236 Sir, I should like first of all to
congratulate you and the noble country you
represent on the occasion of your well-deserved
election as President of this thirty-seventh
session of the General Assembly. We are certain
that, given your diplomatic skill, wisdom and
even-handedness, you will provide excellent
leadership for the work before us. Also, we wish
to congratulate Mr. Kittani for the skill and
tact with which he presided over the tasks of the
sessions of the General Assembly held throughout
this particularly difficult year. We extend
special recognition to the Secretary-General for
his outstanding efforts in the short, yet
troubled, period in which he has held his post.
237. In this general discussion, it is
customary to review the most important
developments on the international scene. Year
after year, we deplore—almost ritualistically—new
and old problems that threaten international
peace and security. But this year, a new and
exceedingly grave threat has aggravated the
situation. I refer specifically to the threat to
world peace and security represented by the
fatalistic resignation by ever-growing numbers of
people and, in particular, by Governments, in the
face of genocide, hunger and misery, and even in
the face of the possibility of a nuclear
holocaust.
238. Confronted with the most tense and
fragile international situation since 1945, at
this session the General Assembly is called upon
to reflect most profoundly. The persistence of
old sources of tension and the emergence of new
ones, in addition to symptoms that the current
structures for maintaining stability are becoming
worn out, lead us to the inescapable conclusion
that the pre-conditions for peace do not exist.
Indeed, there can be no peace if the vast
majority of the inhabitants of this planet are
without bread, education, decent housing,
security and political rights. There can be no
peace without justice. There can be no peace
while certain countries cling to outmoded systems
of domination and dependence and stubbornly
endeavour to prevent third world countries at all
costs from adopting measures they consider
imperative and necessary to overcome
underdevelopment and want in the exercise of
their right to self-determination and
independence. Peace is impossible, so long as the
powerful maintain their arrogant stance of
demanding that developing countries act in
accordance with imperial interests and in
detriment to the interests of their own peoples.
239. How can there be peace when 40 per cent
of the third world population is denied the right
to read and write? How can there be peace when
the vast majority of mankind is struggling to
overcome hunger and misery t while a tiny
minority invests enormous resources in weapons to
be used against those demanding justice?
240. How can we not acknowledge that we are
facing the most serious economic crisis since the
great depression of the 1930s, with world per
capita income not making the slightest advance
since 1981 and with the prospect of a decline in
1982? How can there be peace while countries and
entire continents are fighting not simply for
economic growth but for mere survival? Our
countries are calling for a new economic order
wherein the developed countries do not correct
their own problems of stagnation, inflation and
unemployment at the expense of the developing
world.
241. In this setting Latin America has felt
the need to lay the groundwork for a strategy for
independence and security. At the eighth regular
meeting of the Council of the Latin American
Economic System, held this past August in
Caracas, our countries reasserted the sovereign
right of all nations to adopt their own path in
the economic, social and political fields in
peace and free from pressure, aggression and
external threats.
242. In Managua, the seventeenth Regional
Conference for Latin America of FAO also urged
the creation of security machinery in terms of
foodstuffs in order to decrease the vulnerability
of Latin American and Caribbean nations with
regard to one or several industrialized
countries. And, in Toronto, on the occasion of
the Joint Meeting of the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank, our country, on behalf
of Latin America, the Philippines and Spain,
voiced its opposition to intervention by certain
institutions in the system of economic
organization of countries in need of assistance.
Warning was given of the dangers involved in the
setting of more and more conditions, in the
rising cost of credit and in the threat contained
in the questioning of the very importance of
international co-operation.
243. With regard to international
co-operation, we wish to go on record as voicing
concern at the tendency of some developed
countries not to abide by the commitments that
they have undertaken vis-a-vis UNDP, thus making
the progress of important projects already under
way much more difficult.
244. Just as indicative of the current
indifference to mankind's vital interests is the
impudence of those that try to hide the
consequences of nuclear conflict. Illogically,
they try to make us believe that such a conflict
could be confined to a given geographical area.
It has reached the point where the world's most
formidable military Power is proclaiming that
there are issues more important than peace and
that force is a legitimate instrument in
attaining its objectives of domination and
political hegemony.
245. This reckless policy of the current
United States Administration has made its own
citizens and the peoples of the world contemplate
the danger of a nuclear confrontation. In this
context, it should not surprise us that the
anti-nuclear movement has attained such massive
and broad dimensions—even in the United States
itself—although this outcry, as has unfortunately
become the rule, is not reflected in decisions of
Governments, as evidenced by the paltry results
of the recent second special session devoted to
disarmament.
246. Just a few months ago Latin America
suffered colonialist military aggression by an
extra-continental Power, which threatens the
territorial integrity and sovereignty of a sister
nation. We refer, of course, to the British
invasion of the Malvinas Islands, the true origin
of which can be found in the United Kingdom's
stubborn attempt to perpetuate an anachronistic
colonial situation on our continent. The
aggression against the Republic of Argentina was
possible only thanks to the military, economic
and political support that the United States
supplied to the aggressor nation—support which
astonished Latin Americans, support that unmasked
the United States conception of the reciprocal
defence treaties and the true motives that led
the United States to sign them.
247. In numerous General Assembly resolutions
and resolutions of other United Nations bodies it
has been said in clear-cut terms that the
Malvinas issue is a colonial one that must be
resolved. Twenty Latin American foreign ministers
requested that this situation be discussed at
this session of the Assembly, because they wanted
to make it absolutely clear that the cause of the
Malvinas Islands is also the cause of Latin
America, and that a resumption of negotiations
leading to a peaceful resolution of the conflict
on the basis of United Nations resolutions is
imperative.
248. The principle of solidarity compels us to
unite with our African brothers and sisters in
the defence of Namibia's right to independence.
We reject all the manoeuvres aimed at creating a
puppet Government in Namibia. We demand full
implementation of Security Council resolution 435
(1978) and the recognition of SWAPO as the sole
legitimate representative of the heroic people of
Namibia. We denounce the campaign launched by the
Reagan Administration to deprive Angola of its
inalienable right of self-defence and to the
assistance it needs to repel South Africa's
attacks. We are certain that neither this policy
of Mack-mail nor the stationing of thousands of
racist troops along Angola's frontier, nor the
attempts to destabilize the front-line States,
especially Mozambique, nor the use of mercenaries
to overthrow Governments, as happened in
Seychelles, can weaken the clear determination of
those peoples to defend their sovereignty and to
ensure sovereignty for Namibia.
249. We condemn the aggressive policy of the
racist regime of South Africa against
neighbouring States, a policy which is the
logical outgrowth of its own criminal apartheid
system. We reaffirm what our non-aligned movement
has stated on numerous occasions, namely, that
there can be no peace, stability and security in
southern Africa until the oppressive and illegal
apartheid regime is totally eradicated. We are as
one in solidarity with the labour leaders
imprisoned and condemned to death by the
diabolical racist regime, in flagrant violation
of the most elementary human rights. The United
Nations must step up its campaign to prevent them
from being executed and to win their release.
250. The entire world has witnessed the brutal
aggression of which the Republic of Lebanon has
been the victim, and in which atrocities
comparable only to the "final solution" policy
pursued by the Nazi regime were committed. It is
appropriate to recall, in such circumstances,
that Hitler's Germany started that catastrophe
with its policy of territorial expansionism,
which was followed by the mass extermination of
human beings, and that one of its principal
victims was the Jewish people itself. Today, to
the world's consternation, the leaders of those
who survived genocide and the concentration camps
are to be found promoting acts of genocide and
building concentration camps with the objective
of exterminating the heroic Palestinian people.
25l. The horrors which have occurred in the
Palestinian refugee camps, the indiscriminate
massacring of the civilian population of Beirut
and the denial of people's most elementary legal
rights led the Government Junta of National
Reconstruction of Nicaragua to break the only
remaining link we still had with Israel, that is,
the fiction of diplomatic relations, all genuine
ties having been severed upon the triumph of our
Revolution. It was the least Nicaragua could do
to express its categorical repudiation and total
non-recognition of the Zionist regime and at the
same time its militant support for the
Palestinian combatants and their sole legitimate
representative, the PLO, and the long-suffering
people of Lebanon.
252. We feel it necessary to denounce,
moreover, the open complicity of a great Power in
the barbarism unleashed by the Zionist forces in
Lebanon. That Power gave the Zionist regime its
full political, military and economic support,
thus ensuring that the crimes committed would go
unpunished and, which is even more shameful,
systematically blocked the Security Council's
efforts to restore peace, proclaiming that it
alone was capable of controlling the monster
which it had itself encouraged and which it had
always defended.
253. Those events demonstrate clearly that the
problem of the Middle East can be resolved only
by recognizing the inalienable rights of the
Palestinian people, including the right to
self-determination, to return to their homeland
and to set up their own State. The international
community must step up its efforts to prevent the
policy of force and occupation practised by
Israel from prevailing in that area of the world,
a policy which could have the fatal corollary of
the physical extermination of the Palestinian
people. Equally evident is the fact that the
Middle East crisis will be capable of solution
only when the United States abandons its policy
of protecting those guilty of crime, terrorism
and genocide and stops thwarting United Nations
efforts, in particular those of the
Secretary-General and the Security Council, to
carry out the mandate set forth in the Charter.
254. Speaking as a member of the non-aligned
movement and as a revolutionary nation, we wish
to voice our solidarity with all the countries
and peoples fighting to win or to preserve their
independence: with the people of Cyprus, seeking
to exercise their right to defend the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of the nation; with
Grenada and the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, defending
their sovereignty against imperialism; with the
sister Republic of Cuba demanding the return of
illegally occupied Guantanamo —and we condemn in
the strongest possible terms the blockade and
constant threats against that country. We join
the brother people and Government of Panama in
their just demand that the Torrijos-Carter
treaties be implemented.
255. We rejoice with the people of Bolivia
over their nation's return to legality and
democracy. We extend our solidarity to the people
of Puerto Rico and support their right to
independence and self-determination in accordance
with General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV),
recalling the fact that the problem facing the
Puerto Rican people but that it is, rather, a
matter that concerns Latin America, to which
Puerto Rico is an undeniable part. We support the
Korean people's just struggle for the peaceful
and democratic reunification of their nation free
from foreign intervention.
256. Nicaragua reaffirms its support of the
appeal issued by the non-aligned movement with
regard to Western Sahara for the parties
concerned to enter into negotiations immediately
in order to reach a just and lasting
solution—that conflict in keeping with the
provisions of resolution 1514 (XV) and the
principles of our movement, with the decisions
adopted by the OAU and with the principles of the
Charter.
257. We welcome the efforts made by the States
of South-East Asia to begin a dialogue leading to
the re-establishment of peace and stability in
that region. We welcome as well the positions and
appeals with regard to South-West Asia adopted by
the non-aligned movement at the Conference of
Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Non-Aligned
Countries at New Delhi.
258. The worsening of the international
situation cannot be separated from the grave
crisis affecting the Organization. That is why we
welcome the frankness with which the
Secretary-General in his report on the work of
the Organization acknowledges that the United
Nations is being ignored by some countries, and
we support the recommendations he makes aimed at
strengthening the Organization and, in
particular, at strengthening the authority of the
Security Council to prevent conflicts and
revitalize the system of international security.
In this connection, it is worth stressing that
the use of the veto to thwart the condemnation of
terror, aggression and genocide must no longer be
tolerated, so that being in Washington's good
graces is not interpreted as a green light to
violate the fundamental principles of the Charter
and the most basic norms of law.
259. It should be a matter of profound concern
to the international community that a permanent
member of the Security Council tends to turn
increasingly to the veto in detriment to the just
proposals for peace advanced, with a lofty sense
of responsibility, by Governments in the most
troubled regions of the world. In specific terms,
we wish to refer to the Reagan Administration's
decision to veto the draft resolution regarding
Central America submitted by Panama and Guyana on
2 April of this year, a draft resolution that
confined itself simply to reaffirming the
illegality of the use of force or the threat of
force in relations between States and that called
for dialogue between all parties concerned.
260. Nicaragua believes there is no
justification whatsoever for the Reagan
Administration's attitude towards our country and
the Central American region. We deem it absurd to
portray us as a threat to the United States for
having chosen, in the exercise of our sovereign
rights, an independent political path within the
framework of the most scrupulous non-alignment.
It is even more absurd to try to blame Nicaragua
for all the problems Central American countries
are enduring, problems whose origins and true
causes can be found solely and exclusively in the
constant postponement of appropriate solutions.
This is a situation the peoples of Central
America seem unwilling to go on tolerating
indefinitely, despite the fact that the United
States continues to oppose any changes that might
result in greater independence for the States of
Central America.
261. We have stressed—and we do so here once
again—that the Nicaraguan Government genuinely
desires an understanding with the United States
that would make it possible substantially to
improve the relations between our two States on
the basis of mutual respect, non-intervention in
internal affairs and, above all, on the basis of
sovereign equality, independence and
self-determination—principles that constitute the
foundation of peace and stability in the world
and that are found throughout the Charter.
262. Guided by our unshakeable devotion to
peace, we have presented to the Reagan
Administration a number of different approaches
for initiating dialogue, reiterating time and
again our invitation to hold high-level meetings
between representatives of our States in the hope
of avoiding the putting into effect of the
threats of the use offence against Nicaragua.
263. Unfortunately, the response of the United
States Government to date has been to attempt to
impose upon us its rigid East-West outlook, a
combination of economic pressures, accusations
and threats culminating in the financing of
covert destabilizing activities and the open use
of its territory for the training of
counter-revolutionary forces and for the
preparation of actions of a criminal nature
against Nicaragua. The financial and
organizational assistance the Reagan
Administration is lending the enemies of our
people has led to an increase in terrorist acts
and armed assaults on our national territory and
to a substantial increase in the weaponry,
personnel and organization provided to the
counter-revolutionary forces. Those forces have
been supplied with sophisticated means of warfare
used solely by professional armies—such as those
found in the wake of the evidenced blowing up and
sabotaging of two strategic bridges near the
border with Honduras and as evidenced by the use
of armed aircraft in attempts to destroy our only
oil refinery and the fuel stores located at the
port of Corinto on the Pacific coast. To round
out this distressing picture, we cannot avoid
mentioning the presence of United States warships
in our territorial waters, the overflights of spy
planes and the holding of joint military
manoeuvres with the Honduran army near our
borders.
264. Guided by our firm determination to
consolidate peace in our region, our Government
has taken part in and promoted the search for
solutions which would permit an understanding
among the Central American countries, to which we
are united by bonds so strong that no foreign
Power, no matter how powerful it may be, could
ever permanently impair them.
265. In this regard I should like to recall
the far-reaching importance which the meeting of
foreign ministers, held in San Jose, Costa Rica,
on 14 and 15 March 1980, had for Central American
unity. As the Declaration adopted at the meeting
puts it, it was motivated by the conviction that
direct and frank dialogue between the countries
of the Central American isthmus was the best way
to review the regional situation in the
political, economic and social fields, as the
most appropriate means of adopting positions to
benefit the peoples of Central America. The first
point in the 1980 San Jose Declaration affirms
that the peaceful and harmonious coexistence of
the States in the region requires respect for the
different political systems, for the right to
self-determination and the right to resolve
internal affairs in accordance with each nation's
historical development.
266. Another important agreement adopted at
that meeting was the inclusion of the sister
republic of Panama as an integral part of Central
America, along with the institutionalization of
the meetings of the Foreign Ministers of the
area, which are to be held regularly three times
a year.
267. More recently, during my visit to
Tegucigalpa in April of this year the Honduran
Minister for External Relations, Edgardo Paz
Barnica, informed me that he would immediately
call a meeting of the foreign ministers of the
region—an initiative which Nicaragua welcomed
without delay or reservations. I committed myself
to attending, and to supporting the inclusion in
the agenda of that meeting of the six points
contained in a peace proposal which the Foreign
Minister of Honduras said he wanted to submit for
consideration to the foreign ministers of
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua,
Costa Rica and Panama.
268. Surprisingly, six months after our
conversation —in other words, in this month of
October—bypassing the still-valid agreements of
the Declaration of Central American Foreign
Ministers of 1980, another meeting of Foreign
Ministers was called, also in Costa Rica,
promoted by the United States, from which certain
Central American States were excluded. This
exclusion violated the agreements adopted
previously by the region's Foreign Ministers,
hence this meeting can be regarded only as an
unimportant and marginal event in terms of its
content, and as going against our peoples'
genuine interests of peace, stability and
development.
269. Central America, for the reasons we have
already outlined, finds itself in the midst of
great political upheavals, exacerbated by grave
economic problems. Nevertheless, as pointed out
in the joint letter sent by the Presidents of
Mexico and Venezuela to the Co-ordinator of the
Nicaraguan Government Junta of National
Reconstruction, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, and to
the President of Honduras, Roberto Suazo Cordoba,
it is undeniable that the most critical situation
facing the region the most serious problem, is
the dangerous deterioration of relations between
Honduras and Nicaragua, which could result in a
conflict of unforeseeable proportions.
270. The attitude adopted by the United States
Government, which must be denounced, has
decisively influenced powerful sectors of the
Honduran army, which are providing ample
assistance to the counterrevolutionary forces,
permitting the use of Honduran territory as a
base for military operations to attack towns and
posts along the Nicaraguan border, as well as the
supply of weapons, infrastructure, and logistical
support, tolerating the provocations and attacks
by soldiers of that country's army, and are even
going so far as to sign specific agreements with
the United States on the basis of which the
United States Government has increased its
military aid to Honduras, financing the
reconstruction of airports and military bases,
multiplying the number of its advisers, and
reserving the right to use these and other bases
and military infrastructure in Honduras. It is
obvious that this policy is giving rise to a
dangerous spiral of war in Central America. It
encourages the most aggressive sectors of
Honduras and other countries of the region, who
recklessly brag in public about their military
ability to defeat Nicaragua and openly call for
foreign intervention against our country,
271. These military preparations, which amount
to a prelude to the much-advertised assault on
Nicaragua, were recently denounced by the former
Commander of the Honduran Public Security Force,
Colonel Leonidas Torres Arias, and this week by
the Mayor of Puerto Lempira, Marcial Colemann,
who told news agencies that an unprecedented
invasion of Nicaragua was approaching and that
Puerto Lempira, his own city, would be the
organizational centre for the invasion. He
reported that the counter-revolutionaries there
were being supplied by a Hercules aircraft of the
United States Air Force. He also stated that
there was a warehouse in Puerto Lempira which was
full of weapons that local residents could see,
and that there was evidence of
counter-revolutionary camps from which a silent
invasion of our country had already begun.
272. Notwithstanding these irrefutable facts,
an elaborate diplomatic and propaganda campaign
is under way to defame Nicaragua and portray us
as a country opposed to all dialogue, when the
truth is that it is the people of Nicaragua who
are being attacked and it is Honduras that
systematically refuses to take part in a dialogue
at the highest level to find solutions to
bilateral problems. It is possible that this
reluctance stems from a recognition of the fact
that our problems with Honduras—a brother nation
with which we have close-knit ties—are really
problems with the United States, since the Reagan
Administration conscious of how absurd and
counter-productive a direct confrontation with
Nicaragua would be—the United States so big and
we so small—has chosen Honduras as the ideal
country from which to attack us with the foolish
aim of destabilizing us and overthrowing our
Government. It forgets that this objective is
impossible to attain in the light of our people's
monolithic unity and our determination to defend
and consolidate the achievements we have gained
at such a high cost.
273. From September of last year to September
of this year our country has endured
approximately 143 attacks from Honduras. We have
detected some 23 infiltrations of
counter-revolutionary military groups and units.
There have been 10 violations of and incidents in
our territorial waters. A11 of that has left a
painful toll of more than 150 Nicaraguans killed,
30 missing and incalculable material damage,
which forced our Government at one point to
evacuate the civilian population in the frontier
region, which had become a veritable
scorched-earth battlefield.
274. Within the framework of its many peace
initiatives, Nicaragua promoted the meeting
between the heads of State of Honduras and
Nicaragua, at the El Guasaule border post on 13
May we have repeatedly requested a meeting
between the army leaders of both States,
something agreed Co at El Guasaule; this past
April I travelled to Tegucigalpa to talk with the
Foreign Minister, Mr. Paz Barnica and present him
with a seven-point peace plan, later rejected by
Honduras down to the last detail; we worked for
the meeting between the chiefs of staff of the
respective armed forces, held this past May at
the La Fraternidad border post—as a result of the
agreements obtained at the La Fraternidad
meeting, the only meeting that has actually been
held was between the heads of the naval forces of
our countries in the port of Corinto.
275. The rapid deterioration of the situation
along the border and the systematic refusal of
Honduras to offer the viable solutions urgently
needed in accordance with the existing situation
led Nicaragua to make yet another effort and on 6
August we extended an invitation to the President
of Honduras to meet in Managua with the
Co-ordinator of the Government Junta of National
Reconstruction of Nicaragua. It was made known
unofficially that such a meeting would require a
prior meeting of Foreign Ministers. On 24 August
I sent an invitation to the Honduran Minister for
External Relations for us to meet in Managua in
early September, an invitation I renewed on 4
October, asking him to set the date. The Honduran
response to both invitations was that an
excessive work-load made any commitments
impossible now. Under these circumstances, the
Governments of Mexico and Venezuela launched
their very worthwhile peace initiative, which
Nicaragua immediately welcomed and which we were
most pleased to accept, but which Honduras has,
unfortunately, rejected on the grounds of having
matters of a higher priority to deal with at
present.
276. Fully aware of the delicate situation
existing in Central America, Nicaragua has
redoubled its efforts and will continue to do all
that is humanly possible in order to obtain a
peaceful settlement, through dialogue, of the
matter of the critical relations with the United
States and Honduras, as we have turned the
struggle for peace into the guiding principle of
all we do in the political realm. Nicaragua seeks
only to live in peace, to move forward with the
process of our material and spiritual
reconstruction within the most absolute respect
for the principles of the Charter and of
non-alignment.