1. Almost precisely twenty-four hours ago to the hour, this rostrum became hollowed ground for a brief thirty minutes. It is impossible not to feel the impact of the great call to peace that His Holiness Pope Paul VI made to the entire world of humanity through the representatives of the 117 nations gathered here. I can only hope that in the months and years ahead we shall prove worthy of the message he entrusted to us, and endeavour to keep forever burning the flame that he lit in our hearts and souls. War, they say, begins in the minds of men. We therefore desperately need this inward light to light our path in the enveloping darkness through which humanity has to tread its tortuous way in its unending quest for peace.
2. Mr. President, may I be permitted to begin by felicitating you once again on your near unanimous election. Brief as has been the period since the twentieth session of the Assembly commenced its work, it has not been too brief to demonstrate what a wise choice the Assembly has made when it called on you to occupy the prestigious office of President.
3. I should also like to pay tribute to the exceptional competence displayed by the President of the nineteenth session, the present Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ghana, in conducting the affairs of an exceptional session, which faced unprecedented obstacles. That he weathered the perilous storms that nearly threatened the United Nations with extinction, and was able to bring the vessel to port, battered but unscathed, was a great achievement. The twentieth session is very much in debt to him that it is able to meet at all.
4. Last but not least, there is one other pleasant duty. My Government and my country respectfully wish to add their voices to the chorus of praise
that has been addressed to our Secretary-General. He is the embodiment of the genius and character of this institution and, as its representative and exemplar, he continues to rise in our estimation by the practice of the virtues of patience, persistence, understanding, and the objectivity and impartiality with which he approaches every task assigned to him, virtues which are so very much a part of his personal character and which are the primary characteristics that this Organization should cultivate in its dedication to the well-being of all mankind.
5. The central task of the United Nations is to safeguard peace and security in the world, and it must be confessed that the threats to peace and security that afflict the world in October 1965 are far graver and greater than they were in September 1964. These threats envelop all corners of the globe, but it is in the continent of Asia that they show the greatest persistence and the largest proliferation. In Viet-Nam, in Malaysia, in Kashmir, the hydra-headed monster of war is preying upon peoples, denying them the hope of an untormented existence even in penury and want. The United Nations appears to be inextricably caught in the rising tide of conflict around the world with diminishing ability to fulfil the high hopes that the fanfare and trumpets of its beginnings foresaw for it.
6. Recent controversies have tended to betray its essential weakness — that the ideals that gave it its life, its longings and its hopes for mankind would appear to have come up sharply against the harsh facts of life and the hard nature of man, and found it wanting. Man is still very much a warring, aggressive animal with the primary passions of his nature having to be controlled with his own consent.
7. Again and again the Security Council has felt powerless to stem the tide of aggression because the military power with which it was intended to be endowed has remained beyond its reach. Twenty years have not been long enough to give its authority the strength it needs. Its calls to cease armed hostilities have been devoid of the power that compels obedience.
8. Its power to authorize and prescribe peace-keeping operations is at the very centre of the primary function of the Security Council. Ineffective as it has been, it has however contrived in the process to become laden with controversies. It is perhaps truer to say that the controversies have resulted in its ineffectiveness. The principal controversy that has largely, if not wholly, paralysed the United Nations is the sharing of power between the Security Council and the General Assembly in the area of peace-keeping. This problem of sharing power itself grew from the self-imposed impediments of the Security Council in the way of its exercise of undivided authority to act, by the existence and liberal use of the veto power. Problems of war and peace, the prevention of the one and the promotion of the other, on which the fate of millions depend, became pawns in the gave of playing the politics of power.
9. It is too late in the day to hark back to the ancient theme of the veto. It exists. It is effective. It cannot be spirited or wished away. It would therefore be wise to consider how best to adapt the working of the Organization to it so that it may be used in the context of its original creation without stultifying the purposes and frustrating the objectives for which the Security Council was created.
10. In my delegation's statement to the General Assembly at the abortive nineteenth session [1306th meeting], we suggested a means by which, while the veto would be retained, its exercise might be tamed by convention for the fulfilment of the purposes and objectives of the Charter. We said that the primary concern of the Security Council was intended to be, and must continue to be, to stop all wars, big or small, by nipping them in the bud. With the vast expansion of United Nations membership in a simultaneously shrinking world, power combinations were such that small wars could never hope to remain small. There should, therefore, be a convention among the veto-wielding permanent members that, when faced with an armed conflict that had potentialities of expansion, they should, in the exercise of their special responsibility to stop the conflict and prevent it's spreading, undertake not to use their veto.
11. It is vital to quench the flames at the earliest moment, lest they spread. At the initial stage, political polemics shall have no place and all efforts shall be devoted to putting down the fire. Thereafter, with the fire brought under control, in the further steps of investigating the facts, apportioning the blame and suggesting a solution, the Security Council may take as long as it needs to examine every political aspect of the conflict. At the second stage, the veto may become available for use by any Power which finds the political solution either ineffective or otherwise unsuited to its own power postures in the world.
12. My delegation is happy to note that in recent months, in the stormy debates concerning the Dominican Republic, when the position taken by the great Powers was sharply defined and in sharp conflict, the Security Council, on more than one occasion, found itself able to act with rare unanimity because of its legitimate concern with putting a stop to the spread of the conflict. Even more recently, in the tragic and historic conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, the Security Council has been able to act with singular unanimity on no less than four successive occasions within the space of a few weeks, and, with firmness, persistence and determination, put an end to a situation that held the seeds of a world conflagration.
13. We commend this accomplishment of the Security Council. We cannot avoid the thought that if only the Security Council had found itself able to act with such firmness and determination during the occasion when our own problems, as result of Indonesian confrontation, were before the Security Council, there would have been peace between the two countries today and we would not be wasting our human and material resources in meeting this persistent attack on our integrity and sovereignty.
14. Many, indeed, in my own country, ask truthfully but sadly, with memories of Security Council inaction in the face of admitted aggression by Indonesia, what can be the benefits of membership of the United Nations if it cannot even raise its moral voice of indignation toward aggression admitted, affirmed and gloated over. The United Nations, if we may venture to say so, must not by its inaction allow such attitudes to grow in the hearts and minds of many of its Members, who are unable to rely on it as the shield that will ward off wanton attacks on their sovereignty and integrity. But for our part, our faith in its continued functioning, provided it functions usefully and purposefully by profiting from experience, is still undiminished and we cannot afford to see it fail; nor can we afford to abandon it because it falters from time to time. We may look forward in the future to seeing it act effectively, decisively and unanimously, at least in the initial stages of a conflict.
15. This decisiveness, unimpeded by the veto, presents small conflicts from becoming big wars, renders peace-keeping not only effective but inexpensive, and thereby diminishes in scale, if not in kind, the mounting burden of astronomical expenditures and the impossible search for finding the finances to meet them.
16. We have now, during the interregnum between the nineteenth and the twentieth sessions, by the decision or indecision of the Committee of Thirty-three, side-stepped rather than solved the difficult problem of the authorization and financing of peacekeeping operations. At all events, the essential lesson of the infructuous nineteenth session is to keep all peace-keeping expenditures under control lest its political implications out-run the financial capabilities of the United Nations thus leaving it in the unenviable state of insolvency. In this context also my delegation has a suggestion that is worth consideration.
17. Several items have been inscribed on the agenda bearing on this vital problem of peace-keeping, including the report of the Committee of Thirty-three, and my delegation will make its appropriate contribution to the debates as they progress. Of special importance in this connexion is the item inscribed by the delegation of Ireland [see A/5966/Rev.2], which endeavours to create a bridge between the Security Council and the Assembly so that the controversy that has arisen over the Assembly's competence in the peace-keeping field may be to some extent mitigated by the adoption of special procedures in the Assembly. My delegation looks forward to participating usefully in this debate in the Special Committee. But we must confess we are not too sanguine that a problem of such complexity and such potential for discord and disunity can be solved without the expenditure of much effort and goodwill over a longer period of time than the less than three months allotted to this session of the Assembly. The question naturally arises: what happens in the meantime?
18. In this connexion, my Government wholeheartedly supports the efforts of the Governments of Canada and the Scandinavian countries in the creation, on a wholly voluntary basis, of "stand-by forces” trained and kept ready against the predictably perennial demand of the Secretary-General, at the behest of the Security Council, for undertaking peace-keeping tasks in the far corners of the globe. My Government may claim to have some experience in this field. We contributed troops in comparatively large numbers to the Congo over a long period of time, and my Government was recently privileged to be invited to participate in Ottawa on technical consultations relating to collection and deployment of military personnel with all logistical support. I am authorized by my Government to state that it will immediately consider, in consultation with Governments similarly disposed, the creation, training and equipment of stand-by forces for United Nations service at the call of the Secretary-General. We have our own problems, but we do think that our obligations to the United Nations cannot be ignored and put in cold storage for the duration of our troubles. We should like to see this plan developed on a more scientific and wide-ranging basis and not let it remain the response of a few States to the moral obligations of the Charter.
19. The other day [1341st meeting] the Foreign Minister of France cautioned-us that these contingents do not make an army. Indeed they do not. Until such time as the United Nations can have an army of its own, if it ever does need to have one, is it not essential that the Secretary-General should have at his elbow not a war-making capability, but a peace-keeping force that he can, at need, deploy and interpose between warring factions tenuously disengaged in compliance with a Security Council request or demand? The situation in recent weeks in Kashmir illustrates what we have in mind.
20. May I also be permitted to mention in this connexion that Malaysia has in the past made a modest financial contribution for the maintenance of the United Nations Peace-keeping Force in Cyprus [UNFICYP], and we have just informed the Secretary-General that we are making another contribution of an equal amount. While on the subject of UNFICYP, may I be permitted to digress for one moment on this question of voluntary contributions.
21. Basic to the Charter obligations is the concept of collective responsibility, particularly in the area of peace-keeping. A vital and, by the nature of things, costly function of the United Nations cannot be met and performed by depending on voluntary contributions, and the spectacle of the Secretary-General having to go hat-in-hand to the membership to get him out of a financial difficulty arising out of the discharge of the Security Council's primary responsibility is derogatory to the United Nations. My delegation is in favour of there being introduced into the system of assessments two types of parallel assessments concerning the expenses of the Organization — general expenses and special peace-keeping expenses — the former on the usual periodical-review scale of assessments, and the later on a special scale which will take account of the special responsibilities of the permanent Members and of the comparative capacity to pay between developed and developing countries. This is a far fairer solution to this problem than seeking voluntary contributions. The latter may be an ex post facto means of meeting exceptional situations such as the arrears already accumulated, but as a prospective permanent scheme to meet peace-keeping expenditure it is as illogical as it Should be unacceptable. Moreover, the active sense of a collective responsibility collectively discharged creates in the smallest of States a sense of interest in, and identity with, the vital function of peace-keeping and promotes in each Member State the consciousness of a greater dependence on the United Nations rather than on bilateral or regional defence arrangements.
22. This problem of peace-keeping leads me to a consideration of what my delegation regards as the central political problem of the newly-independent and developing States in the immediate years ahead: the problem of interference in their internal affairs by ways and means which are more latent than patent and which, for want of a better word, we call subversion. Inspired from outside, owing allegiance to ideologies alien to the State where they find for themselves a local habitation, aided and abetted by a vast panoply of subtle interferences in the internal affairs of the State, and masquerading under various innocuous names suggestive of struggles for freedom, there are quite a few of these forces working deliberately to create chaos within many an African and Asian State, as indeed in some Latin American States as well. No land armies march across well-defined borders, the thunder of guns from outside is not heard, the well-understood norms of obvious war are absent, and the eroding; canker of subversion cannot be localized, much less identified and dealt with in any effective manner. The integrity of the State and its independence and sovereignly are undermined from within and not threatened or endangered from without. The United Nations must grapple with this insidious problem betimes, before the norms of international behaviour embodied in the Charter get overtaken, become outdated and for ever rendered anachronistic and ineffective. It is the more dangerous is and less liable to prevention or control because of its capability of working insidiously across many borders.
23. We see patently a picture of it in South Viet-Nam. Intrusion of alien forces still largely and admittedly supplied and encouraged from beyond the confines of the State has kept the country for ever unstable and therefore incapable of bending its energies to the good of its own people. By cloaking these carefully engineered movements of rebellion in the mantle of national liberation movements the boundaries between authority and anarchy are erased and the face of aggression is carefully concealed. It is nonetheless aggression by all standards of international behaviour, and the Charter provisions prove ineffective against these subtle activities. External forces make no pretence of being uninvolved, and by the plain gusto of their encouragement to the existing conflict they leave no room for doubt about whence this subversion comes and whither it tends.
24. But my Government is most anxious that this conflict, whatever its cause and howsoever it began, should end and the parties get to the negotiating table. Neither of the two opposing attitudes has taken a position against negotiation. My Government associates itself with the urgent appeal made on 15 March 1965 by seventeen Heads of State or Government of non-aligned countries to the parties concerned to seek a political solution by starting negotiation without any precondition.
25. We do not intend to convey that this is the only way in which or the only source from which interference in the affairs of another State is practiced. Whatever the form it takes and the means it adopts, any activity of another State, motivated by the desire to create conditions of political or economic instability or chaos in another State, is a patent infringement of the principles of the Charter and my Government is most concerned that this activity should be checked and controlled.
26. We therefore welcome the inscription of an item for debate at this session by the Soviet Union seeking a declaration of non-interference on the part of every State in the internal affairs of another State [A/5977].
27. Perhaps the one primary if not exclusive cause for concern, not only to the States in Asia but also to those of Africa and Latin America is the phenomenon of China and its attitude to world problems. In our own view what happens inside China is a matter with which we should not concern ourselves too deeply. But China claims even the right to decide which are Afro-Asian States. The so-called confrontation by Indonesia against my own country has now taken on a new dimension. It has now secured the active assistance of China. This military confrontation has continued for over two years and shows no signs of abatement. We are still paying with our sweat and blood a debt we do not owe and do not have to pay to Indonesia.
28. At this stage I should like to say a word about the Kashmir problem and the Indo-Pakistan conflict arising out of it. My delegation noted with gratification that the Security Council was able to act with rare unanimity not once but on four successive occasions in calling a halt to hostilities that had unfortunately broken out along the borders of India and Pakistan and across the cease-fire line in Kashmir. In common with the rest of the world, my Government was most anxious to secure an urgent cease-fire in the first instance and our own representative on the Council co-operated with the rest in helping to bring the hostilities to an end. Malaysia has the closest and friendliest relations with both Pakistan and India and our role in the Security Council was limited to putting an immediate end to this fratricidal war. We hope with all our heart that our two friends will find it possible to engage in negotiations, to see that this problem is settled peacefully and reach a solution that will leave no legacy of hate and bitterness behind. We pray that this consummation may be achieved sooner than many of us can today dare to hope.
29. Just three hours ago a Reuters news item carried the message that Pakistan severed diplomatic relations with Malaysia this afternoon. I have as yet no official confirmation of it from my Government but as the news has been attributed to an official statement made by the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, I must assume it is accurate. But the sentiments I have just expressed remain the dominant view of my Government and my delegation. Not to want to regard Malaysia as a friend any longer is the sovereign privilege of Pakistan; but, in the larger context of peace in Asia, our wish to have this conflict peacefully settled is by no means less.
30. These thoughts relating to the existing strife and conflict in Asia that we have ventured to dwell on, are not monopolized by Asia. Other similar sources of conflict exist elsewhere in other continents. The perennial problem of war is as old as mankind and by the beginning of the Second World War man had provided himself with means of self-destruction unsurpassed in history. But with the closing chapters of that war, a new page opened in history and the atomic age began. The subsequent rapid development of science and technology has almost outstripped man’s capacity to control the Frankenstein of his own creation. Nuclear capacity that began as the monopoly of one or two has now become the special privilege of five — the so-called nuclear club. If one bears in mind the frenetic rapidity with which nuclear ambitions have begun to possess the minds of Powers big and small, one cannot foretell how this knowledge of the few and the availability of it, to others may not and will not redraw the boundaries of power. Mankind’s crying need today is to stop this rake's progress and no higher or more urgent task faces the United Nations than disarmament and the prevention of nuclear proliferation.
31. At the nineteenth session my delegation proposed [1306th meeting] that this problem of proliferation should be attacked from both sides, preventing the nuclear Powers from making their knowledge and weaponry available to others, as well as by curbing the desires of the many to seek and obtain access to them. We then said that, of the two, the latter was the more meaningful. That will demonstrate by deed that the pleas of the non-nuclear world are not mere empty words but that they were ready to practice what they preached. We then proposed a convention, as an effective and voluntary gesture by all the nonnuclear Powers of the world that they would not develop nuclear capacity, nor seek, receive or obtain any nuclear arms in any contingency. We are happy to note that this theme finds expression in the draft treaty proposed by the United States to the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee, by the Soviet. Union to this Assembly [A/5976] and by the unilateral declaration proposed by Italy. We would be happy to give our warm support to any scheme that secures the general acceptance of the Assembly in this field. This is the most imperative action that the United Nations must take. It now stands on the threshold of a new era after its arrival to maturity through twenty long years of its history. No other single step can help it to contemplate with confidence its being able in the ensuing years to shape the world in the image of its own ideals.
32. I shall now take a bird's eye view of other problems which will confront the United Nations during the next, decade. These may be viewed broadly in certain categories: firstly, the fight against poverty, ignorance and disease, which are the lot of the vast majority of the peoples of the world, the legacy of decades of colonial domination, particularly in the newly independent States; secondly, the problem of racialism; and lastly, the problem of colonialism. Though capable of separate examination, they are aspects of the same composite picture and partly related to each other as cause and effect.
33. The phenomenon in the post-war era of what has been appropriately termed a revolution of rising expectations among the "have-nots" of the world has failed to find an adequate response from the "haves" of the world. The rapid process of decolonization instigated by the United Nations, and the creation, as a consequence, of a large number of Afro-Asian States struggling to find a foot-hold in the eddying currents and cross-currents created by economic systems which were appropriate to an earlier day, has added to the strength and accelerated the pace of that revolution. Caught in this maelstrom which it could not escape, the United Nations dealt with the symptoms as they arose, making a patchwork quilt of patternless responses which failed to take account of the deep-rooted malaise born of an ancient economy unsuited to the new conditions.
34. This situation was remedied by the most important economic event that has taken place in the world since the birth of the United Nations, namely, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. This was an important milestone in the less spectacular but more, meaningful activity of the United Nations. The Conference cast away the glasses through which the world of yesterday was accustomed to view the lopsided economic development of the world as unavoidable if not beneficial, and decided on a more realistic appraisal of a close-knit interdependent world in which the chasm between the developed and the developing sections of the human community was growing ever deeper and wider.
35. It is too soon to judge the efficacy of the results that this new appraisal may produce in terms of the alleviation of poverty, ignorance and disease; but, as the saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles might begin with a single step. And there is room for real gratification in the fact that the right direction has been set, the right plan prepared and the first steps taken towards the creation, in the words of Article 55 of the Charter, "of conditions of stability and wellbeing which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations".
36. My own country, as a primary producer of well known commodities, has been made acutely aware of the rising expectations of development planning being hamstrung by diminishing returns of export earnings. In the meantime, the rate of growth of the population compounds existing problems; and even as export earnings decline with falling prices for primary commodities, import expenditures for manufactured capital and consumer goods, so essential for development, continue to increase at steeper rates. In common with other primary producer developing countries, however, we have a modicum of satisfaction in the knowledge that even if the final remedy is not round the corner, the disease has been identified and its control made possible.
37. Racialism, we venture to think, is the most significant affliction which the world suffers today. This problem, although manifested in acute form between the white and the black races, by no means exhausts the problems created by superior-inferior attitudes among other peoples in various other parts of the world. In its political manifestation it has given rise to the notorious creed of apartheid in South Africa — which it is sought to extend into South West Africa — and of white domination in Southern Rhodesia. In the Portuguese colonies in Africa and Asia we still see colonialism masquerading as extensions of the metropolitan State.
38. The problem of inferior status because of colour is evident in other regions of the world, but in those regions there is clear acceptance that race superiority is an evil doctrine to be curbed, controlled and abolished. Only in the areas of Africa and Asia mentioned above does one find such a doctrine tolerated and imposed as official policy, with even a pious and sanctimonious claim that it is the best means of uplifting the so-called inferior races.
39. My country has been in the forefront of the crusade against apartheid and, at the behest of the United Nations, has not hesitated to fulfil all the demands made upon it by the resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council. It has closed its doors to trade with South Africa, even though it has meant a loss of nearly $25 million in export earnings.
40. Our position with regard to Southern Rhodesia has been equally emphatic. During the debates in the Security Council, in May 1965, our representative answered effectively the excuse of the United Kingdom based on an alleged constitutional inability to deal with the minority rulers of Southern Rhodesia.
41. The most urgent decolonization problem, besides that of restoring to the four million Africans in Southern Rhodesia their right to a government of their own choice, is the liberation of the reactionary pockets of Portuguese colonialism in Africa and Asia, These matters will come up for debate in the Committee, each under its inscribed item, and my delegation looks forward to making its contribution at the appropriate time.
42. There are a variety of other matters on which this Assembly is required to respond and to take meaningful decisions, but I shall be unable to refer to all of them. I must mention, however, the Palestine question, which concerns most intimately and painfully our brothers in the Arab States. It is sad to think that nearly two decades of discussion have brought the problem no nearer to a just Solution.
43. Malaysia's foreign policy cam be stated simply. It is to steer clear of military and political groupings and to judge every external problem on its merits in the twin context of its own desire to maintain its friendships and its undertakings under the Charter of the United Nations. We pursue our own independent policy in the truest sense and do not accept dictation or persuasion from any quarter against our own better judgement. We do not desire to interfere in the internal affairs of any State and have no intention of doing so. The policy of good-neighbourliness that we have followed in the past and shall continue to follow is not mere doctrinal theory, but is manifested in our conduct and our behaviour in the international world. We have the friendliest relations with all our close neighbours except Indonesia, and of this latter situation Indonesia is the sole cause. If it still wishes to remain the implacable enemy of Malaysia, it is not for lack, on our part, of trying to be friends.
44. We are anxious to cultivate these friendships and create new ones, so that our membership of the United Nations may have a meaningful purpose. We stretch out our hand in friendship to every State, whatever its internal political and economic system. We desire to manifest by deed the cardinal principle of peaceful coexistence among disparate States, which is one of the pillars on which the United Nations rests.
45. In this connexion, may I be permitted to say a word in answer to the statement by the representative of the Philippines on Friday last about his country's claim to North Borneo (now Sabah). This, he said, remained an essential factor in the normalization of relations between our two countries. I wish to assure him that my Government is just as anxious to normalize relations. He referred to this matter as an aside in his fervent plea that all Member States should accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.
46. Malaysia, as I have just said, is most anxious to live in friendship with the Philippines, I am happy to be able to say that, while we may not be friends in the traditional diplomatic sense, there do exist the most cordial relations between the peoples and the leadership of the two countries. We have begun no confrontation against each other. Our relations are not marred by hate and bitterness. Two years and two months ago, on 31 July 1963, the President of the Philippines and my Prime Minister agreed, in the Manila Accord of that date:
"... to exert their best endeavours to bring the claim to a just and expeditious solution by peaceful means, such as negotiation, conciliation, arbitration or judicial settlement as well as other peaceful means of the parties' own choice, in conformity with the Charter, of the United Nations and the Bandung Declaration."
We stand by that statement, and Malaysia, for its part, has done nothing and will do nothing to retreat from that solemn commitment.
47. The representatives who have preceded me at this rostrum have variously expressed their fears and hopes for the United Nations and its future. I share their apprehensions. But, if I may venture a thought for the consideration of the Assembly, it is that we should remind ourselves that the United Nations is more than the sum of its parts. It is but right that each of us should look at world problems primarily in the light of our own individual political or military self-interest. If not for that understandable attitude, such problems would lose their significance for each of us. But it would be useful to remember that we should at all times endeavour to reconcile our self-interest with the demands and needs of the whole Organization. The more we learn to conduct ourselves as owing a concurrent, if not superior, allegiance to the United Nations as such, alongside our inescapable allegiance to our own particular States, the more shall we be enabled to look at individual problems in the wider context of the Organization and thereby serve the cause of the Organization and the causes for which it was created. We cannot hope to take out of it more than we put into it. Our hopes and our desire to profit by our membership in the United Nations must be measured against our own individual contributions to its health and vitality.
48. The United Nations cannot achieve success in influencing man's progress towards harmony and well-being, in spite of all the diversity that is inherent in his nature, if we fail and do not make it possible. Let us all, therefore, on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of its coming into being, rededicate ourselves to hold fast to the principles of the Charter and the purposes of its creators, so that, twenty years from now, our successors, looking back on the history of this time, may be able to say that in the most testing time in its history we did not fail them or the United Nations.