98. In an important speech made at the University of Santiago, Chile, about the middle of last year, the eminent statesman who has acceded to the unanimous wish of this General Assembly, expressed during the previous session, and is continuing to serve mankind as Secretary-General of the United Nations, said the followings
"The future of the United Nations, therefore, rests to a considerable degree with the small nations—in their sense of responsibility, their independence and objectivity, their dedication to the principles of the Charter and, above all, their collective determination to help attenuate and bring an end to the dangerous tensions which have affected international relations so adversely during the last twenty years.... A constant effort, year in and year out, on the part of all nations, both large and small, is essential to build a Lasting peace."
99. Inspired by those thoughts, which tally with the views that have so often been expressed at this rostrum by representatives of Costa Rica, I wish to reaffirm the faith of my compatriots in the ideals of the Charter signed at San Francisco, the determination of my country not to flag in its efforts to help to translate those ideals into living reality, and our hope that the day will come when, with the abatement of international tension and the improvement of the lot of the men of the undeveloped world, peace may reign on earth.
100.The relief of international tension and the improvement of the living conditions of the less fortunate sectors of mankind: these are the essential objectives that must be achieved before we can consider that the aspirations that brought this Organization into being have been fulfilled, These are the objectives that we must pursue, year in and year out, without respite and without discouragement, for we know full well that they are not easy to achieve.
101. Looking back over the last year to draw up a balance sheet, we can in truth find little encouragement in the list of successes achieved. On the contrary, it must be said that the period that has elapsed since the last session of the General Assembly has been a sad period in the history of the world, a period that has closed with a negative balance for the United Nations, since the progress that has been made in some fields has been counteracted by the stagnation, and even retrogression, in other aspects of the relations between nations and, which is even more important, relations between men.
102, It is certainly not encouraging to know that blood is still being shed in the peninsula of Viet-Nam and that its lines of communication and its industrial Installations are still being bombed, despite the promise made by the powerful nation that responded to the South Viet-Namese Government's appeal for help that it would put an end to the bombing as soon as the Hanoi Government announced that it would, in turn, cease its support of the guerrillas who are trying to destroy the democratic system established south of the 17th parallel.
103. Nor is there any cause for optimism in the persistence and intensification of the racist policy of the Government of the Republic of South Africa, which is completely deaf to the appeal of the United Nations and of men of goodwill throughout the world who ask it to cease the oft-condemned practice of apartheid immediately and which does not give the slightest sign that it intends to modify or relax the laws and regulations that the conscience of mankind cannot accept in this last third of the present century.
104. Again, it does not comfort the spirit to observe that, after twenty years of the existence of our Organization, a group of Member States denies the right to existence of another Member State and refuses to recognize its legal status as a sovereign person under international law, while that State — which came into being as the result of a resolution of the General Assembly — flouts another resolution of the same body and does what it will with territories about which the international community is entitled to state its wishes, since they are sacred to more than a thousand million human beings.
105. It is equally discouraging that, despite all the promises and all the efforts, the gap between the few rich countries and the many poor countries is widening as a result of a system of international trade that is daily becoming more favourable for the rich countries, because of the constant increase in the prices of manufactured goods, and more detrimental to the poor countries because of the equally constant fall in the prices of the basic commodities they export.
106. These, however, are the very challenges that we must face, the challenges that are the real reason for the existence of our Organization. We must face them with faith, for, as the illustrious man who is the spiritual head of many millions of human beings — His Holiness Pope Paul VI — has said, the United Nations is today mankind's last hope. And hope, as a desire that is rooted in the human soul, must stay with man until the last day of his existence.
107. We must make a supreme effort to put an end to the conflict in Viet-Nam and to bring the blessings of peace and progress to that long-suffering region of Asia. As Members of the body that came into being as a result of the determination to save the generations of today from the scourge of war, we cannot remain indifferent to a state of war that has been going on far too long, the more so when no one denies the fact that the three nuclear Powers with the greatest population are day after day increasing the support they are giving to the Governments of the peninsula, whether with armed forces, with more and more advanced and deadly instruments of war or with more and more financial assistance. All these are factors that by their very nature could cause the conflict to spread beyond the geographical limits within which it is now contained, bringing the world to the brink of a nuclear war that would mean the inevitable destruction of the civilization that has been built up at such cost by more than a hundred organizations. It is the earnest hope of the Government of Costa Rica that through the normal channels provided by our Organization, or by other ingenious means which the presence of the distinguished statesmen in this Assembly may bring to light, the final dialogue may start which will lead to the termination of the conflict and will enable the people of South Viet-Nam to decide their own future through the ample means of democratic consultation, free from all pressure or interference, open or hidden, from any country or any Power.
108. This Assembly must also endeavour to find the difficult, but necessary, formula that will bring permanent peace to the Middle East, putting an end to the undeclared war that has been going on intermittently throughout the life of the United Nations. The passage of time will not stanch the wounds, for passions run deep and there are great interests that could take advantage of them in a political manoeuvre of world-wide dimensions, to start the conflict all over again. On the other hand, it is not beyond hope that calm consideration of the facts and the circumstances will enable the enlightened leaders whose responsibility it is to watch over the destiny of these peoples to find the middle term of the just solution that will establish peaceful conditions where hitherto people have lived in a state of war. The heat of the battle is over, the smoke of gunfire that darkened the skies has disappeared and they can now see more clearly where the solution lies that will bring their peoples great and lasting benefits. We still think that, in its broad lines, the formula submitted by the delegations of the Latin American group of countries at the last emergency special session offers the best possibility of a temporary solution which will lead to a final solution of the related problems of the Middle East.
109. Another extremely dangerous situation is that which is still prevailing in southern Africa and to which I had occasion to refer during the general debate at our last regular session [1421st meeting] and that I subsequently described to the Legislative Assembly of my country in summary form, in the following terms:
"The policy of racial discrimination practised by several Governments in southern Africa and in extreme form in the Republic of South Africa has been condemned by the United Nations from the first days of its existence and has already given rise to a large number of resolutions calling for the abandonment of that policy. Indeed, these practices of separation and different treatment among men on the sole grounds of the colour of their skin and their ethnic origin run counter to the most fundamental human rights and the principles underlying the very concept of democracy; and today they are constituting a dangerous phenomenon that may one day lead to an armed clash of gigantic proportions between the men of different races who inhabit the African continent. Costa Rica has always supported proposals designed to condemn these inhuman practices and to ask the Governments to abandon them, and has bent all its efforts in favour of this noble cause from the seat it occupies in the Ad Hoc Committee of nine members set up for that purpose.
"Another of the serious problems facing the United Nations is the attitude of the Government of the Republic of South Africa with regard to the territory of the former German colonies in South West Africa, for that Government refuses to recognize the authority of the United Nations to declare the Mandate given to South Africa by the League of Nations terminated and claims that the territory belongs to it by right of conquest. This institutional conflict is extremely serious and the delegation of Costa Rica has made known its firm intention to uphold the validity of the legal principles that deny the existence of the right of conquest in the present era and its opinion that it is a basic right of any people to exercise self-determination and to live an independent life whenever the majority decides upon it by a free vote."
110. The situation has not changed since then and my Government, which still considers this to be one of the most dangerous problems for the future of large sections of the human race, promises that it will continue to give all its support in this struggle for the respect of human rights, which cannot end except with the victory of a noble cause.
111. This is the second time that I have attended the opening meetings of the General Assembly session and I thought it necessary to state my Government's views on the major problems which at the moment seem to be threatening the peace of the world, because of the possibility that they may jeopardize a large number of countries and because of the danger that one day or another they may give rise to large-scale international conflicts. They are not the only parts of the world where there is armed peace, or disguised belligerency, but today they are the greatest source of constant clashes and the greatest potential peril of a future holocaust. I have voiced the views of my country, which has made a religion of its love of peace and democracy, for no other reason than to demonstrate my people's solidarity with the high officials of the United Nations who are devoting all their energies to putting out the fires wherever they may break out and are sparing no effort in their quest for acceptable solutions that will enable mankind to contemplate his immediate future with less anxiety.
112. I shall now venture to take up a few more brief minutes of the General Assembly's time in order to refer to another big problem — a bloodless one this time, but none the less important — that should continue to receive the attention of the United Nations. It is a problem that directly affects my country, as also another eighty-five States Members of this Organization. I refer to the constant deterioration in the terms of trade between the products of the nations which we call "developing" and the products exported to those nations by the industrialized countries. And here I should like to quote some passages from a speech made recently by the President of Costa Pica in the presence of the Chiefs of State of twenty-one countries of America:
"Indeed," — said Mr. Trejos Fernandez — "the terms development and under-development seem, primarily, to be euphemisms, through the use of which the economic literature of our time has sought to mitigate the dramatic reality of extreme wealth existing side by side with extreme poverty — persons in the latter category not poor through any fault of their own, but because of the action of economic interests beyond their control. And just as there is no longer any question of the need for social action to prevent the wretched inequalities in income among the peoples within one country, so must we encourage acceptance of the idea that the welfare of humanity demands a firm effort to attenuate the disparities in incomes among two or more countries....This is the concept on which development policy and, in general, relations between the developed and the developing countries should be based. The latter certainly do not want a charitable hand-out from what might be called international income; they merely want an opportunity to improve their condition by their own efforts. We of the developing countries do not make our appeal to the people of the industrialized countries as taxpayers but as consumers. It is not our desire that they should pay more taxes to increase public aid for development policies.... It is not a policy of favouritism that we ask; what we demand of the highly-developed countries Is an opportunity to specialize and improve our production and to obtain therefrom the income that will enable our people to live with simple dignity ... the firm determination to integrate our action to bring price-levels of Latin America's agricultural and mining products in line with the rising prices of goods that science and technology make available to man to increase the enjoyment and ease of his life and work. In other words, if we have to pay high prices for the goods that our peoples so urgently and justifiably demand for their well-being, the prices of the products of our own soil and labour must be proportionately high."
113. The United Nations has been working through its specialized agencies on development programmes designed to correct the existing imbalance, which with the fall in agricultural prices is becoming worse. Those programmes, however, are far from reaching the recommended minimum of 1 per cent of the gross national product of the industrialized countries and they are considerably weakened by the premature servicing of interest and amortization to which the countries receiving the loans are committed. We have therefore welcomed the recent resolutions of the United Nations setting up such institutions as the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the United Nations Capital Development Fund, which supplement the work of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and offer new prospects for improving the economic and social conditions of the peoples who have not yet reached the minimum level acceptable in this century.
114. Costa Rica has always played an active part in the field of human rights and its delegations have been resolute in pursuing, day after day, the ideals of promoting and ensuring respect for those rights which are Inherent in the human person. It therefore gave my Government great satisfaction to sign the Covenants and Protocols on human rights adopted at the last session of the General Assembly [resolution 2200 (XXI)] and it is happy to note that at this session the Assembly will study the final stage of the plan for the establishment of the office of High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the basis of the draft resolution submitted by Costa Rica at the twentieth regular session of the General Assembly. My Government wishes to express the hope that this important office will be created during this session, despite the suspicion and reluctance with which the draft resolution has been viewed by a few highly respectable delegations.
115. I must also state that my Government is firmly convinced that the Treaty for the denuclearization of Latin America, which the Latin American countries signed recently at Tlatelolco, as a result, in particular, of the persistent efforts of prominent Mexican statesmen, constitutes a model for the signature of similar agreements that will finally lead to the prompt and total denuclearization of the world, so that the advances which the splitting of the atom has brought will be used only for the good of man and not for the destruction of mankind. My Government hopes, in particular, that the Governments of other regions, especially those which already possess nuclear weapons and those which are in a position to possess them in the future, will subscribe to the Additional Protocol II, so that the Treaty may have its full value and effect.
116. Before I close, Mr. President, I should like to offer you my congratulations on the well-deserved distinction that the General Assembly has bestowed upon you by electing you to this office, thus demonstrating its recognition of your merits and emphasizing the universality of our Organization, which is open to countries of every system and ideology, based on the principles of unity of the human race and the equality of rights of sovereign States, I also wish to state my Government's appreciation of the skilful, discreet and intelligent way in which Mr. Abdul Rahman Pazhwak directed the discussions at the last regular session, the emergency session and the emergency special session and to state how pleased our Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Mr. Luis Demetrio Tinoco, was to collaborate in those important functions as a Vice-President of the General Assembly and a member of the General Committee.
117. In conclusion, I should like to pay a tribute of respect to the Secretary-General and to express my wishes — which are those of the Government and people of Costa Rica — for the success of the work we are starting and for a future of peace, harmony and wellbeing for all the nations which have come together to offer mankind the blessings of progress and welfare.