Mr. KARDELJ began by pointing out that in the course of the general debate some speakers had, in what he described as a state of panic, expressed their fears with regard to the fate of peace. Such an exaggerated anxiety was clearly a reflection of the warmongering atmosphere which was being created at the present moment by a large section of international reactionary propaganda; it was tormenting the wide masses of the people, still suffering from the horrors and devastations of the Second World War, with « forecasts» that a third world war was close upon them. The political « lesson » to be drawn from such forecasts and such sensational theories, which were being projected into international life from various centres of warmongering, lay in the need for the speediest possible acceptance and for wholehearted support of an uncompromising policy towards the Soviet Union, the peoples’ democracies and democratic movements in general. Otherwise, those propagandists asserted, a third world war was liable to break out at any moment.
The Yugoslav delegation considered that those very tendencies were among the major causes of the relatively poor results achieved by the United Nations. The United Nations should make use of instruments which would promote agreement, particularly among the great Powers, since without harmony among those Powers international co-operation became a mere fiction. The leading group of States of the majority had nevertheless adopted a different course; namely, the unilateral accomplishment of its aims and the imposition of its will, with the aid of a formal and arithmetical majority within the Organization. Such conditions would naturally not promote agreement but would transform the United Nations into an instrument promoting the policy of a certain group of States or even of a single State. Such a course, if pursued in future, would clearly be a source of ever-increasing difficulties and would result in deadlock for the United Nations itself.
That danger was evident to almost everyone and had been mentioned by many representatives in the course of the general debate. The majority of representatives, however, were seeking a solution which would in fact lead to the downfall of the United Nations as an organization of international co-operation. They were seeking a solution through the revision of the Charter and particularly the liquidation or substantial limitation of the principle of unanimity of the great Powers.
The authors of those proposals must certainly realize that those attempts were therefore tantamount to an abandonment of the policy of international co-operation and collective security and a gradual drift into a policy of blocs and renunciation of the United Nations system.
It was of course both absurd and insincere to attempt to attribute the present regrettable situation in the United Nations, or in the international situation as a whole, to alleged blunders or defects in the machinery of the United Nations. Such attempts were in fact intended to conceal the true cause of the many difficulties arising in the work of the United Nations; namely, the unwillingness of the leading group of States of the majority in the Organization to co-operate or to reach agreement with other countries, especially with the Soviet Union.
The abrogation of the principle of unanimity of the great Powers or the weakening of other instruments of agreement, for which the United Nations Charter made provision, would mean weakening the United Nations; transforming it from an organ of international co-operation into an organ of coercion in the hands of one State or group of States, and finally to the collapse of the whole post-war system of international co-operation. For obviously the United Nations must either be an organ of mutual agreement and of co-operation among sovereign States on the most important international questions or else should not exist at all. Those who were today persistently striving to liquidate the principle of great-Power unanimity must be reminded that they were in fact attempting to abolish the raison d'être of the United Nations, in other words, they were on the way to liquidating the Organization itself as an efficient instrument for international co-operation.
For all those reasons the Yugoslav delegation considered it necessary to liquidate the Interim Committee and to uphold the principles of the Charter. Such a step was necessary because those who had originated the idea of that Committee, set up in contradiction to the Charter, had intended it to contribute to the weakening of the Organization, to its complete disarmament as an instrument of international co-operation and its subordination to the interests of a group of States, or even of one single State.
Experience of the work of the Organization to date showed what would become of its work if it abandoned the very instrument which gave it the right to exist. Witness the fate which had befallen some of the most important decisions of the United Nations in the period between the two sessions.
There was the Greek problem, which clearly revealed the true meaning of the tendency shown by certain States of the majority to use the United Nations and its organs for their own specific aims. Together with the representatives of the USSR and of the other peoples’ democracies the representatives of Yugoslavia had constantly pointed out that the real causes of the national rising in Greece were to be sought not in alleged intervention or instigation by Greece’s northern neighbours but, on the one hand, in the undemocratic establishment of a Government to which the majority of the Greek people was hostile and, on the other hand, in the crude interference of the United States of America and of the United Kingdom in the internal affairs of Greece, as a result of which the overwhelming majority of the Greek people was unable to express its will. Hence the cessation of that intervention and the withdrawal of foreign troops, missions and so-called experts from Greece would be the first step towards the only correct solution of the Greek problem in the spirit of the United Nations Charter, which condemned interference in the internal affairs of other States.
Another road had been taken, however; namely, the intensification of foreign intervention in Greece and of attributing responsibility for conditions in that country to Greece’s northern neighbours. The war in Greece had been in progress for several years, and during that period Yugoslavia and Greece’s other northern neighbours had been charged with responsibility for it. Nevertheless, all the evidence which the various special committees had, with the aid of every sort of machination, been able to gather in Greece in support of those charges was so trivial that, even if true, it would be a mere drop in the ocean by comparison with the funds which the United States and British interventionists were pouring into Greece. It was moreover evident that that so-called evidence against Greece’s northern neighbours bore the trade mark: «Made in Athens».
The Greek people as a whole were nevertheless fighting. The assertion that only a small minority was in revolt in Greece, with the encouragement of the northern countries, was almost entirely untrue as increased foreign intervention obviously resulted in increased resistance on the part of the people, since nations did not gladly suffer the presence of armed missionaries from abroad. The present conflagration in Greece was the consequence of and the answer to the foreign intervention begun by Mr. Winston Churchill. That intervention had already suffered one setback, but had later been taken over by the United States of America. A nation was defending itself against foreign expansion. That was the core of the Greek problem, and it was there that a solution must be found.
The so-called United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans had been created at the second session of the General Assembly. The representatives of the democratic countries of Eastern Europe had, in the name of their Governments, refused to collaborate with that Committee, on the ground that its competence, powers and functions were contrary to the principles of the United Nations and represented a violation of the sovereignty of Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria; hence the Committee was illegal and was not recognized by those countries.
Yugoslavia had been reproached for having taken such a stand. It was however entitled to defend itself against attempts to saddle it with the faults of others.
Today it could be shown by concrete facts that the Special Committee on the Balkans, far from helping to solve the so-called Greek question in a democratic sense and in the interests of peace, had aggravated the situation in Greece by its unlimited support of monarcho-fascist elements and of intervention by the United States and the United Kingdom.
The provisional democratic Government of Greece had repeatedly announced that the liberation movement was willing to accept a peaceful solution of the conflict in Greece. A statement issued by the provisional democratic Government of Greece in May 1948 contained the following passage:
«With the object of easing the tension prevailing in world public opinion, which has recently been showing a keen interest in Greece and in the struggle of the Greek people, and desirous of contributing to the efforts being made by democratic forces throughout the world to attain peace and democratic agreement in the world, the provisional democratic Government of Greece declares its constant readiness to accept and support any initiative, irrespective of its source, designed to help Greece to achieve recovery and to attain tranquillity at home, on condition that a democratic life is guaranteed to the people without any limitations whatsoever, that national sovereignty and independence be secured without any foreign influence and that the Greek people be free to decide their own fate.»
The so-called United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans might have been expected to follow up that peaceful initiative and to undertake some measures to that end. The contrary had, however, been the case. The Special Committee had disregarded all such initiative, while blindly clutching at every act of provocation organized against Yugoslavia and Greece’s other northern neighbours. While, however, the Committee had been collecting false charges against Greece’s northern neighbours, Greece itself was becoming to an increasing degree the domain of United States expansion. Large numbers of American military personnel had assumed complete control of the army of the Athens Government. United States representatives had become the real masters of Greece. Matters had reached such a pass that even right-wing Athens newspapers were protesting against the existing state of affairs. For example, the newspaper Elefteria had written as follows on 2 September 1948:
«By the way Van Fleet is poking his nose everywhere, raising a stir, strutting around, talking about himself, writing and pushing himself to the fore, he would appear to be harbouring the illusion that the Chief of the General Staff of the Greek Army is his own orderly. »
The key positions of the Greek economy were similarly now in American hands. United States representatives in Greece had assumed prerogatives, which, in an independent country, belonged to the Government. They were preparing draft bills, regulations and rides, while consulting representatives of political parties, ministers, members of parliament, delegations and others.
All that was accompanied by a rising tide of mass terrorism, stimulated by the statement made by the American General Van Fleet on 27 February 1948, in which he announced the slogan, « Capture and kill». The mass atrocities perpetrated in Greece had evoked revulsion and protest throughout the world, but they had apparently had no influence upon the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans.
The so-called Greek question obviously formed part of the expansionist policy of the most influential American circles, a policy which was finding expression in the creation and development of Western Germany as a military and economic base for the United States of America in Western Europe; in the retention of troops in the territories of Allied and other countries; in intrigues in the Near East; in the reconstruction of Japan as an anti-Soviet base; in the non-fulfilment of pledges assumed under peace treaties; in the organization of an extensive system of military bases, and in the refusal to consider disarmament and the prohibition of atomic energy as a means of waging war.
Hence the Greek people were today obliged to fight for their liberty and independence. No special committee could deny those facts.
How far the Special Committee on the Balkans had lost the ability to distinguish between provocation and fact was best exemplified by a short phrase in its supplementary report which stated: « In recent months, there had been less evidence of receipt of supplies from Yugoslavia by the guerrillas» (A/644, page 19). Yugoslavia had never interfered in the internal affairs of Greece, and it was therefore obvious that that assertion in the Special Committee’s report was nothing but a transparent and cheap provocation, adapted to present-day conditions, the motives and aims of which were quite obvious.
It was also typical that the work of the Special Committee in Greece was connected with numerous frontier incidents and other acts of provocation, directed against Yugoslavia and apparently organized for the purpose of providing the Committee with the evidence it required. The Yugoslav delegation would deal with the question in detail in the course of the debate on the Greek question. Those facts fully explained the following statement in the memorandum issued by General Markos in August 1948:
«Anyone not entirely devoid of good faith will ask himself why a plan for a democratic solution has not been drawn up, a plan which would exclude the possibility of any intrigue on the part of one side or the other. The task of the United Nations should in fact be to draft such a plan and not to nominate committees which had proved to be the mere servants of those who had organized and were responsible for the civil war. » (Blue Book of the provisional democratic Government of Greece, pages 196 and 197.)
Mr. Bevin’s remark that the Greek people had never had an opportunity of free development since the war ended was true, but to blame the northern neighbours of Greece or the Soviet Union was wholly contrary to truth and to the facts. Neither the northern neighbours of Greece nor the USSR had persecuted Greek antifascist fighters, imposed anti-democratic regimes on the Greek people, staged electoral comedies, or rehabilitated fascists and quislings; all that had been done under British and American patronage. Those were, however, the very reasons which prevented the Greek people from expressing their will in a genuinely democratic manner. In those circumstances the responsibility for the situation in Greece evidently lay with the Athens regime and with those foreign Powers which supported it.
Mr. Kardelj said he had dwelt at some length on the work of the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans, because that Committee had been used as a means of levelling direct accusations against the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. The same course had, however, been taken with similar United Nations bodies, for instance, the Temporary Commission on Korea. Instead of accepting the USSR proposal for the withdrawal of all forces of occupation from Korea, thus enabling the Korean people to decide their own fate, a Commission had been set up, whose real aim was to provide cover and justification for an electoral comedy in Southern Korea and for the creation of a puppet government, dependent upon foreign support and charity and consequently an obedient tool of its masters. All that that Commission had succeeded in accomplishing was to compromise the United Nations in the eyes of the Korean people and of world public opinion as an Organization which through its Temporary Commission, was giving assistance to those engaged in suppressing the independence of the Korean people.
The USSR Government had recently taken a practical step towards the solution of the Korean question by its decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Korea. The Assembly might with advantage recommend the United States Government to do likewise. Such a recommendation would do more for the cause of peace than the special commissions of the United Nations, which had largely compromised themselves to such a degree that they were everywhere regarded with suspicion and even hostility.
The same was true of the fulfilment of international treaties and obligations. To take the Free Territory of Trieste as an example: the Italian Peace Treaty had come into force on 15 September 1947; more than a year before. By its resolution of 10 January 1947 the Security Council had pledged itself to protect the independence and integrity of the Free Territory and to appoint a governor as soon as possible. The Free Territory was still under a provisional regime of military occupation and a governor had not yet been appointed, a fact for which three great Powers were to blame. Use had been made of all sorts of manoeuvres in order to prevent the implementation of those clauses of the Peace Treaty with Italy, which concerned the Free Territory, while the resolution put forward by the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (S/980), drawing the attention of the Security Council to the necessity and obligation to appoint a governor of Trieste as early as possible, had been rejected.
The majority of the Security Council fully upheld not merely the above-mentioned violation of the clauses of the Peace Treaty with Italy, but also supported the policy of the United States of America and the United Kingdom, which was aimed at a de facto revision of the Peace Treaty. The Yugoslav Government had submitted a complaint to the Security Council (S/9M), pointing out that the United States of America and the United Kingdom authorities in Trieste were carrying out a policy consisting of the virtual incorporation of the Free Territory in Italy. The majority of the Security Council had however taken no action to ensure the implementation of the Peace Treaty, thus breaking its solemn pledge to guarantee the independence and integrity of the Free Territory of Trieste. Clearly, such a policy was bound to result in a deterioration of international relations.
The representatives of certain States had said a great deal about human rights as being one of the main questions of our time. It was undoubtedly a momentous and important question. When, however, they considered the practical aim of declarations on human rights made in the Organization, the inevitable conclusion was that those declarations served entirely different aims, which were quite unconnected with the consolidation of those rights in the world. On the contrary, they were inflicting grave harm on the cause of international co-operation.
The question had been treated tendentiously and was directed against the USSR and the other peoples’ democracies. The obvious purpose of the false account of internal conditions in those countries was to divert world public opinion from the main questions of present-day international relations to secondary questions, to give an erroneous explanation of existing contradictions in international relations and to further the ideological mobilization of the masses for a policy directed against the Soviet Union and the peoples’ democracies.
If it were the essence of the question of human rights which was to be considered, socialist countries had a definite advantage over others. There was a great discrepancy between the words and deeds of the leading States of the majority as a whole and in the work of the United Nations in particular, a discrepancy so glaring that no solemn declarations on human rights made in the Assembly could conceal it. He would adduce a few facts on the national and colonial question.
The majority of Members of the United Nations had approved treaties providing for the administration by trustee countries of territories received in trust as integral parts of their own territories, even giving them the right to use those territories for the establishment of military bases. In other words, instead of a system enabling Trust Territories to develop more quickly into independent States as laid down by the Charter, colonial regimes of the usual type had been set up in them. When such conditions prevailed in territories under trusteeship, it was obvious that conditions in other colonial, so-called Non-Self-Governing Territories could not be different. No wonder therefore that uprisings were spreading throughout the colonial world. Those peoples were having to pay with their own blood for every step they took towards freedom. The colonial system was nevertheless being portrayed in the Assembly almost in the guise of a charitable institution.
In that connexion, mention must be made of the Palestine question. The implementation of the General Assembly resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947 on the partition of Palestine might have saved many human lives in that country. However, it very soon became clear that the United States of America and the majority in the Security Council had no real intention of implementing the resolution and were passively observing the execution of a policy aimed at creating chaos in Palestine and at provoking aggression against the State of Israel. At the second special session of the General Assembly, the majority had openly revised the decisions taken earlier on the Palestine question. Thus a settlement of the question was being delayed, while in Palestine hatred was being kindled and blood was being shed.
Many other questions had suffered a more or less similar fate. They had not been solved in accordance with the democratic principles of the Charter.
The policy of the majority with regard to international economic co-operation was also contrary to the principles of the Charter. The peoples of the countries devastated by the war had rightly anticipated that the work of the United Nations as a whole, and that of its individual organs, headed by the Economic and Social Council, would increasingly aim at eliminating that discrimination in the allocation of economic assistance for the reconstruction of their countries and discrimination in economic relations in general. They were entitled to expect that those relations would develop the productive forces of the countries concerned, and would in particular promote their industrialization, without which there was today neither independence nor equality of nations. They had also expected that those relations would promote trade and other economic relations among the States on a basis of equality, in other words, in the spirit of the Charter. Lastly, they were entitled to expect that the assistance granted for reconstruction would not be accompanied by conditions restricting their independence.
Yet the majority in the General Assembly and in other organs of the United Nations had taken an entirely different road under the influence of the diametrically opposed attitude of the United States delegation. The economic organs of the United Nations were virtually paralysed and the implementation of the so-called American European Recovery Programme, the Marshall Plan, had begun outside the framework of the United Nations. The crux of the matter was that American aid to Europe was linked with terms directly contrary to the Charter and altogether inconsistent with the independence of peoples. The Federated People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was one of the countries which had been unwilling to accept such terms, which would have impeded its economic development and endangered its plan of socialist reconstruction, and the country’s independence.
Mr. Bevin had stated in his speech that the countries of Eastern Europe had been «forbidden» to join the Marshall Plan. So far as Yugoslavia was concerned, no orders had been issued to its Government, which had taken its own decision, being convinced, then as now, that the terms of the so-called Marshall Plan were unacceptable to an independent country which had embarked upon the general development of its productive resources. Obviously those terms had been deliberately drawn up so as to be unacceptable to the Soviet Union and to the peoples’ democracies; otherwise, why had the initiators of the Plan not raised the matter within the United Nations?
The results of the Marshall Plan were already becoming discernible. They confirmed the correctness of the Yugoslav view of the economic role of the Plan. It had produced serious international political consequences both in Europe and in the world as a whole. Western Germany was becoming an industrial and military base of the United States of America. German revisionist and imperialist tendencies were being revived. The Marshall Plan countries were being compelled to accept terms which were tantamount to the incorporation of their countries in United States strategic plans. American control over strategic raw materials was being established. The welding of military alliances was being encouraged and a network of military bases organized.
It was perfectly clear that such steps were bound to result in a deterioration of international relations. They had at the same time dealt a heavy blow to the role and authority of the United Nations. The authors of the Plan could hardly be unaware of those probable international repercussions; hence they had assumed a very heavy responsibility for the deterioration of international relations.
As regards the question of displaced persons from Eastern Europe, reactionary propaganda was striving to represent those people as victims of an «intolerable» regime on the other side of the «iron curtain». Such propaganda obviously presupposed that the masses of the world’s population had already forgotten that most of the refugees had fled from their countries with the Nazi army because they had collaborated with it or had been deceived by their quisling leaders. There was no need to enlarge on the subject. The important fact was that the displaced persons, who were naturally willing to sell themselves for a crust of bread to anyone ready to buy their services, were partly being employed as cheap labour and partly in hostile and diversionary acts against the States of Eastern Europe.
Peace and peaceful co-operation among nations were hardly possible when fascist hirelings were being sent to engage in diversionary activities in countries which were Members of the United Nations.
As regards Yugoslav displaced persons, the Yugoslav Government demanded the implementation of the General Assembly’s resolution 3 (I), namely, that all criminals who took part in the extermination of peaceful inhabitants and of antifascists should be handed over to Yugoslav tribunals. For other displaced persons an amnesty had long since been granted by the highest Yugoslav authorities. It was inhuman and contrary to the interests of co-operation among the nations to deceive a mass of misguided people, who were grasping at every opportunity to keep themselves alive, and to detain them abroad. The Yugoslav Government requested the United Nations to assist those people to return to their country to take up peaceful work.
Mr. Kardelj’s purpose in enumerating some of the main problems facing the United Nations was not to deal with them in substance, but rather to point out the fundamental sources of the difficulties encountered in the sphere of international co-operation and in the work of the United Nations. Those questions and many other facts showed that the chief weakness of the Organization lay in the attempts of the leading group of States of the majority to transform the Organization into an instrument for their own purposes.
The line taken by the United States of America with regard to atomic energy had the same purpose in view. Detailed criticism of the substance of the American plan for the control of atomic energy had been made on more than one occasion in the Assembly and he did not propose to repeat the arguments put forward. He merely wished to emphasize that the plan aimed at a fundamental alteration in the principles on which the United Nations was based. For example, the United States plan abolished inter alia the principle of unanimity of the great Powers in connexion with the control of atomic energy. The obvious aim was to remove all obstacles from the path of United States policy.
Many influential Americans were openly saying that the United Nations should be transformed from a community of equal and sovereign States into a world State, in which the full hegemony of the United States of America would of course be ensured. Influential circles in America were openly appealing to the peoples of the world to renounce their sovereignty, to accept United States hegemony and all that it involved, so as to be saved from the atom bomb. In other words, the peoples must themselves decide whether they would willingly submit to American world domination or whether they preferred subjugation by force. Obviously no country desiring free development on the basis of its own ideas and of progressive social achievements could accept such alternatives.
In justifying his stand with regard to the USSR proposal for the reduction of armed forces and the prohibition of the atomic weapon, Mr. Bevin had quoted from Lenin in evidence of the dangers threatening the capitalist countries from the Soviet Union. If that quotation were closely examined, however, it was clear that Lenin had merely said that the socialist countries must be vigilant, because the capitalist world would not tolerate the co-existence of a new and more progressive socialist system and would therefore attempt to crush it with all the means at its disposal.
The prolonged foreign intervention, to which the representative of the Byelorussian SSR had referred at the 147th plenary meeting provided direct confirmation of the accuracy of Lenin’s view. The warmongering propaganda of today and the uncompromisingly antagonistic policy towards the Soviet Union and the peoples’ democracies proved beyond a shadow of doubt that, despite Mr. Bevin’s assertions, Marxist-Leninism had not become obsolete, and that Lenin’s warning was still valid. That did not mean that the programme of the socialist countries entailed war with the capitalist countries or that no co-operation in the sphere of international relations was possible between the capitalist and the socialist countries. The question was not that of the possibility or otherwise of co-operation but rather, as the President of the Council of Ministers of the USSR had stated, that of the existence or non-existence of a desire to cooperate. The Soviet Union and the people’s democracies had proved and were proving every day their readiness for such co-operation and their conviction that it was both possible and necessary.
The same could not be said of the leading States of the majority in the United Nations. Mr. Spaak’s argument, if correctly understood, was that co-operation with the Soviet Union was impossible because the latter was a communist country. The Government of the USSR had, however, taken the same form both during and after the war, as well as at the time of the San Francisco Conference. At that time no one had regarded the Soviet Union’s social system as an obstacle to co-operation, although the quotation from Lenin, cited by Mr. Bevin was familiar.
The representatives of the majority were adopting a different attitude to the question today, for the reason that their own standpoint had undergone a change and not that of the Soviet Union or the peoples’ democracies. The system of international co-operation, set up at the height of the war and directly afterwards, a system which had found its expression in the United Nations, was now in their way. If, however, the people were to devote themselves wholeheartedly to peaceful construction, it was vital that that system of international co-operation should be strengthened. To achieve that end, however, far more must be done than Mr. Spaak had proposed. Tangible proof must be given to millions of workers, who were daily being intimidated by the clamour of the warmongers, that they had no need to fear the future.
The only effective means of securing that end under the present circumstances was to prohibit the atomic weapon, to control atomic energy and to bring about a general reduction of armaments. Hence Mr. Vyshinsky’s proposal for the reduction of armed forces by one-third represent a vitally important contribution to the struggle for peace and for peaceful collaboration between the peoples and thereby to the strengthening of the United Nations itself. The acceptance of that proposal would make an important contribution to the liberation of the masses of the people from the fear of war, to the renunciation of the threat of war as a means of international politics and to the creation of an atmosphere in which burning international questions could be solved with greater success.
In conclusion, Mr. Kardelj said that the Yugoslav delegation, in expressing the desire of the Yugoslav people, who had not forgotten the sufferings and horrors of the Second World War, was fully resolved to support Mr. Vyshinsky’s proposal and would support any other proposal aimed at the strengthening of peace and of peaceful co-operation among the peoples.