20. Mr. President, once again it is my privilege to address you and the Members of this Assembly on behalf of my country, the Republic of Malawi, and to offer my humble contribution to this debate in the form of an expression of my country's views on a number of major world issues which will be engaging the attention of this august body.
21. First of all, Mr. President, before I touch upon matters surrounded by certain elements of controversy, I should like to address myself to one matter on which there is no controversy, namely, your own election to the Presidency of the twenty-second session of the General Assembly. The fact that you have been elected as our President for the duration of this session of the Assembly without one dissentient vote speaks for itself, and on behalf of my country I should like to offer to you our unreserved congratulations on your appointment to this high office.
22. Perhaps I need say no more than that Your Excellency's well-known personal qualities of patience, tact and impartiality and your distinguished career in the service of your country all point to you as a most fitting person to lead us on this occasion. I therefore, as I have said, tender to you personally my country's congratulations on the tribute that has been paid to your personal qualities by your election to this high office.
23. I should also like before I go on to other things, to pay tribute to Your Excellency's distinguished predecessor in office as President of this Assembly and to offer to him, too, my country's congratulations on the superb and admirable spirit in which he piloted to success the twenty-first session of this Assembly. Perhaps the most eloquent testimony of the success of his term of office as President of the twenty-first session was the fact that he was subsequently reelected also to the Presidency of the ensuing fifth special session of this Assembly which it was necessary to call later in the year to consider certain matters of grave concern to the peace of the world. Seldom have we been privileged to enjoy the leadership of so distinguished a diplomat and so impartial a President as His Excellency Mr. Abdul Rahman Pazhwak, whose term of office will long be remembered for its excellence by all of us here.
24. We are nearing the end of our general debate this year and we have been privileged to listen to many distinguished speakers who, whether we agree with them or not, contributed much to our understanding of the grave and difficult issues which lie before us for consideration; and what previous speakers have said has gone far towards clarifying in our minds the differing points of view on these important matters which, in the interest of the peace and prosperity of the world as a whole, it is our duty here to try to settle and reconcile if we are not to lose sight of the true reasons why we are gathered here in this Assembly. To the greater knowledge and wider experience of many of those who have spoken before me I pay tribute, and it is with some hesitancy that I rise to speak at all in such a distinguished gathering. It is not my intention to take up a great deal of the valuable time of this Assembly, but there are some matters upon which my country feels that it must make clear its views, and to that end, Mr. President, I must crave your indulgence and that of the Members of this Assembly for a short while.
25. I have said that there will be no need for me to take up a great deal of the valuable time of this Assembly, and indeed that is so, for my country's views on most of the major issues which come before the world body have already been made abundantly clear on previous occasions, and in most cases those views have remained unchanged. There is therefore no need for me to indulge in tedious repetition.
26. There has, however, emerged during the past year one major issue which has caused all of us who support the true aims of this Organization and strive for the attainment of true peace in the world the gravest distress. I refer, of course, to the outbreak in June this year of open warfare between the State of Israel and the United Arab Republic. That the well-known and long-standing antipathy between two subscribing Member States of this Organization should have been allowed to reach such a pitch is of credit to none of us assembled here today. But recriminations will serve no useful purpose. It is our task as the guardians of the peace of the world not to devote our energies to the apportionment of the blame but to apply ourselves to the problem of restoring peace of a lasting nature to that unhappy part of the world.
27. It is the view of my Government, however, that before we can hope to achieve that end there are two prerequisites. First, all of us must stop talking about not recognizing the State of Israel, and secondly we must use every endeavour to bring together round the conference table the two opposing parties to that conflict. They must come together on an equal footing, with mutual respect for each other's determination to settle differences without resort to violence. In our view any nation which does not subscribe to those aims is not fit to be a Member of the United Nations Organization.
28. It has long been a source of surprise to my Government that any nation which purports to be a Member of the United Nations, to subscribe to its aims and purposes, and to support its decisions duly and constitutionally made, can maintain with any sense of righteousness and dignity the contention that Israel is not a fully independent sovereign State, entitled as fully as any other State to the dignity and respect of full recognition as such, or lend support to any nation which does so maintain.
29. The State of Israel is a creation of the United Nations Organization itself in pursuance of a decision taken in due form in 1947 [resolution 181 (II)]. How then can any one of us here claim with any semblance of sincerity and clear conscience in one breath, that the State of Israel should not be recognized as a fully independent sovereign State, as much entitled to respect and recognition as any other independent country in the world today, and In the same breath claim to be a genuine and sincere Member of this Organization and supporter of its ideals. In the name of my country I call upon anyone who does so to examine his own conscience and ask himself whether such an attitude is in any way compatible with continuing membership of this world body to which we are all, I hope, justly proud to belong.
30. Violence never produced a lasting solution to any dispute. Many of us, from time to time, have disagreements with our neighbours and do not see eye to eye with our fellow men, but there is only one way of settling our differences, and that is by getting together round a conference table in a spirit of true mutual respect for each other's point of view and with a genuine determination to resolve our differences.
31. The State of Israel has declared itself ready and willing to do just this, but we understand that it has received little response from the other side. Just as it takes two to make a quarrel, so, too, it takes two or more to make peace. If, therefore, Israel's enemies in this conflict refuse, for any reason whatsoever, to meet it half-way in this matter and to show willingness to try and bring about a cessation of tension and a lasting peace in the Middle East based on a proper respect for each other's sovereign rights, then it is difficult in the extreme to believe that they genuinely desire peace, and one is led to the inevitable conclusion that such an attitude of mind is one which desires to see perpetuated an atmosphere of tension, hatred and mistrust. Such an attitude of mind we cannot condone.
32. During the past year, there has been in many quarters a strengthening of antipathy towards the Republic of South Africa. There have been calls to boycott South Africa, there have been calls to ostracize it; there have been calls to isolate it, and there have been resolutions [2145 (XXI) and 2248 (S-V)] calling for the termination of its administration of the Territory of South West Africa. Why? For one reason and one reason only, an understandably inherent dislike of the philosophy of apartheid and the principles which sustain that system. I have already made it clear in the past that we in Malawi hold no brief whatsoever for the policy of apartheid as a way of life and that our belief in non-racial democracy is completely at variance with the principles of apartheid, and we would be no less pleased than anyone to see those principles abandoned, but to be of any lasting value such abandonment must be voluntary. Threats of coercion and force will only strengthen more the determination of the followers of that way of life to adhere to it, and believe me, they are in a position to do so.
33. We must be realistic in our approach to this problem. We must respect the fact that South Africa has chosen to follow this philosophy of life in its domestic affairs, and we must apply in our approach to the ideological problem which this has set us the principle, on which we all set great store, of non-interference in the domestic affairs of Member States of this Organization. Threats and violent diatribes against South Africa will get us nowhere. After all, South Africa is not the only country In the world that has adopted in the conduct of its affairs a philosophy which others do not like; some of us assembled here do not like the philosophy of communism which has been adopted by many Member countries In the conduct of their domestic affairs; others of us do not like the philosophy of capitalism upon which others have equally based the conduct of their domestic affairs, but we do not seek to put over the ideals in which we believe and to bring about the abandonment of philosophies in which we do not believe, by direct and forcible intervention in each other's affairs. We seek to do so by example and persuasion, by social and diplomatic contacts, and by intercourse with each other in the hope that those ideals in which we each believe may one day prevail.
34. In this same spirit we must approach the problem of apartheid. In the address which I was privileged to make to this Assembly last year, I said:
"The philosophy of apartheid is a philosophy of fear — the non-African's fear of the African — and it is only by example that such fears can be proved groundless and eradicated.
"Country after country in Africa has proved beyond any shadow of doubt that it is possible for both African and non-African peoples to live in harmony and peace together and to pool their knowledge and abilities for the common good of the countries to which they belong and to which they owe their allegiance ...
"We look forward to the day when the authorities in South Africa may be persuaded that the non-African has nothing to fear from the African and thereby be persuaded, through the examples set in other countries where harmony between the races is so amply demonstrated, that the time has come to abandon their concept of apartheid." [1436th meeting, paras. 26-28.]
35. Those are still our beliefs in Malawi today, and we are more firmly convinced than ever that the happy state of affairs which those beliefs envisage cannot be brought about by threats and hostility. In pursuance of those beliefs my Government has, since we met here this time last year, entered into an agreement with the Government of South Africa to establish diplomatic relations. That decision has been met in some quarters with expressions of surprise and antipathy which we find difficult to understand when the problem is viewed in the cold light of reality.
36. Communist countries do not shun diplomatic relations with capitalist countries merely because they do not see eye to eye with the philosophies of the latter; capitalist countries do not openly decry and seek to interfere by force with the domestic practices of communist countries. They readily indulge in diplomatic, social and cultural exchanges one with the other in the hope that each may influence the other towards acceptance of what they conceive to be for the common good. Indeed the existence of such circumstances is not, as some people seem to think, a reason for avoiding diplomatic relations but, on the contrary, all the more reason for establishing them. Why, therefore, should not a similar approach to the problems of apartheid in South Africa have the same potential hopes of success. We in Malawi are firm believers in the practical approach to the problems of the world, and we believe that where other approaches to this problem have failed, our approach is at least a practical one and has at least some chance of success.
37. Two years ago, when I was privileged to deliver to this Assembly [1338th meeting] a message from the then Prime Minister of Malawi, I made clear my Government's views on the subject of the admission to the world body of the People's Republic of China. Since then, I regret to say, we appear to have come no nearer to solution of this difficult and controversial problem, and I feel that it is incumbent upon me to make clear once again my Government's stand on this issue.
38. On that occasion I made it clear that we in Malawi took the view that to ignore the very existence of the People's Republic of China and to deny in principle to that country the right to membership of the world body altogether was unrealistic and unsupportable. At the same time, however, I made it equally clear that my Government considered that before favourable consideration could be given to the possible admission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations three important conditions must be fulfilled.
39. First of all, it must be agreed by all concerned that the admission or otherwise of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations must be accepted as being an "important question" within the meaning of Article 18 of the United Nations Charter, requiring a decision by a two-thirds majority of the Members present and voting, and I went on to say that in the opinion of my Government the past record of the People's Republic of China in world affairs was not such as to warrant any departure from that rule in its favour. My Government is still of that opinion.
40. Secondly, I went on to say that it was the view of my Government that under no circumstances should admission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations result in the expulsion therefrom of the Republic of China which, in addition to being a founder Member of this Organization, has for so many years been a staunch supporter of its principles and all that it stands for. Here, again, my Government's views remain unaltered and under no circumstances will we vote in favour of the expulsion of the Republic of China from the United Nations.
41. The third condition which my Government laid down in 1965 as a prerequisite to our support of any motion for the admittance to the United Nations of the People's Republic of China was that that country should demonstrate a genuine change of heart in its attitude towards armed combat, its open interference in the affairs of other nations and its outspoken antipathy to the United Nations itself, coupled with a genuine willingness, if admitted, to respect and abide by the basic principles of the United Nations.
42. At that time it was my Government's hope that there would emerge in due course some manifestation of this on the part of the People's Republic of China. Regrettably this has not come to pass. Whilst still believing that the voice of the People's Republic of China could well be heard with advantage in this Assembly in certain circumstances, we in Malawi are still convinced that this could be so only if it spoke for a people which had shown a genuine change of heart in Its attitude towards world affairs in general and towards the principles for which the United Nations stands in particular. Until that came to pass, we believe that that voice would be no more than a disruptive influence designed to make even more difficult the already difficult tasks which face us. Accordingly, we are unable at the present time and in present circumstances to advocate the admission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations.
43. For the rest, my country's views and my Government's policies towards other grave matters which come before us for consideration remain in no way altered from those expressed in this Assembly in previous years, and I shall not therefore weary members with a repetition of them.
44. Before I close, however, it would be ungracious of me in the extreme if I were not to stress once again my Government’s appreciation of and gratitude for the assistance which we continue to receive from the economic, social and technical agencies of the United Nations. I have said that I would not indulge in the luxury of repetition of things already said before, but this is one exception where repetition is justified. As I said last year, the assistance which we as a developing country continue to receive from these agencies is of the greatest value to us in our struggle to create in Malawi a fully viable economy and to achieve a state of true economic as well as political independence. Without that aid our task would be immeasurably more difficult, and I wish to place on record once again our acknowledgement of the debt of gratitude which we owe not only to the United Nations and its specialized agencies themselves, but to those Member States of the world body whose persistently generous contributions to the coffers of the United Nations continue to make It possible for those agencies to carry on their tasks.
45. It is perhaps strange that this year, for the first time in many years, we are deprived of the pleasant privilege which has been ours in the past of welcoming new States as Members of the family of the United Nations. We are pleased to note, however, that this does not imply that we have reached the barren years and that the emergence of newly independent nations in the world today has ceased, but merely that the period of gestation has lengthened and that in due course we may hope to be in a position to welcome into our midst several more Member States which will by this time next year have gained their independence from the yoke of colonialism.