1. Mr. KREISKY (Austria): Mr. President, I should like to avail myself of this opportunity to offer you the sincere congratulations of the Austrian delegation on your election to the high office of President of the General Assembly. Your distinguished record in international affairs and your profound understanding of the problems which beset the world today clearly make this a most auspicious choice.
2. Let me also pay attribute to the Secretary-General, to whose brilliant leadership this Organization owes so much.
3. Austria is not a large country; our contribution to the solution of world-wide problems is necessarily a modest one. It is nevertheless incumbent upon us to do our part and to state our views before this Assembly.
4. Everywhere the question is now being discussed whether a summit meeting might assure the world of peaceful development. There have been frequent warnings against too much optimism on that score — warnings that may be well justified. It may be useful to recall, however, that there have been some fruitful high-level conferences in the past. The Berlin Foreign Ministers’ Conference of 1954, for instance, while it did not succeed in solving the German question, paved the way for a settlement of Austria's case; and, at the same Conference, agreement was reached on the convocation of the Geneva talks which eventually led to a termination of military conflict in Indo-China. Finally, in 1955, the four-Power Foreign Ministers' Conference held in Vienna restored Austria to sovereignty by giving her the State Treaty.
5. There was a marked thaw of the political climate at that time. Austria joined the United Nations and thus affirmed her intention to take part in the solution of the political problems of our time — whether they be her immediate concern or not.
6. Our time is overshadowed by the threat of the staggering destructive power given into human hands. We therefore consider the agreement reached between the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States concerning a temporary suspension of nuclear weapons tests a step towards the solution of mankind's most urgent problem. We hope that a world-wide accord on a permanent cessation of such tests will soon be effected — a hope in which we have been greatly encouraged by the auspicious results achieved so far.
7. The Austrian Government welcomes the prospect of the spirit of conciliation asserting itself at last. And it welcomes the decision to make Vienna the headquarters of the control organ concerned with the prohibition of nuclear weapons tests.
8. I should also avail myself of this opportunity to express, in the name of the Austrian Government, my sincere appreciation for this decision to the Governments of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and to declare that Austria will make all the necessary provisions for the establishment of an institution of such world-wide importance.
9. There is yet another recent decision which appears to confirm our cautious optimism: it is the appointment of a ten-Power Committee on disarmament which will convene early next year in Geneva. We are happy to see the initiative taken by the United Nations thus come to fruition; and we trust that the final decision will be left to the United Nations as the ultimate competent authority in this field.
10. Austria, needless to say, has full confidence in the principles of the peaceful settlement of disputes, a principle fully relevant to the question that ranks among the highest of our foreign affairs, namely, the question of the South Tyrol, whose cultural and economic development must be safeguarded and whose ethnic substance must be preserved. Clearly this is a problem which can only be solved in the spirit of the United Nations Charter, whose aim it is, in conformity with the principle of justice and international law, to bring peaceful means to bear on the settlement of international disputes, and to develop friendly relations among nations.
11. I should like briefly to state our case. The Saint- Germain Treaty of 1919 severed the southern part of the Tyrol from Austria and made it part of Italy. The South Tyrol now is a territory of 2,869 square miles with a population of roughly a quarter million Tyrolese. Under the Fascist regime, South Tyrol suffered the consequences of a sustained campaign of de-nationalization — even the children were prevented from receiving instruction in their own language — and finally, in 1939, an agreement between the two dictatorships led to the displacement of ten thousand families. After the end of World War II, all attempts to find an equitable solution of the problem of the South Tyrol ended in failure. I should like to stress in this context that it was not only Austria which considered this state of affairs unjust and, indeed, untenable. For instance, an "Italian Manifesto" appeared in the American Press as early as 1944; it was signed by prominent political leaders, scientists and artists, among them Randolfo Pacciardi, Professor Giuseppe Borghese, Professor Gaetano Salvemini, and Arturo Toscanini. In this manifesto it was even suggested that Italy relinquish her control over the ethnic minorities in the extreme north and north-east of her territory.
12. In 1946, Italy and Austria reached an agreement which, it was then hoped, would assure the South Tyrol a cultural and economic development unhampered by restrictions. This agreement which, as annex IV, is a part of the 1947 Treaty of Peace with Italy, expressly provides for “special provisions to safeguard the ethnical character and the cultural and economic development" of the South Tyrol; it also grants this minority group autonomous legislative and executive powers. And yet, the correct interpretation of this agreement has been subject to differences between the Governments of Italy and Austria ever since.
13. Let me briefly summarize the situation in the South Tyrol. There can be no doubt that, compared with the Fascist era, the South Tyrol is now relatively free of restrictions in the cultural field. The social and economic area, however, presents a different picture. Here the situation is indeed serious. Let me say at once that the South-Tyrolese are an extremely vital ethnic group. Yet the present practice of the administration undermines the very foundations of their existence on their native soil. It discriminates against them when they look for employment; and, as far as housing is concerned, it may be apposite to point out that only 7 per cent of the apartments built with Government aid in the South Tyrol have been made available to its indigenous inhabitants. This is indeed a gross and incomprehensible discrimination; it has compelled many thousands of young South-Tyrolese to emigrate.
14. The South Tyrol problem which, of course, remains a national question, is increasingly becoming a social and an economic concern. It is one of the more tragic aspects of the problem that, in a court of law, a South-Tyrolese will probably be faced with a judge with whom he cannot communicate in his own language. Among those to whom jurisdiction over the South Tyrol — with a population of a quarter million — is entrusted, there are only five South-Tyrolese judges. The parliamentary representatives of the South Tyrol have repeatedly sought redress of this utterly unsatisfactory state of affairs; they have also submitted a draft bill outlining the proper autonomous status for the region of South Tyrol.
15. In their draft bill, the representatives of the South Tyrol insist on their people’s right to use their own language in public life, to claim their share in public office in proportion to their population, and, finally, to create conditions requisite to the equality of opportunity in their daily lives, paying particular attention to housing and employment. The Austrian Government cannot but endorse these just aspirations. Clearly, the only way to implement the agreement, in spirit as well as in fact, is to create an autonomous Province of Bozen. Indeed, is there any other way of assuring an ethnic minority its full democratic rights than to grant it self-administration? It is only thus that an ethnic minority may claim to profit from the principle inherent in the Magna Charta of modern democracy, the Declaration of Independence, according to which Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
16. In the true spirit of the Paris Treaty, the Austrian Government will continue to claim its proper share in the implementation of that international agreement, should, however, bilateral negotiations not succeed in creating conditions satisfactory for a minority of 250,000 in a nation of almost 50 million, Austria will have no alternative but to appeal to the United Nations to put this question on its agenda at the earliest possible moment.
17. It is quite evident that it is neither spite nor hostility against our Italian neighbour that compel us to state the case of South Tyrol. Indeed, how could we have hostile feelings against a nation with which, for many centuries, we have been bound by mutual ties of commerce and trade, a nation whose abundant spiritual heritage has greatly enriched our own culture?
18. It is, let me repeat, not enmity which motivates our step, but the responsibility which rests upon us. It is, moreover, the restlessness of thousands of young people of the South Tyrol, who want to plan their future and to shape their lives, as young people do elsewhere in the world. Nothing divides us from our Italian neighbour but this open question. If a solution can be found which the South-Tyrolese can accept, new avenues of fruitful co-operation would be opened up in our part of Europe.