1. Madam President, it is
with great pleasure that I congratulate you on your election
to the highest United Nations office, the Presidency of the
General Assembly. You are the second woman, and your
country, Liberia, the third African State, to be so honoured.
The choice is not only a tribute to your personal
qualities and your contribution to the work of the
Organization; it is also a recognition of the emergence of
the great continent of Africa in the community of
nations — and, I venture to think, a symbol of its determination
to finalize its epic of liberation from centuries of colonialism.
2. We are grateful to the temporary President and to the
representative of Peru for giving us all the opportunity of
paying tribute to the memory of the former President of
the Assembly, the late Emilio Arenales [see 1753rd meeting].
3. The delegation of Afghanistan has always participated
in the general debate as a unique forum where high-level
representatives of now more than 100 States annually
convene in the unending search for a better understanding
among nations. In that alone, if in nothing else, the United
Nations has made a tremendous contribution to world peace.
4. But now, in our twenty-fourth session, the debate is
taking a new turn. You, Madam President, and others who
have followed you, have set a keynote for a session of
self-criticism, for deep soul-searching into the extent of our
accomplishments and the dimensions of our influence. Our
small minute of meditation is expanding into weeks of
debate on this theme and this is good. It is completely in
harmony with the series of self-appraisal dominating our
various organs, committees and commissions, on the eve of
the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the United
Nations, which will take place next year. It could be a hope
that this invaluable forum will move away from monotonous
reaffirmations of frozen positions to an institution of
creative and constructive ideas or, preferably, reconstructive
policies, that the cancer of this stale confrontation
will yield to the spirit of compromise and consensus.
5. At this point, however, it seems to my delegation that
we must arrive at a clear understanding of what this
criticism is all about. Is it the purgative of genuine
self-criticism, a scrutinizing examination of our policies
with respect to the world Organization? Or is it, as we
seem to detect, a general onslaught on the United Nations,
its noble aims, its unfolding ideology, its substantial
inventory of fundamental principles which it tenaciously
upholds against abuse and violation of its Charter, its
tireless quest for that peace which has been the goal of all
mankind throughout the centuries?
6. Let us make sure that what was intended to de a call for
a constructive critique in the interest of an improved
Organization is not turned into a campaign of rancid
cynicism, into a dyspepsia of studied disrespect, into an
orgy of pessimism. I think we all recognize that campaign
of ridicule as the familiar device of those whose misguided
policies find themselves in conflict with the Charter, with
the resolutions of the General Assembly and with the
decisions of the Security Council. There is such a campaign
and it sometimes takes on a more subtle view: those who
undermine its authority while tearfully deploring its alleged
impotence damn the Organization with faint praise. Others,
sometimes with good intentions, designate themselves
“defence counsel” in justification of the life of the world
Organization.
7. As far as the delegation of Afghanistan is concerned, we
shall not stand on this. rostrum in any posture of apologia
for the second great experiment in modern times to save
mankind from the great plunge it has taken towards
extinction in. the cataclysms of two global confrontations.
8. Today, in the era of final weapons, we note that the
third plunge will bring about the total eclipse of man on
this planet; and we note that if we have so far avoided this
great tragedy the credit is largely due to the United
Nations, where words of warning and words of reason
somehow broke through the thick fog of blind fear that
gripped the world following the explosion of the first
atomic bomb. Therefore, my delegation, in unashamed
reversal of Shakespeare’s famous line, “I come to bury
Caesar, not to praise him”, must say that we come to praise
the United Nations, not to bury it. For us the function of
our criticism must be the betterment of the Organization
and the first prerequisite for making an institution better is
to see its essential good.
9. Against this background we cannot close our eyes to
the fact that recently the. United Nations has sustained a
considerable loss of prestige in the eyes of world public
opinion. We cannot ignore the obvious diminution of
confidence in many parts of the world in the effectiveness
of the Organization. It is reflected in the petitions, in the
organs of popular expression and in the mass media. It has
slowly corroded some of the most vital projects of the
Organization; it is largely responsible for the mediocre
results of the First United Nations Development Decade.
Public indifference has created an atmosphere favourable to
Governments that defy the Organization with impunity.
10. In our frenzied preoccupation with projects and with
resolutions, we may be prone to forget that we do not
dispose of the power of legislation or the arm of enforcement.
Our decisions are, as is tirelessly pointed out,
recommendations whose enforcement potential lies entirely
in the moral weight they carry with popular support, and
the degree of general faith in the efficacy of the United
Nations. Lacking that support, we have a faith without
followers — a creed without disciples — in short, a United
Nations as remote as the moon, and far less exciting.
11. This poses a serious problem for our future work. We
are engaged in very important long-range projects, with
items ranging from the sea-bed to outer space, from the
classroom to national plans, from human rights to the rights
and duties of States. But most important of all is the global
strategy of the Second United Nations Development
Decade, involving the destinies of two-thirds to three-quarters
of the world’s population in the underprivileged
nations; and we are seeking to go even beyond that, into
longer perspectives, on the basis of the twenty-fifth
anniversary. Yet at this stage of our work, when we shall
need the full thrust of popular opinion to lift us into a
viable orbit of accomplishments, we find that support at its
lowest ebb. Is it not the most perverse of paradoxes that
the most consummate programme for man enjoys so little
of his enthusiasm and his confidence? How has this come about?
12. It is the view of my delegation that either we find the
answer to this problem or we shall move blithely ahead
with more plans and more resolutions, in tiresome restatements
of the repetitious resolutions of previous years.
13. One popular explanation is that we are going through
a period of reversion to nationalism: that people, turtle-like,
have put out their necks, looked at the big, wide
world, and then have drawn back into their nationalistic
shells, with a kind of ostrich blindness to pre-world
isolationism. But while true to a degree, that theory does
not square with the world we see around us. Never was
there so little of the old symptoms of nationalism, the spirit
of chauvinism and flag-waving; never was there so much
preoccupation of peoples with peoples, never so much of
the world-view of things. The youth who at the turn of the
century demonstrated for flag and country today riots for
the principles of universal peace and social justice.
14. No, this is definitely not a world of turtles and
ostriches, but the world of man — man caught in the spokes
of forward-moving forces — man on the move, but certainly
not in a reversion to the past. From all we hear and see
about us it is man in a conversion to the future. In this
orbit he is neither a nationalist nor an internationalist.
Perhaps he is basically the eternal explorer, seeking a sense
of direction out of his dilemma; and if he has lost his
contact with the United Nations, the supreme radar of that
direction, it is because he is propelled by forces with a
speed which gives our past the illusion of standing still.
15. It has also been said that we have lost the man of
today because we have lost contact with reality, that we
have adopted phantom resolutions whose words vanish like
ghosts with the first ray of morn, that we have adopted
decisions without regard to the voice of minority opposition,
or to the prospects of their being implemented.
16. It is true, of course, that many resolutions remain
unimplemented. But to blame the laws because they are not
observed puts the problem upside down. The concept that
the consensus of the majority must yield to the will of the
minority poses a new kind of veto — a voluntary subordination,
a tribute to power, without the responsibility of the
veto under the Charter. Resolutions that are by-passed and
defied are not necessarily adopted in vain; they carry with
them a stubborn moral content of their own, with a
penetrating force that begets implementation by somebody
along the corridors of time. It is not the resolutions that
alienate people from our influence, but our failure to
implement them, to make them come to life, to give them
the flesh of reality; it is our supine surrender to those who
ignore them that has created the confidence gap regarding
our Organization. If we fail to close this gap between
decisions and action we shall certainly not close that other
gap between the rich and the poor nations.
17. It would appear that in recent years this Organization
with its record membership, its vast agenda, born not out of
a misguided spasm for resolutions, but under the pressure
of a changing world, moving too fast for the “haves” and
too slowly for the “have nots“, has generally become
divided into two schools of thought. Those who enjoy the
monopoly of power — economic and military, psychologically
and logically — constitute a phalanx of gradualism.
The others make up the camp of the “forward-march”.
Government policies in the United Nations appear to be
shaping up along the lines of this division.
18. But for the hundreds of millions of impoverished in
Latin America, in racist-bound Africa, in war-ridden Asia,
and even for many people in the wealthier nations, the pace
of gradualism appears to be no longer acceptable. Impatience
is the pulse-beat of the day, and the so-called
revolution of rising expectations has moved far beyond
mere expectations to urgent demands, yes, sometimes even
reached for the impossible; and is the impossible so remote
when hundreds of millions have seen with their own eyes
the landing of men on the moon—and soon, we are told, on
Mars or Venus?
19. For the past two years we have witnessed an enormous
acceleration of the world revolution rotating into the
future. We have seen the rise of youth as a new political
force, with its own new rhythm of accomplishments,
clamouring for action where previous generations have
marked time. Everywhere new and old societies are seething
cauldrons of threatening violence in more insistent demands
for social justice.
20. This may well be a warning to us that if we do not
enforce the decisions of our own making somebody else
will — and it will not. be with the peaceful transition we
envisage. If we stand still, as so many of our frozen
resolutions testify, it is obvious that the world does not.
Not only the people on the streets, but also the scientists in
their laboratories have stepped up their tempo in the
elaboration and production of new weapons, so that the
snail-pace progress made in disarmament is wiped out by
the new weapons, just as in developing economies inches of
progress are erased by the population explosion.
21. Thus if we establish a true ratio between gradual
progress and the big leap of current events, we shall see that
gradualism means standing still, and standing still means, in
fact moving backwards.
22. We hear many views on what the United Nations
might be, a forum, a mere diplomatic mart or the builder of
nations and their future well-being. But I think that we can
all agree that the one thing the United Nations, of all
institutions in the world, can never be, is what is
contemptuously called in our new world “The Establishment”.
The United Nations can never be the “Old Generation”. Its
Charter functions, based upon principles of a new and
better world, give it a force and built-in leadership of the
new world which no Government, however benign or
liberal, can rival. I am afraid that the United Nations is
doomed to the role of either “Perpetual Youth” or
“Gradual Eclipse”.
23. This poses a problem for an organization whose centre
of power at its founding was the older generations. Youth
was then largely in military uniform. Since then what we
call public opinion has undergone mental and psychological
changes. I am not sure that we have established a line of
contact with these new forces. In the area of human
thinking also, science and technology have made valuable
strides. Therefore it may well be that the new psychological
forces could become one more item on the agenda of our
Advisory Committee on the Application of Science and
Technology to Development, recalling the famous UNESCO
dictum that wars and peace begin in the minds of men. In
the meantime we may safely assume that our “peoples gap”
problem is chiefly the problem of non-implemented resolutions.
While in our vast agenda we are about to add over
one hundred more resolutions to the archives of the past, it
might be useful to establish a small group or committee on
the presidential level to concern itself with the problems
and possibilities of increased implementation. Such a group
might approximate the “wise men” formula utilized in
other international circles.
24. We are gravely concerned with certain retrogressive
tendencies in world political developments in the past year,
which not only by-pass the Charter but promulgate policies
in direct contravention of the most basic principles of our
Organization.
25. In recent months we have heard the enunciation of the
right to the military conquest of territory and to the right
of annexation of foreign lands. We have even heard a big
Power, a permanent member of the Security Council, a
major custodian of the Charter and a praetorian guardian of
the peace, accord that right to a belligerent nation,
generously at the expense of the territory of other Member
States — a right which, incidentally, this big Power has
repeatedly renounced for itself.
26. There is no need for me to discuss the juridical aspect
of conquest by force of arms; the truth here is self-evident.
All I wish to say on behalf of my delegation is that if this
throwback to the dark ages is permitted an inch of
compromise, then we shall plunge the world back into the
days of Genghis Khan whose footprints are still on the soil
of my country; then no nation represented in this hall will
be safe from the ancient greed of the wars of conquest. This
Assembly should administer an unmistakable and decisive
rebuff to such policies.
27. The past year has also seen new and more extensive
violations of human rights in the colonies, in occupied
lands, in war-ridden lands and other lands. It is here that
the United Nations, in its failure to go beyond the
enunciation of general principles, has sustained an immeasurable
loss of prestige. Accordingly, my delegation will
support the creation of a United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights as a first step in the future
development of an international enforcement structure.
28. We are also concerned over the rise of a new type of
war. As in the case of war for territorial conquest, we
thought that religious wars — the most dangerous, the most
fanatical and the most intransigent of all wars — were a part
of a long buried past never to return. But now it appears
that we are about to suffer a serious relapse into history.
Claims to the Old City of Jerusalem have been made on a
basis of biblical law and quasi-religious narratives. On 3 July
1969 I appeared before the Security Council [1485th
meeting] on behalf of my Government, along with representatives
of other delegations, in the Council’s deliberations
on the occupation of Jerusalem. I raised the warning
that the claims made to Jerusalem on so-called religious
grounds, apart from any other aspects of the issue,
dangerously opened up the flood gates for a reversion to
religious war. I stated that if such a war took place, Israel
would be responsible.
29. On 20 August 1969 the world heard with dismay and
grief of the burning of the sacred Al Aqsa Mosque, one of
the holiest of shrines to the Islamic peoples in all lands and
a historic landmark to all religions and all faiths. This tragic
occurrence ignited the hearts of Islamic peoples everywhere.
30. My point here is to draw some lesson from this
unhappy development for the future peace and security of
the world. Religious claims are one category of war into
which the United Nations must not allow itself to be
dragged as an arbiter — and for a very sound reason. Even in
political and ideological tensions the world Organization
has its. obvious limitations and, within them, has achieved
much in the prevention of conflict and in halting its spread.
It has been able to exercise a restraining influence over
Governments. But wars involving the most precious convictions
of man run beyond the control of governments and
become the crusades of peoples on the highest level of
reckless emotions; and this kind of war may not be
amenable to the usual United Nations restraints. The
United Nations must nip in the bud any attempt to revive
this kind of war by eliminating its causes.
31. We are always concerned about the concepts of
security. In this area the winds of war, like hurricanes, shift
their direction. The centre of gravity of war now appears to
have shifted from Europe to Asia, but with different problems.
32. In Europe the conflict was one involving power and
hegemony, and at times colonization. In Asia the causes
and roots of the conflict are more economic than political.
Ours is primarily the problem of under-development in the
lands where people are hungry and poor and restlessly
striving for a slight improvement in their meagre livelihood.
In this situation there is little margin for an extravagant
division into military blocs, even for purposes of security,
and their inevitable arsenal of armaments. Here, the
strategic approach constitutes absolutely the wrong basis
for the economic development which the countries of the
region so desperately need.
33. Here, where seemingly, the fate of war and peace is to
be decided in the future, and is already being fought out in
what was once called the Indo-China sector, where tensions
simmer between Pakistan and India, between China and the
Soviet Union, between China and India, between Pakistan
and Pakhtunistan, it is essential to ponder the political
structure most conducive to the economic and social
development of an entire hemisphere.
34. In such a structure we consider that foreign intervention
is fraught with the greatest danger of setting off a new
power struggle. Here, unlike in Europe, the ruling principle
of peace must begin with the principle of self-determination
of peoples as the major point of orientation. On the basis of
these axioms — accepted as United Nations truths — perhaps
the entire continent may embark on a constructive era of
economic rehabilitation and development only on the
broad base of an all-Asian formulation as the alternative to
the rivalry of blocs and rival groupings.
35. In this pattern we may be able to implement what our
Secretary-General, U Thant, calls a disarmament decade.
Rightly and financially it is inseparable from the decade of
economic development; the two are as complementary as
the right arm is to the left. In the same way the two are
inseparable from continental collective systems which,
unlike strategic blocs, have no need for excessive armaments.
We hope that Member States may begin to think in
terms of this triptych for a new concept of inter-relationship
between economic development, disarmament and security.
36. However, it must be emphasized that as long as the
political crises and wars and disputes continue to plague
relations between nations in any region or continent, to
speak of peace and progress or collective understanding for
any purpose, in any form, will remain far from realistic.
37. Speaking for my country, I am happy to state that our
own relations are friendly with our neighbours, with all
countries on our continent, and indeed on all other
continents. It is with great regret that I have to mention
one excepticn.
38. At the last session of the General Assembly I spoke of
the serious situations of international concern affecting the
people of the Asian continent [1690th meeting]. I expressed
the hope that a peaceful settlement of the disputes
would be found in an amicable solution of the problems
causing them. We are still deeply concerned about those
situations in which Afghanistan is not directly involved; but
we are directly involved in the high tension between the
people of Pakhtunistan and the Government of Pakistan,
fraught as it is with danger for the future peace and security
of that region.
39. The cause of the people of Pakhtunistan is a legitimate
and just cause based on the right of peoples to self-
determination and the fulfilment of the aspirations of
peoples to determine their own fate and future. This is a
cause that, as Members know, Afghanistan has supported
for all peoples everywhere, and naturally we cannot do less
for a territory that was a part of our country, usurped by a
colonial Power, and a people that is our own people.
40. Pakhtunistan is not a small problem. It involves the
legitimate aspirations of more than 7 million people. It is
the largest territory in Asia demanding the right of
self-determination. it is a serious and explosive problem,
fraught with the possibility of grave consequences. Since
this problem is not yet before the United Nations, I shall
once again express the hope that the new Government of
Pakistan, fully aware of the aspirations of these people and
having realized the gravity of the situation, will not add to
our disappointment as in the past by refusing to deal with it
in accordance with the accepted international standards
regulating such disputes, on the basis of the undeniable
right of peoples to self-determination.
41. This Assembly session offers us an opportunity of
facing new problems, the new forces, the new trends in our
swiftly evolving world. They are many and complex. They
include ourselves. They must be our profound preoccupation
as a prelude to the next session, when we shall embark
on a programme of celebrating our great anniversary and
landmark. Basically, it all comes to a renaissance of the
great faith the founding nations enunciated in San
Francisco. We must restore faith in our people, faith in
ourselves and a rededication to the Charter which has
already done so much to alter the concepts and perspectives
of modern man. We must close this gap between ourselves
and this new man. We must regain our partnership with him
in the great epic of our times: the renaissance of the human race.