May I, Mr. President, add the warmest congratulations of my Government and delegation to the many congratulations extended to you from this rostrum on the occasion of your election to the Presidency of the sixteenth session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. In selecting you, the Assembly has paid a tribute to your qualities as a statesman, and through you, to your country, Tunis. This unanimous choice is a natural recognition of your personal merits, of your competence, and of the outstanding services you have rendered on so many occasions to this Organization with great dignity, tact and political wisdom.
41. For our part, we shall not forget the important personal part you played in the Laotian crisis of the summer of 1959 and the precious aid your country gave us, along with Argentina, Japan and Italy, in the Sub-Committee set up by the Security Council,!/when my country became a victim to attacks from across its northern frontiers. Without this peace mission urgently despatched by the Council, my country might have succumbed to the assaults of these foreign subversive forces.
42. On behalf of my country, I should also like to extend my most sincere congratulations to the outgoing President, Mr. Boland, on the competence and impartiality with which he presided over the past session.
43. Finally, I should like to extend our warmest congratulations to the representatives of Sierra Leone, whose admission recently has brought the membership of our Organization up to one hundred. I am sure they will make a valuable contribution to our work. We hope that Mauritania, Outer Mongolia and some other countries will soon be with us. Thus, by further admission from year to year, the United Nations will be fulfilling the hopes of the founding nations that it would achieve universality.
44. After a year which was disturbed by grave events, this sixteenth session of the Assembly has opened in an atmosphere of mourning—the worst so far in the history of the United Nations. Its highest official, loved and respected by us all, has died tragically While accomplishing his mission of peace. His death has created a vacuum which must be filled without delay.
45. I have already had occasion to express to this Assembly, on behalf of His Majesty the King, the Government and the Laotian people, our deep sorrow and sincere affliction at the death of Mr. Dag Hammarskjold and I have referred to the capital role which he played for seven years in the building of peace. That is why, however deep our grief and our sorrow at this loss may be, we must master our feelings and think seriously of the future of this Organization. We cannot, on fallacious pretexts, allow it to be long deprived of leadership at a time when not only its structure, but also its foundations, are being strongly attacked. We shall strongly resist any changes in its structure, for we do not think it should be a "continuous creation" at the service of one bloc or another. The United Nations was set up to serve the interests of peace and justice for the whole of humanity, not the interests of blocs.
46. We do not think that the direction of the United Nations should be put in the hands of three persons representing the present political currents in the world or even in the hands of a collegiate body of competent persons. That would merely lead to disagreements, friction and antagonisms which would retard the reaching of decisions for which speed is essential. If the "troika" principle proposed by the Soviet Union is accepted, the Organization, whose machinery is already cumbersome enough, would go through phases of confusion and paralysis before it finally died. With it would go, because of our quarrels and our mistakes, the hopes of hundreds of millions of men and women who had put their trust in it. In our opinion, to adopt the "troika" principle would be to violate the Charter of the United Nations, to perpetuate the concept of blocs and to undermine all the efforts made by our Organization in its search for understanding, for peace and justice. We should then see all that it had bravely and patiently built up since the beginning of its existence collapse in chaos and confusion.
47. As for us, we cannot be a party to manoeuvres of any kind which aim at undermining the authority and the foundations of the United Nations. In our opinion, the status quo must be maintained, and the Organization must have at its head, as in the past, a single, all-powerful but accountable head. Otherwise the torch of civilization which it bears would be but a glimmer in the gloom.
48. The small countries, which are weak like our own and have just obtained their liberty and independence, need the protection of the United Nations more than ever. To them it is not only the best instrument of peace for localizing and extinguishing any conflagration wherever it breaks out, but also a platform where they may speak freely.
49. In the past, the intervention of the United Nations has helped to prevent the spread of conflicts which, without it, might have led to a world war. Its activities
in the economic and social field, its aid to refugees, its efforts to bring about the independence of colonized countries, are so many proofs of benefits to mankind. Laos, for its part, has benefited from technical assistance, both in the form of materials and personnel. A small United Nations mission is helping the Royal Government to carry out modest programmes of rural assistance. It has now been able to work at full strength owing to the notable situation in my country. That is why, in so far as the Organization reflects man's anxiety to preserve peace and justice and in so far as it represents an attempt to outstrip present antagonisms, its existence is more indispensable than ever. It is therefore in the interests of all, and more particularly of the small countries, to strengthen' its authority and to encourage the discussion within it of the problems connected with their existence. All those who are anxious at this moment to avert fresh disorders and disappointments for the United Nations should now clear the way so that it may rest on sound and firm foundation.
50. At the moment when this session is opening, the world finds itself once again at a decisive turning-point in the history of humanity, where the slightest false step might unleash a world disaster. Today hope and confidence are being replaced by anxiety, suspicion and fear. The dissensions bred by the cold war are more acute than ever before. In Europe, Asia, Africa and even in America, conflicts having their roots in the cold war are growing worse and assuming disturbing proportions. Some have remained at the larval stage while others show alarming symptoms. All are ready to explode. In Laos peace remains precarious; the Congo is faced by difficulties caused by the situation in Katanga. In Angola and Algeria a war of liberation is fiercely being waged. In Berlin, the rights and the freedom of the citizens have been suppressed by the East German authorities who hope to stem the flow of refugees by feverishly building walls and barricades. These combined measures have created a new situation and are threatening the rights of the powers which are guaranteed by international agreements. Peace is everywhere endangered.
51. Millions of human beings are disturbed and anxious when they see the insuperable difficulties which are facing the world and the ineffective measures taken to deal with them. Against this background, darkened by a recrudescence of grave events, we still regretfully witness today a frenzied armaments race and a growing accumulation of weapons of mass destruction. After a three-year moratorium, the resumption of nuclear tests by the Soviet Union has caused a wave of anguish and anxiety to run round the world. The Soviet nuclear explosions have been succeeded by the United States explosions which are aggravating the dangers of pollution of the air. These series of explosions have shocked the conscience of mankind. We are opposed to the resumption of nuclear tests of whatever kind and wherever they may occur, for what disturbs a small people like ours, that has no means of defence, is the physical danger resulting from radioactive fall-out. Whatever the difficulties of the moment may be, we call upon the great Powers to make a supreme effort because it is desperately urgent to resume negotiations on disarmament together with an effective control system. We know that in this matter, no miracles will be wrought overnight. But it would be a crime-to let the nuclear threat hang over mankind for long. When peace is in danger, there must be a firm resolve to establish peace instead of a mere pretence of seeking it. To emit countless threats of intervention at all sensitive nerve centres in the world is no true way of finding peace.
52. As for us, we shall not let ourselves be caught up in this whirlwind of hatred and acrimony, either in our words or in our deeds, though we have many good reasons for bitterness and enmity. In seeking the solutions to our problem, we should constantly endeavour to be guided by the principle of tolerance and justice derived from Buddha, which is our State religion.
53. We remain hopeful that the benefits of wisdom and common sense will soon prevail in our country, so that our people may be rid of this nightmare of fratricidal struggle and so that our country may be endowed with a recognized neutral status guaranteed by all countries.
54. I shall now turn to the numberless difficulties our country has had to struggle with since its accession to independence. Situated as it is in a difficult geographical position, between countries with different and rival political systems, my country has had to endure some cruel tests during the past two years. It is a small and weak country, with no means of provoking, let alone threatening, its neighbours ten times stronger than itself. It is not a member of any military alliance and belongs to no bloc of countries. Its small defensive army, a symbol of its independence, could disturb no one. The people of Laos are profoundly Buddhist and eminently peaceful. All they want is to live in peace and good understanding with their neighbours.
55. Yet the territorial integrity of Laos has been flouted more than once, its sovereignty and its air space have been violated and its very existence has been at stake. During its recent past, it has been the victim of numberless extortions, invasions and aggression from its northern borders. In 1952, 1953 and 1954 its territory was trampled by invading armies from abroad, which overran more than half the country. They returned in 1959, 1960 and 1961, attacking us fiercely as they had before and showing not the slightest restraint. As far as we know these units seem in no hurry to leave our national soil. Under the fallacious pretext of liberating Laos—though the Laotians have been liberated from the colonialist yoke since 1959— our northern neighbours were concealing their perennial covetous designs upon our country, which remains their first objective. In 1954, the Geneva Agreements brought to an end the long Indo-Chinese war which Laos had not caused, but whose heavy legacy it had to bear.
56. The Government of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, which had created with nothing but a few dozen Laotian malcontents the Pathet-Lao movement, whose subjection to international communism has steadily increased, put my country to some severe tests after the Geneva Agreements. By using and sowing the seeds of subversion in the form of bands of Laotian partisans, entirely subservient to the orders of Viet-Minh, the Viet-Minh Government was able subsequently to provoke a series of incidents, starting with the occupation pure and simple of a piece of our national territory and going so far as open aggression.
57. After the Geneva Agreements, there was no more shooting, but open war was succeeded by a new kind of war, a secret and cunning war of subversion. The people of Laos had to endure this tribulation for seven years, during which the cases of raids, murder and
forced conscription multiplied, intensifying the reign of terror. The progressive deterioration of the internal
situation in my country since 1954 has been due to the subversive activities of Viet-Minh; its presence and its maintenance of numerous units in Laotian territory are a flagrant violation of the Geneva Agreements and a defiance of the principles of peaceful coexistence. The intervention of Viet-Minh in Laos has been an established fact, known to all, for a long time.
58. For slightly more than a year the Soviet Union, because it wished to impose a political solution to the conflict between Laotians, has given the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam a unique opportunity to intervene more aggressively In Laos in order to attain its goal of penetration towards the South. Up till now, the air space of my country has been infested with the flights of Soviet planes parachuting and bringing weapons and munitions to the insurgents. The lorries carrying the materials and troops of the Democratic Republic of North Viet-Nam towards Laos are still being driven along our roads. These Powers have artificially imposed the "troika" system which they now want to be tried out everywhere else. Everyone knows that in Laos there are not .three forces, but two: the force struggling for the preservation of the monarchy and democratic institutions in peace and freedom, and the force which sows the seeds of disorder and dissent in order to install a new order of alien origin. Laos will thus serve as a proving-ground for this new form of political subversion. The Laotians are pitted against one another and the fratricidal struggles have reached a pitch which we should never have seen had we remained the masters of our own fate.
59. Had it not been for the wisdom of some great and friendly statesmen, the civil war in Laos, which had been started and was being maintained from abroad, could have seriously endangered peace and international security. Here I should like, on behalf of His Majesty the King, the Government and the Laotian people, to express sincere thanks to His Royal Highness Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Head of State of Cambodia, for his untiring efforts in helping my country to extricate itself from the present difficult situation. Without the happy initiative he took at the Conference of Fourteen Powers at Geneva,?/ our people, already hurt to the quick, would have had to continue enduring the sufferings of a fratricidal strife for a long time. But for his proposal [877th meeting] in this very hall during the fifteenth session of the Assembly, the achievement of neutrality, for which our people desperately long, might have remained no more than a pious hope. His Royal Highness Prince Norodom Sihanouk deserves in this respect the gratitude of the Laotian people.
60. Today, though the clouds have to some extent cleared in our sky, the cease-fire is uncertain and the future full of doubts. The infection has not spread, but the wound is not entirely healed; it may at any moment reopen and fester. My country should be extricated from these struggles around it without delay; it should be made a free, independent and neutral country, protected from all outside interference and not aligned with any group of Powers. This neutrality for which we are striving is not just an attitude of mind: it is imposed on us by geographical imperatives, by the history and religion of our people. His Majesty the King in his solemn declaration to the
V International Conference for the Settlement of the Laotian Question convened on 16 May 1961.
world on 19 February 1961, already proclaimed the neutrality of Laos. In order to achieve Laotian neutrality, we must now find a common denominator. That is why we are asking the great Powers interested in peace and stability in that region of South-East Asia to work together to find a rapid solution, putting aside all considerations based on the false principle of the bloc. Now that the Powers participating in the Geneva Conference on Laos have a common aim and that the principle of neutrality is recognized by them, it would be foolish to provoke pointless crises once again.
01. In his speech here, President Kennedy stated bluntly that the United States will support "a truly neutral and independent Laos, its people free from outside interference living at peace with themselves and with their neighbours" [1013th meeting, para. 83], The Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, Mr. Gromyko, has made similar statements [1016th meeting, para. 174]. And all the representatives of the /countries participating in the Laos Conference at Geneva, whether representing the People's Republic of China or the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, spoke of nothing but the neutrality of my country. They have been discussing this problem since the month of May and despite the marked progress achieved in these negotiations they have not yet reached complete agreement, simply because the same words used in their declarations do not represent the same intentions.
62. The threat of war is now shifting from the northern to the southern part of the Indo-Chinese Peninsula. Hardly has the conflagration in Laos been extinguished than another one flares up in South Viet-Nam. This shift in tension on the North-South axis is part of a carefully-prepared plan of domination and conquest. The painful events that have taken place in Laos since 1949 and the calm that has set in since May 1961 have enabled the Communist forces of North Viet-Nam to extend their "area of subversion" to the South. The rot has already spread to our neighbour, South Viet-Nam. Whole units, powerfully armed, have forced their way through my country to strike elsewhere. After Laos, South Viet-Nam and perhaps Cambodia will be the theatre of the violence and disorder fomented by those who pursue their plan of subversion, gnawing at and changing, if need be by force, other political systems. Raids, armed attacks and assassinations, in which peaceful citizens have blindly been struck down, are now being replaced by open warfare. Newspapers all over the world are now publishing reports of violent fighting in South Viet-Nam. Coveted countries are being undermined from within and when the right moment has come, disorders are provoked which make them fall like ripe fruit. Such is the method used yesterday in my country and today in South Viet-Nam.
63. What we now want is not so much to return to a sad past as to ensure a stable future for our country; The guns have been silent since the month of May, but the lull is a relative one. Yet the hope for peace and reconciliation is today stronger than ever. The Laotian people rejoices that the Conference of Geneva has continued its work until today. The Laotian people wants peace and only peace, not a truce between two clashes or two cease-fires. All its efforts are, of course, aimed at bringing about a national reconciliation, so that peace may be restored to our country, for so far peace to the Laotians has been no more than a fleeting hope. What more does the Laotian peoples want? It wants all forms of intervention to come to an end, that the const.. arrival of arms should be
stopped, and that the infiltration of foreign armed elements should end. It wants Laos to be completely restored to it so that the country should not be divided into two or three parts. Finally, it does not want its territory to serve for anyone as a springboard for aggression against its neighbours, as is the case at present.
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64. The Royal Government which I have the honour to represent here is prepared to overthrow the barriers of misunderstanding so that there could again be unity of minds and so that the foundations of our existence, of our religion and of the values that form part of it could be rebuilt. It has given sufficient proof of its good will and its wish for peace. It has entered into conversations with its opponents in order to promote a policy of conciliation free from all suspicion and all rivalry. These conversations will be pursued. At this time, while I am addressing you, conversations are being held between the three Princes and their principal assistants to the North of our capital at a front line. These conversations have been fruitful and we hope that a government of national union will soon be formed which will put an end to this fratricidal struggle and lead our country on to the path of real neutrality. But that does not mean that the Royal Government must give way on all points because of the blackmail of its opponents, that it must close its eyes to reality and cease to heed the danger that threatens its independence and its freedom. We declare that we shall respect the rights and interests of all our neighbours as firmly as we defend our own. We are faithful to our friends but our hearts are open to new friendships. Peaceful coexistence, however, must not be merely a slogan for the use of the strong which serves a definite policy. It must become a reality. If it means a total and continuous struggle against all those who have not accepted some ideology or other, the world will never have truth or peace.