42. The delegation of the Federal Republic of Cameroon wishes first of all, Mr. President, to add its voice to the chorus of congratulations which has greeted your election as President of the nineteenth session of the United Nations General Assembly. The circumstances in which this election took place, the fact that you were the only African candidate, and the vote by acclamation — an unusual occurence in this hall — constitute an indisputable tribute to the whole of Africa and a source of pride for all natives of that continent and their true friends.
43. We Africans rejoice doubly because, while the United Nations has been enriched by the admission of three new Members, the family of the Organization of African Unity has been joined by two more independent States. To these three States just admitted to the United Nations — Malawi, Malta and Zambia — we offer our brotherly welcome and our wish that they may prosper and develop in this life of independence, which has proved difficult for some and painful for others, but is stimulating for all once its responsibilities are accepted.
44. For almost three years now, a singular conspiracy of fate has dictated that the Assembly should meet either in the shadow of crisis or in such circumstances that its proceedings are disturbed virtually from the outset. On each occasion, the Assembly has heard the wings of the angel of distress beating above it.
45. l's this not particularly true of the present session, when you, Mr. President, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, are for the moment the sole member of our presidium, which should normally also include seventeen Vice-Presidents and the Chairman of the Main Committees of the General Assembly? I surely am revealing no secret in expressing the anxiety felt by each of us, which has led us to take the paradoxical step of opening a general debate without an agenda and thus assuming such an incredible measure of freedom that each, if he so desires, can discourse on the sex of the angels or the temperature on Venus without your being able to call us to order, while so many burning and pressing problems demand our attention. How can it be explained that the General Assembly, from which the world expects a yearly review of the prospects for peace and for the advancement and development of mankind, is so paralysed that, despite this debate, no one can maintain that the session has really started? All this shows that the symptoms of a major crisis are present. It seems to us that the time has come to face it squarely, and above all to examine our consciences.
46. For this reason I would prefer not to make a statement on Cameroon's foreign policy, which our President, Ahmadou Ahidjo, explained in detail from this rostrum at the eighteenth session on 17 October 1963.
47. It is rather my intention to make a brief survey of this phantom agenda, the draft of which we carry in our brief-cases and which we have agreed to discuss without adopting it, and to try at the same time to indicate the essential features of the problems which must be solved if our Organization is to resume its normal course and regain the necessary vigour in the interests of fruitful relations between the members of the international community.
48. How and why does it come about that the world continually proceeds from one crisis to another, even involving this Assembly, when never before have there been so many regional organizations, so many smaller and larger conferences at which almost invariably the same issues are discussed without solutions to them being found? How and why does it happen that the United Nations is suddenly prey to a deadlock, that the same abscesses of localized war continue to be inflamed, at the very time when permanent dialogue between Moscow and Washington has been established — dialogue from which one was entitled to expect an end to the "cold war"? How and why is it that, while arriving at quite substantial agreement on other points, the two capitals are at loggerheads with regard to paltry sums which are a mere drop in the ocean compared with the amounts spent on Luniks, Sputniks, Observers, Mariners and all the others of the same species, when what is at issue is the preservation of this Organization? There is far too much inconsistency in all this.
49. Already, during the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development at Geneva, we had witnessed this extraordinary clash of extremes, based on the same "nyet", in connexion with the unanimous demand from the small and medium-sized countries concerned about their backwardness, asked in terms of great moderation that account be taken of their perilous situation and that something be done not only for them but in the interests of stability, so advantageous and essential to all!
50. This is clear indication and proof of the fundamental anachronism of our times: international society, inherently conservative, has not been able to develop and adapt itself to the physical change called for by this century, which is itself the beginning of a new epoch.
51. It has already been said, from this rostrum, that we are living in this second half of the twentieth century with the mentality prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century. Even the spirit in which the Charter was conceived is now out-of-date. Hence these contradictions in which we are involved and from which we find it hard to escape.
52. It is no longer possible for the affairs of the world to be thought out and decided by a few. The desire for freedom is now so powerful that all the old structures are breaking down, are collapsing. This new age of mankind calls for a new spirit in the men and women of our times, in their institutions and in relations between their States.
53. In the case of our Organization, the rule of the powerful, established by the veto, must be made more flexible and less absolute. It is no longer possible for two nations, even if they hold the terrible privilege of being able to end life on earth, to claim sole right of decision in regard to the affairs of the world community as a whole.
54. We wish here and now to issue a respectful but solemn warning to the Soviet Union and the United States of America. We say to them: the small and medium-sized Powers are essential to you. You can never do without them. The logical consequence of your different systems and of the equal and terrible power you possess is that you are inevitably opposed to each other. Only a third, mediatory force can prevent a fatal encounter between you. You may think that agreement at our expense would be easy; but we say to you that the conflict would come at the end, when the spheres of influence were divided up.
55. There is accordingly only one solution — to consolidate the United Nations and restore it to normal working order, with the operation of the traditional democratic machinery, obviously oiled by mediation and negotiation.
56. We have been asking, for a very long time, that the Charter be reviewed. We desire that the coming year, which is that of its twentieth anniversary, shall be, as in the life of an individual, the year of transition from childhood to manhood. We desire that 1965 should be the year of true, genuine and fundamental revision of the Charter. Together we must think out, coolly, intelligently, fair conditions for exercise of the veto, and ways and means of reconciling it with the requirements of the democratic majority. It will no longer be enough to proclaim faith in democracy; we must first, and at once, put it into practice in this forum of nations.
57. Is it not here that the root of the financial problem lies? It is a conflict of competence between the Security Council, which some wish to have exclusive right of decision in regard to peace-keeping operations, and the General Assembly, which is subject to no veto other than the law of numbers.
58. If we consider the state of paralysis into which we have been led, if we consider the extraordinary fact that, despite almost universal goodwill, a conflict between two States is erecting a barrier against the views of 113 States, there can be no doubt that we are facing an unmistakable challenge to the principle of equality and balance carefully established by the Charter.
59. The present crisis is merely the expression of a political conflict in terms of obligatory annual contributions. Let no one speak to us of legal or juridical arguments. Political will, when it exists, knows no irreconcilable principles or criteria.
60. Let nobody be mistaken: if it comes to a choice between the Soviet Union and the United States of America, we shall always choose the United Nations. We will not be a party to excluding anyone. Are men's memories so short? How did the League of Nations die? Through the gradual departure of its important members, of those that were the great Powers of their time. The essential feature of our Charter is its universality. It is not selective; if it were, it would be that, no longer of the United Nations, but of selected nations. If it were selective, could we, the late-comers, rely on being co-opted?
61. In short, I would say on this matter: We wish to retain all countries, with all countries paying, because without contributions the United Nations cannot live.
62. Why should we renew the United Nations and ensure its survival? The answer is clear: in order to ensure international peace and security, to safeguard that triptych which President Ahidjo spoke of, in this Assembly, as being the fundamental need of man. I quote: "... the need for security, to feel himself safe from attack; the need to feel himself free, to choose according to his will or to consent without constraint; and the need to survive, to grow and to develop;" in three words: "peace, self-determination and development" [1244th meeting, para. 29].
63. What do we mean by peace? It seems that the words which are most common are also those for which each one has his own definition — often, unfortunately, different from the ordinary meaning; Peace is not simply a state of calm in one's own national territory, where a nation can enjoy to the full the agreeable sensation of being remote from the theatres of war, generally situated overseas — even if from time to time some few families must mourn sons who have fallen on those distant battlefields.
64. Peace, we repeat, is indivisible. Can one speak of peace when in Cuba, Cyprus, the Congo, Viet-Nam, Laos, Korea, Berlin, South-East Asia and the Middle East whole armies wait, finger on trigger, squadrons and fleets are ready to take off or set sail, guerrillas are ready to come to life, the "maquis" are on the alert? One has the impression that the great Powers say to each other: so long as it is not happening between us, these are the slightly adult games of unruly children.
65. We must create a mystique of peace. Peace at home, and peace in the territories of our neighbours, the great, and the small; a general, total peace. Without such a mystique, there will be no general, total disarmament, complete and controlled. What an astonishing century ours is, when no scientific advance can be described without a series of high flown epithets.
66. The twentiety-century common man — and we are of his ranks — demands, so that mankind should survive, disarmament so patent that all epithets are superfluous. The drive which produced the Moscow Treaty has clearly lost its force. Is this not further reason for redoubling our efforts?
67. But it will not be enough to renounce weapons; the desire to impress others must also be renounced. To impress others — this, first and foremost, is the extravagance, the inordinate pride, whereby man seeks to subjugate man, to deny to his fellow the rights he claims for himself. Colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism and discrimination — such are the various aspects of this same moral sin.
68. As I pursue this subject, I already hear criticism from some to the effect that the tune is old and overplayed. Perhaps it is. But unfortunately it is also more timely now than ever. At the risk of repeating myself, I would say that here too it is the same cause producing the same effects. In this era, when proclamations of faith in self-determination abound, there is no lack of secret ambition to restore former dominion through gunboat tactics, open or disguised.
69. But we shall meet the obstinacy and unpardonable refusal of some to hear us with a no less inflexible resolve to cast an anathema on imperialists of every kind until, wearied by our revolt, they allow the subject or oppressed peoples to intone at last, with those that have been set free, the hymn of deliverance and fraternity.
70. Close by us in Africa, the persistent cries of anguish from our brothers groaning in the shackles of Portugal and South Africa are with us from morning to night. We shall never be able to taste the full joys of independence so long as Angolans, Mozambicans, Rhodesians, Basutos, Zulus, Bantus, and others continue, at our side, to suffer their calvary.
71. No, we cannot remain silent. For in this matter our silence, or even a pause in our protesting, would amount to criminal complicity. After the adoption here of the historic Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples, after the untold sufferings to be found all over the colonies, after the experience of cases where decolonization has proved to strengthen and better the relations between former metropolitan countries and new nations, it is astonishing to find that colonial Powers have still not understood and learnt.
72. True, some of them have shown a degree of understanding. At the doorway to the Federal Republic of Cameroon lie Fernando Póo and Río Muni. Spain, the colonizing Power, has taken a positive step there ty instituting a system of self-government by stages. Having ourselves gone through the same process, we would be wrong not to give it its due, especially after the painful experience of unsuccessful decolonizations. But caution must not result in evasion. Self-government is not an end in itself, but simply a state on the way to complete self-determination or independence.
73. We have referred to self-government in Cameroon; the self-government stage lasted one year. Spain must therefore make haste, for it is already behind the time-table of African liberation. Decolonization is, moreover, indivisible. It would mean nothing to release the former Spanish Rif while retaining Fernando Póo and Río Muni.
74. Justice requires courage. The reform undertaken in Río Muni and Fernando Póo is a development we recognize and welcome, the more so as we have encouraged refugees from Río Muni and Fernando Póo to return to their country and there undergo an apprenticeship in managing their own affairs. But we trust that Spain will take the next step too. Complete independence must be granted without delay, and the inhabitants of these territories must be allowed to decide their destiny freely, without hindrance or mental reservation, without manoeuvres or machinations.
75. Indeed, independence must come for all those who have not yet obtained it. Portugal must withdraw within its original frontiers fixed in Europe. It must abandon the course of artificially extending them into Africa through a policy of assimilation which history has condemned. It is so written in the stars. Like all the overseas empires of all times, the Portuguese empire must come to an end, as have those of Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, to speak only of modern colonial empires. And yet, does this mean that these Powers have left Africa or Asia? In fact they are present there more than ever before, thanks to the necessity of co-operation among nations.
76. This indeed is the question, the real question- transforming the presence of former colonizers in our countries. A few days ago I heard a prominent person ask what neo-colonialism was. This person I is so familiar with international affairs that it is hard to imagine why the meaning of this term should have been so difficult to fathom. It is a question of the "transforming of presence." There are those who make a pretence of leaving but who stay on under the same conditions as before determined to concede nothing and retain all. There are also those who remain, even though in a sense they have left, but who stand aside for the rightful rulers and simply remain available for the provision, on request of aid and advice — proud and eager to consolidate and complete a truly exhilarating undertaking, one in which there is true human solidarity, true brotherhood. In the other camp there is only egoism, cowardliness and treachery; and at the worst there is intervention in the affairs of others, leading to tragedy, to revolt and finally to those crises of which we have so many examples before us.
77. When we think of man's egoism in dispossessing others of their rights, when we think of all the distress of our times due solely to the fact that self-determination has entered the political vocabulary but not the sphere of political action, we cannot but agree with Roland Dorgelès, who wrote in his Les Croix de bois: "How hard is man, despite his cries of pity; How mild the pain of others seems to him, When his own pain is not a part of it." What would this writer have said if he had visited that hell on earth, the Bantu part of South Africa, where, under apartheid, man is not a man, where he is hunted on his native soil, penned up, maltreated and lynched, just because of the colour of his skin? What would he have said if, having so severely castigated the ordinary man, he were asked to pronounce on the attitude of this Organization and its Members, adopting resolutions on South Africa and refraining from carrying them out?
78. All we have called for is the application of economic sanctions. Is this so difficult? What is so ironical is this leniency towards South Africa compared with the rigorous attitude taken on finances, simply a question of money but one which, it is feared, may cause the elimination of a few founding Members. Now that is a great deal. We for our part are not asking for so much.
79. Let us re-examine our consciences let us rearm ourselves with courage and take the stout resolve to reinstate man in his rights everywhere in the world, including the Union of South Africa.
80. It has become a truism to say that political liberation is a deception if unaccompanied by economic independence, which is its necessary complement. Thus, among nations as between individuals, civic relations must be complemented by relations of interchange which are free of all subjection or dependence. Man does not live by freedom alone. He lives, first of all, by bread.
81. To be convinced of this, we need only recall how last year public opinion throughout the developing world sought and Remanded the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and hailed its opening, last March, at Geneva. The holding of this historic Conference dispenses me from any need once again to analyse the current economic situation, which was presented, commented on and dissected by the world's foremost economists.
82. The results of the Conference are impressive, as we may judge from the United Nations press release of 1 October 1964, which reads: "A total of nearly sixty individual recommendations were adopted by the Conference. These included fifteen ’General Principles’ and thirteen ’Special Principles’ to govern ’international trade relations and trade policies conducive to development’; and eight principles relating to transit trade and landlocked States. Recommendations were also adopted relating to commodities, manufactured goods, financing for an expansion of trade, improvement of ’invisible trade’, special problems, and a programme of work in the field of trade and development. "The recommendations approved by the Conference also included one calling for the establishment of new international machinery as an integral part of the United Nations to continue the work initiated by the Conference and to implement its recommendations and conclusions." There are grounds for asserting that never before has a disease been submitted to the meticulous scrutiny of so many physicians, all experts in their special fields, and never before has a prescription been so long and detailed. But what will the remedy finally be? We can no longer claim to be ignorant of the disease, its scope or its gravity, or of the therapeutic measures that ought to be applied.
83. This is why we are concerned, as I said at the beginning of my statement, over the paralysis with which this session of the General Assembly has been stricken. We are most anxious to see the establishment of this new machinery which is to be part of the United Nations and is to deal specifically with trade and development.
84. At Geneva we were moderate, and we remain moderate today. We were asked to consider institutional arrangements for conciliation. A special committee worked on that question and made recommendations.. But this is neither the time nor the place for an analysis of that matter.
85. We categorically refuse to be reconciled in any way to this chance situation which compels the General Assembly, willy-nilly, to depart for the time being from the normal procedure of expressing its desires. True, the circumstance is exceptional. But we hereby refuse to recognize it as a precedent, for at Geneva, as you will recall, the question of voting was the stumbling-block. Let no one nurse the vain hope of exploiting that example tomorrow, in the negotiations which the question of economic transformation will require.
86. it is here too, indeed here more than elsewhere, that transformation is needed. The traditional division of labour, which condemned our economies to a proletarian role in relation to the industrialized nations, must also go through its process of decolonization. It has become clear that political despotism, arraigned before history, was nothing but the puppet of a more ruthless master—economic exploitation.
87. There is, indeed, no way of ensuring world stability so long as economic inequality and underdevelopment continue to prevail, under economic structures imposed in the past and sanctioning the monopolization of wealth by the minority to the detriment of the greater number. In his address of 17 October 1963, President Ahmadou Ahidjo uttered these cautionary words: "To speak frankly and realistically, the attitude of the industrialized countries does not take sufficient account of the effective solidarity which, in the general context of our times, binds and will increasingly bind all nations in the world and all men. We feel that the time has come to realize that the arms race, and even the atomic arms race, is not the only factor threatening world peace and collective security. Another factor, although undoubtedly less spectacular but more insidious and enduring, is under-development. The arms race and the cold war, which is its corollary, are merely the consequence of the basic imbalance of the international community. "How can we build a balanced international community of we do not eradicate within each nation composing it the causes of that instability, of which under-development—that is to say, poverty, disease and illiteracy—is surely not the least important? "In view of the lesson of history that civilizations die from injustice, that is to say, from the inability to distribute equitably the fruits of mankind's achievement, it is to be hoped that co-operation will become the keynote of our times. Otherwise, it seems to us that mankind can only prepare for itself a bitter morrow." [1244th meeting, paras. 78-80.] To be sure, not everything depends on the industrialized countries. Far from it. A great deal must be done by the developing countries themselves.
88. The normalization of the terms of trade in all spheres must go hand in hand with a rational and scientific organization of markets, supplemented by a judicious apportionment of selective preferences. The inequality of levels of development compels the smaller States, under penalty of death by suffocation, to pool their means and their resources. It is in this light that we must view the efforts of regional regrouping and direct them on to a dynamic path headed towards the outside and away from autarchy.
89. We in Africa have been, much inspired, in our action, by these motives. Thus the Federal Republic of Cameroon has joined with other countries in the Association of African and Malagasy Economic Cooperation and Development, which is linked to the European Economic Community under a convention of association that was signed in our capital city, Yaoundé.
90. In a more restricted context, the founding of an economic unit has just been completed with the signing at Brazzaville on 8 December 1964 of a Treaty establishing the Economic and Customs Union of Central Africa. The participating countries are Gabon, the Congo (Brazzaville), the Central African Republic, Chad and the Federal Republic of Cameroon. This economic union is the first step towards an African common market, about which many have spoken but which we are only now beginning to develop with a view to complete economic integration, involving interregional trade, the equitable distribution of industrial infrastructure, the co-ordination of development programmes, the establishment of a common customs tariff, the harmonizing of internal systems and investment codes, and the establishment of a sub-regional bank for common industrial development. Our five countries already have a Currency Issue Institute, while in the matter of transport systems all studies and projects have been conceived in terms of long term regional development.
91. I must apologize for going rather extensively into this last aspect of my country's joint efforts with its neighbours to build African unity. But this is our ultimate objective. It is the experiment with which we are concerned today, and we hope that history will record it as our proud achievement and the symbol of our generation's contribution to the rehabilitation of the African cowJnent.
92. Far from doing injury or creating obstacles, regional agreements, in suppressing the causes and sources of friction and fostering co-operation and good-neighbourly relations, promote and strengthen agreement at the summit. This at any rate is our idea in Central Africa: to close our ranks so that we may be more cohesive, and to merge with the continental aggregate of African unity.
93. I hope you will excuse me for having spoken at such length; but the special circumstances surrounding the convening of this session, and the conditions under which we are meeting here, called for some comment which my delegation deemed necessary to make.
94. Today, as always, each of us — each delegation — and the Organization as a whole face a crucial moment demanding courage and responsibility. A great man, Edouard Herriot, who for many years presided over the French National Assembly, once spoke of nations in these terms: "Nations make their own destinies. Nothing good comes to them simply by chance. Those who serve them best are those who develop their inner strength." I dedicate these words to our Organization in this difficult period. Our Organization will indeed face the destiny we make for it. Can it be that we will fail it? No: I am sure that, finding in ourselves this strength which lies deep within, for it is the strength of life itself, we shall mould our destiny for the survival of man and the happiness of all in a world of peace and co-operation.