76. The twenty-second general debate is drawing to a close. The unprecedented magnitude of the participation in this debate hardly leaves room for a statement pretending to say something new. I therefore propose to put before you, without any illusions but with profound concern, a few observations prompted by the state of international affairs and by the lining-up process which has marked the present debate. Our feeling is that the General Assembly seems to be meeting under the threefold sign of paradox, contradiction and misunderstanding.
77. Paradox, Mr. President, because your election constitutes the most eloquent tribute to the solidarity in action of progressive forces and to economic development based on social justice — in a word, a policy of change and realism. That tribute is all the more appropriate in that, as a leader of Romanian diplomacy, you have been one of the main advocates of this trend.
78. It is not paradox-seeking to observe that the homage paid to the eminently positive role assumed by the socialist Powers from the outset has been to a considerable extent due to the colonized countries of yesterday which today, while being integrated in the United Nations, still experience segregation on the part of those who do not really work for the community of nations.
79. Of course, there is also relaxation of tension between the Powers of the East and those of the West, which today, as we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Great October Revolution, recognize the eminently positive contribution of nations which at one time were ostracized. In addition to this self-evident fact, it must be made clear that, because of the upheavals it brought about, this Revolution sparked off a dynamic movement whose end is still far from being in sight. But this outlook is largely tempered by the new challenges to these very principles over most of the world.
80. Contradiction between words and deeds: where the word spells liberation, it is called aggression; where the act is aggression, it is called liberation; where there is a spontaneous revolutionary uprising it is called foreign intervention; where there is foreign intervention, it is described as legitimate self-defence; where it is legitimate self-defence, the talk is of subversiveness.
81. Finally, misunderstanding; for the Charter, the rules of law and international relations are no longer construed as was originally intended, nor applied to the full. This downgrading amounts to querying every aspect of our principles and is reflected in a reappraisal of the equilibrium on which the United Nations was founded.
82. A sober analysis of the situation is bound to lead to the general observation that international relations are in a state of imbalance which, though it has come about gradually, is none the less general in scope. The primary cause of this is the prodigious development of the economic, technological and military strength of one of the leading Powers; the second is the refusal of some Powers to accept all the premises and all the implications of the policy of peaceful coexistence; and the final cause is to be seen in an equivocal search for formulas to maintain a stepwise balance of armaments.
83. This analysis of the situation can be illustrated by the fact that sustained efforts to bring about the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and to stake out the ground for a nuclear defence system have occurred almost simultaneously, a fact which will inevitably create two categories of nuclear Powers.
84. Algeria’s opinion is that this important question should be considered from a completely different angle, by accepting various political commitments and bearing in mind the proper interests of all States, nuclear and non-nuclear, considered not in isolation or by kindred groupings, but as a whole, since solidarity is the only option for all.
85. In the same connexion, we cannot but welcome the proposals to ban the use of nuclear weapons and the suggestions for a much-needed curb on armaments. The latter suggestions must be made within an appropriate political and strategic framework where the curbs will be inescapable.
86. Is it appropriate, is it indeed necessary to refer here to the decisive factor we perceive when we observe the absence, either intentional or condoned, of the People's Republic of China from our deliberations and our search for solutions to international problems?
87. A similar imbalance is evident between the great nuclear Powers as a whole and those which are at the pre-nuclear technical development stage. Those Powers today face conditions which tomorrow could lead them to the stage where their full sovereignty, their capacity for development, and their security could be challenged, or at the very least jeopardized. This imbalance could give rise to serious upheavals in Asia, in Latin America, and perhaps even in Europe.
88. The disparity between the developed and the developing countries as a whole has two main manifestations; first of all, that inherent in developing societies, and consisting not so much in the establishment of independence as in the consolidation of independence. The former step has led to a clash between national liberation movements seeking to solve their structural problems, and imperialist forces. The other step reveals the temptation either to curb and control the development of new Powers or to impose a kind of domination, not in a formal way but no less effective for all that. The second form has to do with colonial problems. This is all the more acute in that decolonization no longer responds to the classic formula of unimpeded implementation of the principle of self-determination of peoples and the struggle against foreign domination and unqualified national sovereignty.
89. These two phenomena are tragically illustrated by two crises which, if allowed to develop, could turn this imbalance into a total collapse of the international edifice. The two crises are, of course, those of the Middle East and South-East Asia. Strategic concepts cannot conceal the bitter reality of the problems and their true nature. In either case, a certain parallelism has been suggested between the cessation of the bombing of North Viet-Nam and the evacuation of the occupied Arab territories. In both cases what is sought is an end to belligerent actions or provocative statements; in both cases the parties claim to be ready for direct negotiations.
90. It is not surprising, therefore, to find both protagonists in these conflicts adopting an identical stand, with regard to the problems common to them. Together, they make a great show of procedures superficially attractive, the better to disguise the substance of problems which disturb public opinion and frustrate the Organization. These procedures, call them negotiations, mediations, non-military solutions, what you will, are designed to create the impression that there is agreement on the essential issues. To put forward fancy agreements, in the one case, or high-sounding treaties, in the other, is tantamount to regarding the problems as settled. The will to negotiate cannot possibly precede, let alone replace, the will to face the real problems, in their true nature and proportions, with political courage and intellectual probity. Thus, and only thus, can headway be made towards satisfactory solutions.
91. As far as the Middle East is concerned, as in the case of Viet-Nam the problem has two aspects: that of the inalienable rights of a nation, and that of aggression against its territory. This aggression has brought out the relationship between the occupation of the territories of sovereign States and what we must still continue to call the Palestine question.
92. For this question is still the backcloth for any thorough-going analysis of the Middle East crisis. We ourselves believe that for a proper understanding of the problem, certain hard facts must be recalled. The hard fact is that the Palestine problem raises all the questions involved both in colonialist settlement and in the antithesis of liberation and domination. The hard fact is that Israel constitutes a now classic example of the colonialist phenomenon which by implanting a foreign population, by its way of life, by the organic links it maintains and develops with foreign elements, constitutes a provocation, an invitation to strife, a seed of evil which continues to afflict a part of mankind. The hard fact is that this Zionist implantation in Palestine engendered the tragedy of Palestine. The problem of Palestine is in origin a problem of national liberation,, one which brings a people driven out of their homeland face to face with population of foreign origin. It follows that the role of the Arab States is nothing more than that of supporting the national cause of the people of Palestine.
93. This is the context in which we must place Israel's aggression against the United Arab Republic, Syria and Jordan, on 5 June 1967. It need hardly be recalled that this aggression, premeditated on the part of Israel and encouraged by certain Powers, resulted in the occupation of vast areas of sovereign States, Members of this Organization.
94. The fact that the United Nations, once the matter was brought before it, was unable to assume its responsibilities under the Charter and condemn the aggression and insist on the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Israel troops from the occupied Arab territories was because certain Powers, to safeguard strategic interests, blocked the normal functioning of the General Assembly convened in emergency special session. The lessons to be drawn by the international community are to be found in the clearly expressed will of those same Powers not to deal with the substance of matters concerning world society on a strict footing of equality, with the participation of the new nations.
95. Today, the urgent task before this Assembly must be to make every effort to remove the consequences of Israel's aggression and to demand the immediate withdrawal of the Zionist troops from the occupied Arab lands. To impose prior conditions for such withdrawal is tantamount to condoning the aggression, endorsing the policy of the aggressor, and leading the United Nations to renounce the basic principles of the Charter and reach an impasse. In insisting on unconditional withdrawal, the United Nations will be doing nothing more than fulfilling an international obligation.
96. In this connexion, we must recall that the reason why the situation in that region has always been unstable is because Israel has systematically boycotted the Mixed Armistice Commission set up by the United Nations and has constantly violated the General Armistice Agreements, the United Nations Charter and the resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly. I need hardly repeat that Israel's policy of expansion beyond the armistice lines has been merely the beginning of its systematic violations.
97. Conquest as a means of acquiring territory is a practice condemned by the United Nations Charter, This means that occupation does not create any right for the aggressor State, let alone authorize it to lay down conditions for the evacuation of the territories it occupies. By a shocking euphemism, this war of aggression and occupation has been dubbed a "struggle for survival”.
98. The survival of men has since been followed up by the survival of the motivation of the expansionist policy: more and more immigrants, more and more territory, more and more centres of colonization, more and more arrogant obstinacy in completely denying the identity of Palestine. If we are to talk of recognizing the right to live, is it not high time, precisely when the people of Palestine are yearning for a new lease of life, to grant it this right, elementary perhaps, but nevertheless absolute? The state of tension that generates war will continue to threaten the Middle East so long as this right to existence is denied.
99. On this point, Algeria has always considered that the problem of Palestine is essentially political in nature, and that its solution is therefore bound to be political. The object of the struggle of the Arab peoples is first and foremost the restoration of a lawful right that has been ignored. It is useful to recall that this attitude, which has been deliberately distorted, has never involved, as has been alleged, the liquidation of the population living in the territory of Palestine.
100. Today more than ever before, the United Nations must take all appropriate measures to ensure the implementation of its resolutions concerning the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland. My delegation considers that these measures are a step in the direction of a just and peaceful solution of this distressing problem.
101. To stress the shortcomings of the United Nations is not to question its motives; on the contrary, we wish to induce the Organization to face the problems, drawing the lessons to be learned from its own trials and tribulations, and from its failures. It would not be incorrect to state that there is in this Assembly an almost unanimous consensus as to the imperative need for the occupation forces to withdraw from the territories of the United Arab Republic, Syria and Jordan.
102. This brings us to another aspect of the problem which dominates the Middle East situation: that of security. The main cause of the insecurity felt by the Arab world can be traced to the creation of Israel as a foreign body in the area. Hostile and powerful propaganda has painted the picture of a territory encircled and menaced by its neighbours, so as to falsify any objective appraisal of the problems arising in the region. The periodic upheavals which have shaken that part of the world have thrown light on the true extent of the insecurity which pervades all the Arab States. Who is in a state of insecurity today? First of all the Palestinian people, who have had to choose between Israel reservations and UNRWA camps. Next the United Arab Republic, whose eastern sector is still occupied. Then Syria, whose capital, Damascus, continues to be threatened with occupation; and Jordan, where a veritable military colonization is in operation.
103. We have been told that "collective suicide is not an international obligation". But the very ones who hawk these wares are the advocates of the collective liquidation of the Palestine national community. Can it not be argued that the state of tension and war into which the Middle East has been plunged is the outcome precisely of this collective liquidation? Can it not be realized that the Palestine nation, mutilated as are its limbs, is none the less alive? Cannot the evidence of resistance whose echoes, although stifled, reach us every day, be assessed at their true value? Is it not a known fact that the preservation and reaffirmation of national identity inspires the most sacred quest a people can embark on? Can the Arab peoples be expected to participate in the final liquidation of a sister nation? Can anyone believe that because the Palestine entity has been erased for a time from the map of the Middle East, it will disappear for ever? If that were the case, what happened in Poland could happen in Palestine. You have been told, time and time again, that the Arab Governments come to the United Nations to complain of the obstinate refusal of Israel to disappear. Do they not understand, or do they refuse to understand, that the only request of the Arab peoples is the one put forward by the Palestinian people?
104. If the phenomena which led to the Middle East crisis are not entirely to be found in Viet-Nam, we certainly find all the other factors there. For the struggle waged by the Viet-Namese people for more than twenty years is the result of the denial of the right of the Viet-Namese nation to consolidate its independence on the basis of the principles to which a tribute was paid by electing you, Sir, to the Presidency. What do the people of North and South Viet-Nam want but to develop, in a necessarily unitary framework, a national sovereignly without partitioning, and to build up a democratic, peaceful society without interference of any kind?
105. Admittedly, for reasons peculiar to the Viet-Namese conflict, the United Nations could not in any event claim the right to intervene in this vexatious problem through formal channels.
106. However, we cannot and must not shirk our obligations towards world peace. On the contrary we must manifest our deep concern, for side by side with the intensification of massacre without precedent in the history of Viet-Nam by the most up-to-date armaments, North Viet-Nam, a small country, has for nearly three years been hammered by the air and sea armadas of the United States. Who would dare to question that this conflict is leading, as things are at present, towards a conflagration of incalculable magnitude?
107. To persist today in placing on the same footing the intervention of a foreign Power in Viet-Nam and the perfectly natural solidarity between the parts of a single country and a single people is not merely to compound an injustice but also to reject any scale of recognized values. Whatever the trials and tribulations of the Viet-Namese people, it remains one and indivisible. The unity of people and territory are two privileges which the people of Viet-Nam are entitled to enjoy, like any other people in the world. Moreover, is this right not explicitly stated in the 1954 Geneva Agreements?
108. So long as the escalation against North Viet-Nam is continued and the prospects of an invasion by American armed forces are likely, and so long as it is obstinately denied that the people of South Viet-Nam, led by the National Liberation Front, are fighting for their national rights and for an independent, democratic, peaceful, neutral and prosperous South Viet-Nam, any prospect of a political solution emerging will remain problematical.
109. In this connexion, as in the case of the Middle East, the importance of the methods used has been stressed rather than the political objectives. This misunderstanding is no chance occurrence. It rests on the fact that the United States is trying to convince itself that it is fighting the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam and not the people of South Viet-Nam, that is to say, not the whole of the Viet-Namese nation. Having convinced itself of that basic premise, the United States proposes a kind of deal which would restore Viet-Nam to a state of perpetual partition. This is what is meant, seemingly, by a "return to the Geneva Agreements". This error must be corrected. The main obstacle to be avoided in the search for peace in Viet-Nam is that of allowing the apparent similarity of phraseology to conceal differences in substance. The point is not so much a return to the Geneva Agreements as the unequivocal acceptance of the unrestricted implementation of those Agreements.
110. This implies the cessation of the bombing of North Viet-Nam is a categorical obligation which by its very nature is not negotiable. It implies the evacuation of foreign, that is to say non-Viet-Namese, troops and bases. It implies also the ultimate recognition that the National Liberation Front is an obvious, indispensable and valuable participant in any dialogue.
111. Algeria therefore shares the view that the restoration of peace and unity to Viet-Nam necessarily presupposes the re-establishment of all the conditions laid down in the 1954 Geneva Agreements and the
implementation of all their clauses. Restoration of peace likewise presupposes the recognition of the National Liberation Front, with which, short of perpetuating a state of chaos, peace formulas will have to be worked out. A reasonable and workable platform for the emergence of a peaceful, independent and neutral South Viet-Nam has recently been devised by the emergency congress of the movement.
112. With the accession of Aden to independence in the near future, the international community will then be confronted, not with "administrative and economic" colonization, but with the colonization of settlement. This will inevitably lead the United Nations to reconsider, if not the guiding principles, at least the measures of implementation of its decolonization policy.
113. In this connexion, the Organization will have to consider the best ways and means of coping with the type of problem raised with particular acuteness by southern Africa. Until now, despite praiseworthy efforts, it has not been possible to examine this problem in its proper context. Moreover, a wide-ranging examination should enable us to discover ways and means which, however gradual, could stimulate a favourable dialectical process within the country concerned provided they were applied in time. This should in no way be regarded as an adventure, but should rather be undertaken in the quiet conviction that a society founded on racial superiority is doomed to failure.
114. Refusal to countenance these inevitable confrontations or to adopt an equivocal attitude is tantamount, whatever anyone may say, to succouring the present masters of southern Africa. But if there was any peaceful solution, it would undeniably be due to the fact that the Western world, either in its own interests or to adhere more closely to the picture it draws of itself, had finally undertaken to assume with the international community the responsibilities which no one can escape.
115. Clearly the foregoing lengthy analysis implies repercussions not confined to the political sphere as such. The international situation I have described has consequences in the social and economic fields as well.
116. Mr. Philippe de Seynes, Under-Secretary for Economic Affairs, stressed this a few days ago when he inaugurated the work of the Second Committee [1109th meeting]. He intimated that if the year 1966-1967 had on the whole been a good one for the industrialized countries, the same had not always been true of the developing countries.
117. Thus, as regards trade problems, the Kennedy Round did little or nothing to extend the benefits of its provisions to the countries that need them most. Even if the intention was expressed of resuming this task — which can only be described as uncompleted — at a later date, it would only underline once again the concern of the major and the medium Powers to work out among them a common stand to be taken in due course vis-à-vis the pressing requests from their less favoured partners.
118. This is why it is becoming more and more evident, precisely because of the concerted stand of the developed countries, which amounts to a crystallizing of supposed differences of interests between the northern and southern hemispheres, that the unity of the poorer countries is an imperious, vital and decisive need if excessively vulnerable economies are to be maintained and developed.
119. The Kennedy Round merely illustrates this strategy founded on the aristocratic club notion; but it is evident that the obstinate defence of certain vested interests is also found in great international bodies, which are often less concerned with the general interests of international society at the level of trade relations or financial settlements than with being a meeting-place for oligarchies wishing to mould these permanent institutions to the needs arising out of the evolution of their relative strength at a given moment.
120. Whether it be the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the International Monetary Fund or other institutions, one feels only too often that the settlement of the problems most vital to mankind, which are surely understood and stressed by the very ones who postpone them year after year, is only likely to come about in the framework of new negotiations and not in further petty squabbles which in the final analysis do not redound to anyone’s benefit.
121. As far as GATT is concerned, the problem is not so much to modify its spirit as to remodel its structures so as to adapt them better to the realities of the system on which trade has been based up to the present, and to facilitate the access of the new nations, which ardently desire it, to a world economic circuit where alone the problems of hunger and under-development can gradually be disposed of.
122. With regard to the International Monetary Fund, which the recent agreements have shown to be of great importance, it is high time it tried to apply the conclusions drawn from its studies, namely that the close interdependence characteristic of monetary phenomena, and the Fund's incalculable responsibility at the world level in respect of factors of development, fully justify a review of its machinery and in fact the implementation of its decisions, in the interests of the developing countries.
123. The question must be asked why, in this second half of the twentieth century, the great majority of the nations belonging to the Organization are still excluded from the international economic circuit which they helped at one time to develop.
124. It must be ascertained whether, really and truly, the fundamental role of the developing countries is for ever to serve as suppliers of raw materials to the industrialized countries, or whether they are not rather meant to rise within a reasonable time to the status of major partners in the world-wide economic dealings which will develop sooner or later.
125. It is because they are concerned about this knotty problem that many developing countries will be participating next February, at New Delhi, in the Second Conference on Trade and Development for which preparations are now being made by a ministerial committee of the Group of 77 at Algiers.
126. I need hardly stress with what interest and what hopes the countries of the Third World look forward to this great meeting and how greatly it could contribute, at the international level, towards smoothing out conflicts and anomalies which, unless care is taken, affect and are likely to affect more and more adversely the fate of millions of human beings.
127. The essential observation prompted by the state of international relations is, first of all, that there is a confrontation between two forces. One force is waging a bitter struggle for national independence, and gathered round it are the peoples engaged in anti-colonial liberation movements and opposing neocolonialist domination. The other force unites those who are trying desperately to maintain the status quo, in other words to perpetuate all forms of domination. The fact that the former are in a minority today can only incite them to intensify their efforts. This is what has always happened.
128. The balance of forces as seen here in the Assembly constitutes a twofold lesson on the distance we have still to travel. It need hardly be said that this state of affairs cannot go on in the world for the obvious reason that an organized international community is not possible when there is a lack of balance which challenges the very principles of an international order accepted by all.
129. If I may impose on the good nature of this Assembly a moment longer I would say that if history has a meaning, it is the meaning given to it, in spite of failures and setbacks, or perhaps because of these failures and setbacks, by the community of men struggling and working to better, to alter, and to transform the existing state of affairs.