we have freely consented, without
allowing ourselves to have recourse to expedients
in the name of pragmatism and acceptance of
reality. It is in this context that we have
studied the Secretary General's report on the
work of the Organization with the greatest
interest. Our concerns are very much his own,
and, since the Organization is not just the
symbol of collective responsibility but also the
most appropriate framework for its implementation
and further development, we can but rejoice if
the indications given by the Secretary General in
his report are followed up by deeds, particularly
by the permanent members of the SecurityCouncil.
This would put to an end the continual challenge
to the authority and functioning of the
Organization. To take up this challenge is also
one of the reasons and not the least for our
participating in this general debate. For our
part, we renew our whole hearted commitment to do
our utmost in this respect and in the cause of
peace.