1. Mr. President, on behalf of the Government and people of Guyana my delegation congratulates you most warmly on your accession to the Presidency of the General Assembly at its twenty-second session and wishes to assure you of the same unswerving support and co-operation that it was our aim at all times to give to your predecessor, Ambassador Pazhwak, as he so ably guided the twenty-first session and the special sessions through their many excitements and crises.
2. For Guyana the twenty-second session of the Assembly marks the end of our first year's participation in the work of the United Nations. Tor us this first year has been one of building foundations, and nowhere has there been a greater need to build securely than in the area of international relations. In setting about this task we recognize that a nation's foreign policy in the truest sense can only emerge out of the experience of many years of responsibility for its foreign affairs. There are, I know, some who sometimes speak as if on the achievement of independence small countries like mine can, as we select our flag and national anthem, choose a foreign policy which we should immediately proclaim and to which the conduct of our foreign affairs should thereafter at all times conform. But this notion is naive and an over-simplification of international existence. A nation's foreign policy can only be hammered out on the anvil of experience and amid the dust and heat of the busy workshop of international affairs. What we can insist upon, and what as a new nation we do insist upon, is the right to devise a foreign policy on the basis of experience — one that is shaped by our needs and the needs of the international community as we assess them. It is, I suggest, this demand for an acknowledgement of the right of self-determination in the area of foreign affairs that lies at the heart of the concepts of neutralism and non-alignment — concepts which have been the central themes in the foreign policy of so many new States and which, when recognized in this light, represent not an arid negativist policy but an environment of freedom which is essential to the evolution of a healthy, constructive and internationally beneficial approach to world affairs.
3. As the large and powerful nations confront one another today in so many vital areas of international endeavour, the need for this freedom is perhaps greater than it has ever been; for if the small States have a role to play in resolving the vital Issues of war and peace in our time — as I am certain that they have — that role can be fulfilled only through the freedom to bring to bear on those issues an independent judgement which takes as its starting point a commitment, not to dogma, but to the rule of law at the international level as it is enshrined in the Charter of this great Organization. This is the role that my Government has sought to play, in its modest way, during this past year—a year which has seen so much activity in this Assembly—and it is the role that we shall continue to pursue in the work of this Assembly in the months that lie ahead of us.
4. The crisis which now confronts the Middle East - affecting, as it does so directly, small States on both sides of the dispute — has concerned us deeply. Along with so many others, we strove during the fifth emergency special session earlier this year not merely to help to end the war but to secure a lasting peace in that troubled area. Those efforts must continue, and the need for them grows greater as the issues become clouded by distrust and resentment, by hatred and by fear. We believe that success may yet attend those efforts if all parties to the conflict show a greater willingness to seek a reasonable way out, Only negotiation can point the way to peace, and only a determination on the part of all to pursue a vision of the future in which peace is lasting will bring that permanent calm which is so essential to the well-being and advancement of the many millions of people who live within the area.
5. Yet in our search for a solution there is one overriding principle which must not be lost sight of. It is that the acquisition of territory by force cannot and must not be condoned either individually by Member States or collectively by the international community. That principle has been reinforced by what must surely be the lesson of recent events: that recourse to force and the perpetuation of a state of war offer no solution to international disputes. The Charter of this great Organization upholds that principle, and Member States cannot afford simply to pay lip service to it. In the seventh decade of the twentieth century the developing nations in particular need a firm assurance — which only a keen international conscience and an effective world order can provide — that they can be free to use their slender resources, both human and material, in the vital tasks of change and improvement to which they are so inevitably committed. They need to be freed of the burden of bearing arms in defence of their right to survive as sovereign States. Issues vital to the survival of the small State in many parts of the world are here at stake. Many of us live in the shadow of territorial claims — claims often advanced by larger and more powerful neighbours — which threaten the right of small States to make their way in the world. This Organization must stand behind the independence and the territorial integrity of all States, including those it has helped to bring to freedom.
6. What I have said about the need for a determined approach to a negotiated settlement in the Middle East must apply with even greater emphasis to the situation in Viet-Nam. There is no peace in the world while that conflict rages. It must be the duty of this Assembly to make use of all its resources in examining and exploring the means by which international conciliation may contribute to a peaceful settlement. In these efforts let it never be the case that peace in our time is made to take second place to a sterile emphasis on the machinery which was itself designed to promote it.
7. In the Latin American region commendable success has recently attended the efforts of the Governments of that region to contribute tangibly to the cause of world peace. The Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America [see A/6663], signed in Mexico last February, is a notable step forward in curtailing the spread of nuclear weapons through the creation of nuclear-free zones. The Government of Guyana shares fully the motives that have guided Latin American Governments in the negotiation of the Treaty and endorses the principles and procedures embodied in its text for fulfilment of those aspirations for peace.
8. It is, therefore, a matter of deep regret and concern to my Government that, by virtue of the exclusionary provisions of article 25 of that Treaty, Guyana is precluded from being a signatory. The explanation of this exclusion lies in the controversy between Venezuela and the United Kingdom over the validity of the international arbitral Award of 1899 by which the boundary between Venezuela and Guyana was established. A solution to that controversy — with which, on attaining independence, my Government became associated — is being pursued through machinery established for the purpose, and it is not my wish to advert to these matters on this occasion. However, I must express the deep disappointment of my Government that that controversy should be made the basis of Guyana's exclusion from participation in the regional arrangements for a nuclear-free zone in Latin America — all the more so since, by their very nature, those arrangements must depend for total success on the degree to which they are truly comprehensive and all-embracing.
9. But these great issues of war and peace that we pursue so imperfectly are no more important than the fate of the human personality within the boundaries of nations. Indeed, our efforts for peace among nations must always fail to attain their maximum effect while within nations systems persist under which men are so far denied their basic rights as individuals that peace becomes no less a solitude than that which war may bring.
10. This Organization has achieved much in advancing the cause of the equality of all men. Already many hundreds of millions have been led out of the depression of colonial status to the self-respect of nationhood. But that work is not yet done and what lies ahead demands the full commitment of every State in which individual freedom has meaning. Human dignity is not divisible by continents or countries; there are no geographic or ethnic boundaries which may confine it. The misery, humiliation and oppression which are the under-pinnings of the racist minority regimes in South Africa and in Rhodesia shame all mankind; and for so long as the Government of Portugal continues to withhold the right of self- determination from millions of people in Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea, in open contravention of the wishes of this Assembly, the integrity of our commitment as a world Organization to the principle of independence is tangibly diminished.
11. It was with a consciousness of these matters that my Government accepted the invitation to serve on the United Nations Council for South West Africa established by this Assembly [resolution 2248 (S-V)] at its fifth special session earlier this year. We have not been unmindful that in some respects the establishment of the Council places in issue the authority of the United Nations. On the other hand, one is bound to ask the question whether we do not do more harm to the authority and standing of the United Nations by declining each challenge to its authority rather than facing the challenge and isolating those members of international society who are prepared to stand aside from the mainstream of international justice and co-operation. Surely it must be the case that the greater the solidarity among those nations accepting these principles, the more effective must be the isolation of those who deny them.
12. It remains for this Assembly to determine — and this is as true of Rhodesia as it is of South Africa — whether a single régime can, at this stage of organized international effort, be permitted to challenge international society and to flout the international order in which mankind everywhere has reposed its trust. If the international order proceeds always on a theory of survival which requires that every confrontation with power be avoided, it will not be long before it loses the faith and respect of the people of the world without which its survival would be meaningless.
13. And yet, political problems are by no means the only ones that cry out for solution at the international level. For the greater part, the economies of the developing nations stagger under the burden of falling growth rates, decreasing flows of capital investment from the developed countries, uncertain markets for their products, and population increases accompanied by disastrous personnel shortages in the professional and technological fields. And the disaster is compounded when our own experts are absorbed into the thriving economies of the developed nations, leaving us to benefit as best we may from the technological "charity" of the more advanced countries. It is a sad reality that in this particular area the developed nations have gained so much more than they have given — or even acknowledged.
14. The Secretary-Generals annual report [A/6701] has made painfully clear how little has been achieved since 1964 when the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) came into being. As so many others who have spoken before me have pointed out, despite its high promises the Kennedy Round has been a triumph for the developed countries and a bitter disappointment for the developing countries, where the need for improvement was so much greater. Against this background of disappointment the urgent need to find solutions to the problems of the developing nations is perhaps brought into finest focus by the UNCTAD projection that net lending to the developing countries will become negative by 1975 if present conditions and trends remain unchanged. The challenge of changing these conditions and reversing these trends must be accepted by the international community.
15. There are, of course, some respects in which we in the developing countries may help ourselves. In my own area of the Commonwealth Caribbean my Government has been militant in its promotion of regional unity, and already tangible steps have been taken in the direction of economic integration. Along with the Governments of Barbados and Antigua, we have taken the first step towards the creation of a regional trade market in arrangements agreed upon for a Caribbean free trade area. Later this month the heads of all Commonwealth Caribbean Governments will be considering proposals, already discussed at official level, for the widening of the free trade area as part of a phased establishment of a sub-regional common market. We are also considering a report by the United Nations Development Programme Preparatory Mission for the establishment of a Caribbean Regional Development Bank, to whose funds we are prepared to contribute more than the normal governmental share and for which we hope the developed countries will be willing to demonstrate their strong support in practical ways. We shall continue in these efforts, for we accept the initial obligation to promote and establish those institutional arrangements which will best advance our own development and that of the region of which we are a part.
16. But economic integration will fail to meet the urgent needs of our society — indeed, it may fail altogether — if the movement towards economic union is permitted to falter before the counter-pressures of political fragmentation. Conscious as we are of the difficulties which beset the small States of the world, my Government is mindful always of the dangers of still further fragmentation. Whether in the Caribbean or, indeed, anywhere else in the world, no worthy cause is served — certainly not the cause of an ordered international society — by secessionist movements which seek achievement of their aims through an investment in rebellion.
17. Within recent times there has been in the Caribbean a situation of this kind in the former British colony of St, Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla — now a State in association with the United Kingdom, This situation posed grave implications for constitutional government throughout the region, since what was involved was an illegal attempt in Anguilla to displace the lawful authority of the State.
18. At the request of the Governments concerned, the Governments of Guyana and other Commonwealth Caribbean countries sought to mediate the dispute. Our efforts were directed to a peaceful solution of the problem based on a return to constitutional government on terms which would advance the economic development of the island and provide a rational system of local government. These efforts have so far failed in their objective — a failure which has been influenced by attempts at the international level to sponsor the cause of the insurgents. Some of these attempts have had little to do with the State or with the region. Some have been centred on the promotion of theories of international organization relating to small communities; others appear to have their origin in battles long ago, and sometimes not so long ago or far away.
19. The Governments of the region in which such events occur cannot be indifferent to the fate of constitutional government in their part of the world any more than this Organization can endorse the cause of the illegal overthrow of Governments or of governmental authority anywhere. Let us realize that it is futile for us to make valiant efforts to maintain the rule of law at the international level if, simultaneously, through a facile romanticism, or even less worthy considerations, we give comfort and support to those who are prepared to pursue solutions to social, political or economic problems by way of the illegal dismantling of constitutional government and the establishment of new States on the foundations of outlaw régimes.
20. Let us remember always when we promote our theories, when we indulge our tastes for dragon slaying, that what we may be promoting is fragmentation of society and that the dragon slain may turn out to be the embodiment of lawful government. Above all, let no approach to the problem of the small society address itself to the breaking-up of political entities already in existence for this would leave open to disintegration many of the world's great archipelagoes. It is to the building of societies and to the preservation of an environment of peace in which they may prosper that this Organization must remain dedicated. To that work my delegation is fully committed.