1. In rising to conclude this general debate, I wish to associate the Israel delegation with the just tributes which have converged upon Mrs. Pandit from all sides on her election to the presidency of the General Assembly. The sincere and patient efforts which her country, and she personally, have devoted to the cause of international peace, are fittingly acknowledged by her elevation to this high office. She may confidently count on the support of all her colleagues in helping to make this eighth session worthy of the hopes which the peoples of the world repose in it at a critical moment in the quest for international peace.
2. Our Organization enters upon its future tasks with a change of direction by virtue of the recent appointment of a new Secretary-General. We have admired Mr. Hammarskjold’s efforts in recent months to strengthen the cohesion and morale of the international civil service which is charged with the daily operation of our machinery and the execution of our collective policies. We are confident that he will build constructively on the foundations which his eminent predecessor established during the first seven years of the work of the United Nations.
3. Recent events have diminished the sense of deadlock and frustration which has attended the United Nations^ since its inception. Negotiations to resolve the major causes of international tension are now envisaged by the leaders of the great Powers as a serious and tangible prospect. All our governments and peoples have been inspired by the vision of a new international era, in which the second half of this century would emerge full of peace and abundance after the continuous anguish of its first five decades.
4. At the present stage, however, this new atmosphere is nourished far more by generous hopes than by actual fulfilment. In his constructive address at the beginning of our general debate [434th meeting], the representative of the United States, Mr. Dulles, enumerated some of the main elements in the current Rational tension. It is impossible to refute his prudent warning that few of those conflicts have actually undergone substantive change in recent weeks; indeed, in respect of some of them it has still proved impossible even to institute processes of negotiation.
5. But on one issue of overriding international importance there has been more than an improvement of mood and spirit. There has been a merciful termination of sacrifice and danger. The fighting in Korea has come to an end. The first attempt in history to resist armed aggression under the banner of a world organization has been crowned with success. This triumph of international authority has exacted a cruel cost of bereavement and suffering from the sixteen countries which actively represented the universal. cause. The sacrifices of the American people in the leadership of this collective enterprise merit special sympathy and respect. But amidst the many sharp complexities which still beset the Korean question, we should not deprecate or ignore the positive achievement which the United Nations has here inscribed upon its record. It may well come to be said that in 1950 the foundation stone was laid of an international order based upon a recognized system of legal obligations and restraints.
6. But even here our satisfaction is modified by concern at the obstacles which have so far prevented the opening of the political conference on Korea. While the composition of the political conference was under discussion at our previous session, it was appropriate that we should examine the question with full gravity and exchange alternative views according to our best judgment and conviction. But once a conclusion had been reached, surely all our governments and peoples must have sincerely hoped that the conference would convene upon the principles which the General Assembly had recommended. Differences of view on this matter of procedural organization can hardly be deemed to justify a refusal to enter upon the political conference at all. The general debate has expressed an overwhelming consensus of hope that current efforts to bring the political conference into session under our recent recommendation may yet succeed. It would be grievously disappointing if the momentum of agreement and good will generated by armistice were not immediately utilized for further progress towards peace and stability in Korea.
7. As it prepares to contribute its part towards the relaxation of world tension, the United Nations may fittingly survey the record of its own achievements and set-backs in an effort to improve its capacity to turn the present opportunity to fulfilment.
8. There is no justification for the widespread tendency to record the failures and disillusionments of the past eight years without due tribute to the benefits which the United Nations has brought to (the life of our generation. The list of achievements is not unimpressive in relation to the brief time and the adverse circumstances which have attended the work of our Organization. Since the United Nations depends for its effectiveness upon the confidence and faith of world opinion, it is vitally necessary to prevent demoralizing verdicts of failure from taking root in the public consciousness. Let us look at some of the successes which the United Nations has crowded into the record of eight turbulent years.
9. First, it has established a precedent for effective action to withstand and deter armed aggression. A few years ago, any small State assaulted by invading armies could rely upon no international support in its struggle to avoid the complete extinction of its life and its independence. Much progress has been made since then; and the Korean action has taught small nations that they may not again have to stand alone to bear the peril and sacrifice of aggressive assault.
10. Secondly, the United Nations has managed to localize and limit many armed conflicts which might otherwise have lingered indefinitely, with the constant danger of enlargement.
11. Thirdly, the United Nations has assisted many new States to achieve their sovereign independence and their freedom from foreign occupation. We may thus have outlived the age when national freedom could be achieved only by revolutionary violence. There are now established methods of peaceful, evolutionary development whereby subject communities can advance from dependence and tutelage towards the full satisfaction of their national rights. In the Middle East arid Asia, new areas of multiple sovereignty have arisen over great expanses of the world where no independent nations enjoyed their freedom but a few years ago. The Arab people, with eight sovereign States over an area of 1 million square miles, have been the most fortunate beneficiaries of this vast new inheritance of freedom, in which Israel, too, has obtained its much smaller but no less cherished part. At the same time, the work of the United Nations in the disposition of the former Italian colonies has expedited progress towards national freedom in the African continents
12. Fourthly, the United Nations has worked with sympathy and skill to bring aid to countless millions through its programmes of economic development and technical assistance, as well as through the humanitarian work of its specialized agencies.
13. Fifthly, the international conventions which have been formulated in the United Nations on many aspects of human welfare might well be regarded as the modest beginnings of a voluntary legal system to govern the life of a developing world community. Adherence to these conventions thus has a significance of its own, over and above the sentiment of emulation which causes individual States to ensure the observance of higher standards in human rights within their own borders and to promote international co-operation.
14. This record of achievements falls far short of Utopia. There is nothing in it to indicate that the United Nations has begun to approach the effective discharge of its total responsibility for world peace. But surely it is unjust and unrealistic for anyone to have expected that the mere signature of a charter would bring the full structure of a world community into complete existence overnight. Those who expected any such thing deserve to be disappointed. If we understand that we are here embarked upon a patient process of international evolution which may take years or, perhaps, even generations to complete, the achievements of the United Nations in these past eight years will appear to us in a truer and brighter perspective.
15. Against this background of restrained satisfaction with the initial progress of our Organization, we should frankly face our difficulties and shortcomings, many of which have been clearly defined in the general debate.
16. It is natural to inquire whether the effectiveness of the United Nations as an instrument for peace might be increased by a review of the Charter. Articles 108 and 109 require us to decide in 1955 whether or not to call a conference for this purpose. The delegations of Argentina, Egypt and the Netherlands have therefore shown responsible foresight in inviting us to undertake preparatory work in advance of that decision.
17. There is much wisdom in the view expounded here by the Foreign Minister of Sweden [443rd meeting], that the causes of international tension reside, not in the imperfections of the Charter, but in the lack of agreement among Member States, and especially among the great Powers. Even the extensive use of the veto should be regarded, not as the cause of the great-Power disagreement, but as one of its symptoms and results. If the disagreement remains acute, no change of legal texts will do much to affect it. On the other hand, if the relations of the Powers develop in such a way as to make an improvement in the international atmosphere possible, then such an improvement can well be achieved within the terms of our present Charter. A broad but legitimate interpretation of the General Assembly’s powers under its resolution [377 (V)] on “Uniting for peace” may enable the United Nations to avoid the paralysis of its major security functions in the absence of unanimity amongst the great Powers. Similarly there have been other avenues in which the work of the United Nations within the framework of the present Charter has shown a capacity for organic development.
18. It is therefore quite possible that the review to which Argentina, Egypt and the Netherlands have invited our preliminary attention may lead us to a conclusion that the Charter should be maintained, just as it may lead us to a disposition to embark upon revision. In any case, no revision is possible without the unanimous consent of the great Powers and a great majority of our total membership. There is therefore great value in the assurance of the representative of the Netherlands [443rd meeting] that the preparatory work which he and others suggest in the light of Article 108 would not commit us at this stage to support any particular amendments of the Charter, or even to advocate any revision at all.
19. But some of the problems which affect this Organization in its institutional development deserve examination on their own merit, quite apart from the text of the Charter. A case in point is the relationship between United Nations action for the maintenance of security and the classic conceptions ox belligerency and neutrality. These concepts, belligerency and neutrality, have no place in the spirit and language of our Charter, yet through lack of any other system of legal formulas or ideas we sometimes find ourselves paradoxically regarding the United Nations as one party to an international dispute. Thus, in our present discussions on Korea, it has become customary to describe some forty-three Member States as “neutrals” and the rest as “belligerents”, whereas in point of fact all Members should be morally identified with the United Nations in its collective capacity. Similarly, in other disputes, of which my country has intimate experience, we find the United Nations sometimes invited to recognize belligerent rights and to give verdicts on grounds of “military advantage”, as though it were legitimate for any country to have the United Nations safeguard its ability to prosecute a future war.
20. The practice of the United Nations reveals a wide divergence of view on another article of the Charter, that forbidding the United Nations to intervene in matters of domestic jurisdiction. Many items on our current agenda involve this controversy. Here we have no other course but to seek a central avenue between two extreme views. On the one hand there is a tendency to interpret this provision so rigidly as to exclude almost any ability of the United Nations to bring world opinion to bear upon questions of fundamental human rights or upon problems arising in Non-Self-Governing Territories. Such rigidity might well prevent the General Assembly from ever utilizing the capacities of constructive debate on matters which affect, the atmosphere of. international relations. At the other extreme, there is a tendency to ignore Article 2, paragraph 7, so completely as to weaken the very essence of national sovereignty which the United Nations system is committed to recognize and respect. The majority amongst us would probably wish to avoid each of these extremes. In particular, it is worth reflecting whether there might not be a valid distinction between a discussion of such problems, a discussion which might have an independent utility of its own, and intervention such as would be involved by the United Nations taking institutional action in areas to which the concept of national sovereignty properly applied. There is, I suggest, nothing illogical in a middle position, namely, that it might be useful to discuss a problem even where the right of intervention was precluded by the terms of the Charter.
21. There are other respects in which the practice of the United Nations could well be broadened and made more effective. The object of the General Assembly to find agreed and practicable solutions of international problems. But to do this it must let its mind range over the entire scope of available solutions and programmes. It does not always follow that a solution once envisaged for a problem remains the sole effective or just means of solving it in different circumstances of time and political atmosphere. The General Assembly should not lack the resilience and moral courage to let its thinking progressively evolve, so long, of course, as it keeps within the framework its essential purposes and objectives.
22. The following pattern is becoming all too familiar in our work. A programme is recommended by the general Assembly which, if accepted at the time, would constitute an honourable and effective solution of an international problem. The recommendation, however, is resisted by dissentient governments, sometimes to the point of armed violence. As a result, the situation in the area concerned becomes crystallized in a new and different mould. A new basis of stability is then devised with active United Nations support and assistance, and embodied in formal accords with the status of valid international treaties. At this point, those who destroyed the original programme by the force of their resistance retrospectively invoke its provisions. They seek the resurrection of policies which they themselves have killed; and this comes at a time when to restore such programmes would disrupt conditions of stability thereafter achieved, would undermine subsequent agreements which have acquired the force of law and stood the test of time, and would dismantle a whole structure of rights, relationships and situations which the parties themselves have laboriously erected with United Nations consent and encouragement.
23. In most of such cases the demand to restore an original recommendation comes at a safe distance of time, when such restoration has been rendered impossible by the original act of rejection. Therefore, what is at first sight a virtuous and dogmatic fundamentalism, emerges really as a propagandist tactic of great cleverness and convenience to those who use it, but surely without much real claim to moral support. For the aim of the tactic is to avoid rather than to seek a genuine solution of an admitted deadlock.
24. I leave it to the General Assembly to consider whether what I have just said is not a dispassionate and precise description of the juridical controversy between Israel and its neighbours which, until this session, has figured so prominently on our agenda. The basic question is whether those who resist the United Nations policy and prevent its implementation at the time for which it is conceived, merit serious regard when they demand its restoration after the passage of many years and the accumulation of many new circumstances of welfare, institutional life and international law.
25. But this is not the only instance where solutions which appeared valid and practicable at the time of their formulation are affected by their rejection or neglect in the circumstances for which they were conceived. If we assume that our function here is not to win arguments but to find agreed solutions of our problems, it is surely our duty and right to search persistently for new and effective instruments to carry out the abiding purposes of the United Nations in any situation or dispute. This consideration leads us to endorse the doubts expressed from this rostrum by many of our colleagues, as to whether there is value in placing the same problems on our agenda year after year without any developments having ensued during the year, by processes of direct settlement, which would make the international discussion more fruitful than before. The Chairman of the Canadian delegation, Mr. Pearson, illuminated this debate [441st meeting] with his forceful observations on these problems and on the related question of public or private diplomacy.
26. The United Nations system, after all, was never envisaged as a substitute for the traditional forms of direct international intercourse. It was rather conceived as a supplementary instrument for harmonizing existing relationships within the framework of agreed principles embodied in the Charter. Nothing could be more eccentric than the view that governments may decline to maintain any direct relationship, and yet expect that a third party, in the form of an international organization, should solve all the problems outstanding between them and their neighbours by waving the magic wand of public debate. The experience of the past eight years has surely proved the need to reiterate the fact that sovereign governments are responsible for resolving their differences by processes of direct settlement within the framework of normal diplomatic relations.
27. Is it not noteworthy that many deadlocks which have baffled the United Nations through countless hours of weary debate have begun to approach a solution at the very moment when they have left the public forum and entered the realm of direct contact? The settlement in Indonesia, the armistice treaties between Israel and its neighbours, the question of Kashmir, have all proved the overriding utility of direct contact and private diplomacy in which the United Nations may often play a vital and constructive role. My delegation hopes that the General Assembly will develop the tendency which it has recently displayed in many questions—to summon contending parties in international disputes to their duty of direct diplomatic settlement. For the experience of the General Assembly fully bears out Mr. Pearson’s conclusions, when he said [441st meeting] : “I am sure that we can all think of subjects that / have come before us in recent sessions of the Assembly that could have been more constructively discussed and more easily settled if there had previously been quiet and confidential discussion of them between delegations and governments, especially between those which were in disagreement over the matters in question.”
28. It is natural that all the considerations which I have outlined should in a measure reflect the special experience of my Government in seeking, so far without success, an adjustment of its relations with neighbouring States. This conflict, as much as any other, needs the application of the procedural principles which have been so widely advocated in our general debate, as a means of improving the effectiveness of United Nations action. It is here that we need the humility, the tolerance and the goodwill with which to seek new solutions capable of winning general consent and fulfilling both past objectives and present possibilities. It is here that we need patient recourse to procedures of direct settlement and private diplomacy, to supplement the vast literature of public debate which we have already accumulated with such great effort and with such scanty results. It is here that we need to apply the general counsel contained in the report of the Secretary-General when he bids us to regard the United Nations “as an instrument for conciliation”, providing “a forum which should serve the Members less for the voicing of complaints and more for the presentation of proposals furthering the common end” [A/2404, p. xii],
29. It is here that we need a serious balance of responsibility and initiative, especially a balance of effort, to relieve human suffering. For example, if the small country of Israel, with its 8,000 square miles and its pitifully meagre resources, could, by a supreme effort of will, find homes for 800,000 destitute newcomers, is it not at least possible that the vast independent regions which surround us, so rich in land and water and oil, could help provide homes for a like number, if only the dictates of compassion and of natural kinship would assert themselves there as they did with us? Can governments really create a vast human problem by their aggression, possess the full capacity to solve it, receive bountiful international aid towards its solution, and then, with all that accumulation of responsibility upon their hands, refuse to join in the acceptance of any permanent responsibility for the fate and future of their own kith and kin? These are matters which will require our discussion when this urgent item comes before the Ad Hoc Political Committee.
30. My Government continues, despite these disappointments, to uphold the vision of a Middle East at peace within itself, uniting the efforts of its two kindred peoples to heal the wounds of aggressive violence and reawaken the rich potentialities' of. the region for political, economic and cultural progress. It is plain, however, that we shall not advance towards the fulfilment of that vision until the counsels of free and direct negotiation prevail above the sterile rancours and controversies of the past. Until that occasion presents itself, we must learn to live within the present political situation as determined by armistice agreements, seeking all ways to give those agreements the dynamic quality of a transition to peace. It is not an uncommon experience in modern international life to find provisional arrangements, originally conceived as a brief stepping-stone to a more permanent settlement, lingering on, unchanged for many years, in the absence of a new process of negotiation and agreement. That is still the position in some parts of Europe; that is still the position in the Near East; and it may be our unfortunate destiny to witness such a situation, at least for some time, in Korea.
31. In such circumstances it is our duty to seek the greatest degree of political normality and constructive economic development that can be assured, to avoid all symptoms of active belligerency, such as boycotts, blockades and illegitimate economic interference, and to arm ourselves with patience and vigilance until the desire for a positive peace asserts itself as the common aspiration and interest of all parties concerned.
32. Our natural preoccupation with issues of political controversy should not cause the General Assembly to lack interest and zeal in approaching the vitally important tasks which confront it in the non-political field. My delegation will give its most earnest attention to the questions arising in the Second Committee with respect to the economic development of underdeveloped countries. We are able from our experience to pay earnest tribute to the progress of the technical assistance activities undertaken by the United Nations in many parts of the world. We shall give our support to the maintenance and consolidation of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, in the direction of which we have been privileged to play our part.
33. The success of the regional economic commissions established for Europe, Latin America and the Far East leads us to express our keen regret at the inability of the United Nations to extend this form of activity into our own region, where it could swiftly have impressive social and political results. It is lamentable that the sterile practices of boycott and ostracism should have been allowed to intrude even into those areas of international activity which should be dominated by overriding considerations of human solidarity. For epidemics, diseases, locusts, soil erosion and other ills which plague human society do not respect frontiers or political antagonisms. Should not the United Nations here strive with every resource to establish the duty of all Member States within any region to co-operate with each other at least for these larger human ends?
34. A sense of historic opportunity in the quest for world peace has hovered over this general debate in all its stages, and will doubtless communicate itself to our Committees when they embark upon more specific discussion. It cannot be expected that this session of the General Assembly will itself produce a sudden transformation in the climate of international life. But this session may well serve to illustrate whether or not there is real potentiality in the new currents and moods which have recently opened out the rich promise of international conciliation. If the conference on Korea is able to commence its work, if the discussions on disarmament reveal a readiness of the great Powers to control and restrain the fearful forces of destruction which lie in their hands, if a sincere desire for direct settlement begins to take root in the relations of the great Powers and in the areas of stubborn regional conflict, this eighth session may well mark a stage in man’s eternal and indefatigable quest for a peaceful world order in the shelter of a universal law.