85. I should like to add my delegation's sincere congratulations to those already offered to the President on his election to preside over this twenty-second session of the General Assembly. We are particularly happy that this annual session has as its President, for the first time, an eminent figure from a socialist country. We would like to feel that this election is a sign, and even more, an augury, of harmonious understanding and closer co-operation between countries with different political systems.
86. For some years the Organization has been much criticized, and harshly criticized, because of certain amenities which in our opinion are in fact distributed satisfactorily. The presence of Mr. Manescu in this high office may lessen the effects of this to some extent — at any rate we sincerely hope so — since this session is likely to be dominated, more than any other, by the fundamental problem of war and peace.
87. I must also take this opportunity to pay a tribute to Mr. Pazhwak for his valiant efforts and for the skill with which he presided over the most recent sessions of the General Assembly; for this he deserves our thanks and our gratitude.
88. The past year has been marked by outbreaks of violence and hatred everywhere in the world. The escalation of war is paralleled by an escalation of hate, resentment and distress. Violence, as Secretary-General U Thant pointed out in his annual report [A/670l/Add.1] is no longer the exception but the rule. Millions of human beings are worried about their future. The sacred principles of the United Nations Charter are abused and flouted to the point where the Organization, as it enters upon its twenty-second year of existence, has become a weak vessel surrounded by malevolent forces. Pollution, disorder and violence have thus for three years poisoned the international atmosphere and hampered any inclination to act and to seek compromise solutions for the many complex problems troubling the conscience of the world.
89. Distinguished representatives speaking before me at this rostrum have expressed their apprehension and disquiet in the face of the increasing danger. A war which should never have broken out has just recently played havoc in the Middle East, causing profound dismay for several days throughout the world. My delegation had occasion to express its views on this grave episode during the emergency special session. It returns to the subject today, not with any intention of laying the blame and responsibility on any particular State, but to ask the Powers concerned not to retreat into a verbal and legal jungle but to silence the hymns of hate, so that the area which in twenty years has seen hostilities three times may at long last enjoy peace. For experience has shown that if grievances are stifled or approached from the wrong angle or patched up by temporary expedients, they will frequently break out at the slightest tilt in the balance of forces caused by the whims of some and the stubbornness of others. In our opinion, this burning issue, pregnant with the seeds of lust for power and racial fanaticism, which United Nations bodies have had before them for twenty years, must necessarily find a solution within the Organization and not outside it.
90. The United Nations, a stronghold for the small States and a factor tending to consolidate their interests, must guarantee the territorial integrity of all States and more especially all Members States, and not tolerate the occupation of the territory of one State by the military forces of another. We feel that the right of every State to exist should be recognized by all, that every State must be able to live in complete security within its frontiers without interference of any kind. Otherwise, the law of the jungle would prevail.
91. Recurrent quarrels are dangerous; we are nevertheless convinced that peoples born in the self-same land, nurtured in the self-same cradle, whence the noblest of all messages of peace and love have come, can reach understanding within the framework of the principles embodied in the Charter. Settlement of disputes by force, and military conquest, are poisoned dead sea fruit. In an age when the indivisibility of peace is evident, only dialogue and political negotiation can lead to fruitful understanding and co-operation. Otherwise international morality, which U Thant has spoken of so often, would be only a publicity slogan.
92. The problem of war or peace concerns us all, whatever we are, great nations or small, since we are destined to live together on this now shrunken planet. The United Nations, which has to its credit so many peaceful settlements, so much progress, achieved in the course of its twenty-two years of experience, must adapt itself to the complex realities of today if it is not to disappoint the hopes of millions of men for long acting as if in obedience to conditioned reflexes. Its work will be what we wish it to be; either it will flounder in the mud of the sterile past, or it will prove that it is still a useful tool at the service of mankind. In this connexion my delegation is pleased to see that the United States and the Soviet Union have produced a joint draft treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. This event, the outcome of years of patient effort, is a miracle of achievement and understanding.
93. My delegation is not given to undue pessimism, but we are also not afraid to look things in the face, however disagreeable they may be. If there, has been war in the Middle East, it is a warning. If Laos has not known peace for twenty years, in spite of solemn treaties and international guarantees, that is another warning. If the disastrous war in Viet-Nam goes on, that is a third warning — of something which I fear could lead us all into a catastrophe of world proportions.
94. My delegation has no inclination today, any more than at previous sessions, to lecture anyone. But it must be recognized that we have some cause for complaint and bitterness, when for more than twenty years we have been the victims of subversion, violation and armed aggression. For years we have seen treaties concluded with us violated, agreements trampled underfoot, our neutrality challenged, our soil invaded. For years, in the name of a so-called national war of liberation, a neighbouring State, in its revolutionary and ideological zeal, has been sending troops into the Kingdom of Laos to back a many-sided rebellion, sometimes doffing the mask, sometimes in disguise, but always like a robot activated from abroad. It is again through this "revolutionary doctrine", which actually hides a will to expand and to dominate, that our people is torn by prolonged strife, our country atrociously mutilated and our national conscience disturbed. The war in Laos is forgotten by the world’s Press, but its ravages nevertheless go on in my country, creating unrest, causing more and more bereavement, bleeding the economy white. As I speak here, skirmishing, ambush, battles, are going on in the north of my country and all along the famous Ho Chi Minh road, over which from north to south move the convoys of men and war material, and all this panoply bears the escutcheon of death.
95. The Laotian people, for years the victims of a war imposed from outside, longs fervently, not for an uneasy peace, a peace between two cease-fires, but a real peace. More than anything else, the Laotian people wish to break out of the circle of stagnation in which for years they have been forced to live. They have no desire to pay the price of other people’s quarrels with the blood of their own sons, even in the name of an ideological crusade. The neutral people of Laos only want to solve their own problems, which some people insist on linking with those of Viet-Nam; for their fate Was settled as far back as the Geneva Agreements of 1962. As I have stated more than once here and elsewhere, Laos, whose spokesman I am, is always ready to engage in talks with its errant compatriots, whatever their political labels, with a view to reaching a modus vivendi through which peace in national reconciliation and concord can gradually be rebuilt. The Royal Government over which I have the honour to preside is ready to seek with its neighbours, especially with North Viet-Nam, ways and means of safeguarding and maintaining the neutrality status patiently worked out, recognized and guaranteed by thirteen Powers. If this will exists on the other side,, the Laotian question will be settled without any change of instrument; if the will is lacking, then the question will remain unsettled however perfect the instrument.
96. As with the Laotian problem, the road to peace in Viet-Nam must necessarily pass by way of the negotiating table. This conflict, the aftermath of the war in Indo-China and the Geneva Agreements compromise of 1954, must find a solution within the framework of those agreements, which as the parties involved in the war have themselves stated on various occasions, could provide a sound basis for negotiations. Collective common sense calls for a political and not a military solution. A military victory would be a pyrrhic victory, since it would bring us an unreal peace. It is inconceivable because it would destroy the principles of peaceful coexistence and the balance of forces in South East Asia. The interests of peace demand that the broken links be mended and the bridges of reconciliation built so as to create the climate of confidence needed for political negotiations. Deafness here, obstinacy there, merely prolong needlessly the unspeakable sufferings and ordeals undergone by the Viet-Namese people generally for more than two decades. They merely feed the propaganda of those who advocate all-out war. Hence prior conditions and false pretexts are obstacles to initiative and prevent the cooling of passions.
97. For all the outbursts of passion, for all the clash of arms and the bitterness of the fighting, my delegation is convinced that the statesmen, on whom the fate of the world hangs will not sign their own death warrant by acts of folly and despair. History has too often left a trail of blood behind it. The time has come to tackle the major problems of hunger, disease, ignorance and under-development. It is high time to turn our full attention to the distressing and tragic episode of Rhodesia, and apartheid, and to destroy the last strongholds of backward-looking colonialism in Angola and Mozambique.
98. It is the duty of all of us, great and small, rich and poor, to treat the peoples who have endured such suffering, lived through such nope and such despair, to something else besides words. It is by acting in this fashion that "We,' the peoples of the United Nations", will be able "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war", and remain true to the oath that those who wrote the Charter proclaimed at San Francisco.