89. It is a special honour for
me today to express to the President of this Assembly on
behalf of the Government and people of Guyana our very
deep pleasure and satisfaction at her election to the office
of President. Representing as we do a people whose origins
lie predominantly in Africa and in Asia, my delegation
takes particular pride in welcoming her to her high office.
We can never forget the interest and concern which she
showed for us in the days when, so ably representing her
country on the committees and councils of this Organization,
she advanced the cause of Guyana’s independence
with a courage and determination which contributed
materially to our achievement of nationhood. We believe,
indeed we know from our own experience, that she brings
to the Presidency those qualities of wisdom, judgement and
compassion which will serve to enhance the office to which
her election is so richly deserved.
90. Her distinguished predecessor in the Chair of this
Assembly, the late Mr. Emilio Arenales, served this Organization
for the most difficult months of the twenty-third
session and served it with great distinction and at much
personal cost. The tragedy of his death at an age when he
still had so much to offer to his country, to the Latin
American region and to the wider stage of international
politics, has saddened us all. My delegation wishes to join in
the tributes that have been paid to him — for he spent his life
in the service of the international community and gave it
while serving the cause of international understanding. The
most tangible tribute we can pay him is to answer the call
he made in his inaugural address to this Assembly a year
ago [1674th meeting] when he reminded us that what is
needed is not a new organization but simply a return to the
spirit of the Charter — a return to those principles of human
coexistence, international as well as national, that must
serve as the basis of political and human philosophy. Unless
international society makes an effective response to that
call, the cause of international understanding which so
many men and women serve with steadfastness and
dedication will remain merely a cause, and international
peace, which should be the reward of their efforts, an
elusive aspiration.
91. It is regrettable that the goal of international peace has
been only partially attained, and that the cause of
international understanding continues to be jeopardized by
a lack of commitment to the spirit of the Charter by those
who behave as if the rule of law in international affairs is a
soothing palliative — prescribed only for men too naive to
recognize the realities of power. In the face of the
continually widening gap between the language of statesmen
and the policies of their Governments, the people of
the world have grown immune to the rhetoric of peace and
have become cynical of much that is done in the name of
peace, including much of our work here in the United
Nations. There is an urgent need to reclaim the interest and
the belief of men and women everywhere in this Organization,
in the pursuits enjoined upon it by its Charter and in
the principles which Member States stand pledged to
uphold and to advance. On the eve of the twenty-fifth
anniversary of this Organization it is time that this work of
reclamation began, and Guyana raises its voice with those
who already from this podium have called for it to
commence.
92. The responsibility for this effort must rest on all
countries — the large and the small, the developed and the
undeveloped, the rich and the poor. Since the malaise has
its origins in the abuse of power, the main responsibility for
the cure must rest with those who wield power. If we are
going to achieve the ordered international society that was
the vision at San Francisco 24 years ago, that achievement
must rest upon an acceptance by the major Powers of the
rule of law in international affairs as a higher good than the
passing rewards of power at any moment in history — an
acceptance that was acknowledged as the fundamental
compact when this Organization was created. Certainly the
world has changed, and history with it; but the nuclear
Powers of today, the wealthy nations, the advanced
societies for whom science and technology have created
new reservoirs of wealth and power, are none the less those
same nations and societies whose statesmen helped frame
the Charter. The gravest responsibility of all rests upon
those who, by virtue of their permanent membership in the
Security Council, possess the principal responsibility for
maintaining the peace of the world — and for doing so not
through bilateral arrangements for spheres of influence but
under the broad provisions of the Charter.
93. The genuine acceptance and the resolute discharge of
these responsibilities by the major Powers will do much to
guarantee faithful adherence by all countries to the
precepts of the Charter, but a refusal by the major Powers
to discharge their responsibilities, or their willingness to do
so only selectively, does not absolve the rest of the world
from its obligations to international peace; nor does it of
necessity imply the abandonment of all hope for international
security. To the contrary, such a situation — and it
is such a situation that confronts us today — calls for a
special effort by the rest of the international community,
by the countries that are neither major Powers nor
irrevocably committed to their policies, to ensure that the
peace of the world is not held in pawn to power. Guyana
considers that there is a pressing need for the middle-sized
and smaller States to assert a positive role, especially in the
area of international security. While resisting the pressures
towards bi-polarization, they must bring their influence to
bear on the problems of international security and this
influence can be produced from their solidarity in support
of the Charter. As one of the non-aligned countries of the
world, we stand ready to play our part, however small and
modest it may be, in all such collective efforts designed to
ensure peace in the world and, more especially, the security
of those who least have the capacity to breach that
peace—the small developing nations.
94. In no other area of international endeavour is there a
greater need for this Organization and its Members — all of
its Members — to do more to fulfil the purposes of the
Charter than in the area of peace-keeping. A year ago, as I
spoke from this podium [1680th meeting], I said that the
world’s aggressors had learnt all too effectively how to
exploit the gap in the system of international security
which results from the absence of established arrangements
for peace-keeping operations of a preventive character.
said that Guyana lent its voice to the plea for this gap to be
closed, especially in relation to the developing countries,
and I pledged that we would support every reasonable
proposal to this end. My Government is glad to acknowledge
that the year between then and now has, indeed, seen
an intensification of efforts for the acceptance by this
Organization of its fundamental responsibility in this field,
and that as a result of these efforts we now see the first
indication of a movement towards the assumption of this
responsibility.
95. For the past seven months, a working group of the
Special Committee on Peace-keeping Operations has met
continuously, to analyse, and if possible to formulate,
proposals for the authorization, establishment, direction
and control of United Nations military observer missions
and to reach agreement on legal, financial, administrative
and other organizational issues. It is a matter for regret that
despite this major effort there is as yet no final consensus.
There are indications, however, that the will to reach
agreement does exist, and my delegation urges that the
Special Committee should continue its work with a sense of
urgency renewed by this Assembly’s reaffirmation of the
necessity of an effective peace-keeping system to international
order and security.
96. The proposals submitted to this Assembly by the
USSR which are now included in the agenda as an item
entitled “The strengthening of international security” may
provide an opportunity for such a reaffirmation. My
delegation was particularly glad to hear from the Foreign
Minister of the USSR, in his statement revealing these
proposals, that it was the view of his Government that it
was not sufficient alone to stamp out fires but that it was
“more important to take effective measures to safeguard
the world in general from fires, and to remove in good time
the centres of potential conflicts and complications”
[1756th meeting, para. 135]. Peace-keeping operations of
such a preventive character — operations that come early
enough to forestall conflict — are precisely those which are
of the greatest significance to the smaller countries, and my
delegation will follow with close interest the work of the
Special Committee in the months ahead as it continues its
attempts to devise workable arrangements by which this
Organization may discharge these responsibilities. We will
watch, indeed, for a new resolve to promote a regime of
international security, bearing in mind that the frustrations
of past attempts have arisen in the main from disagreements
between the major Powers.
97. Let me say, however, that it is imperative — if we are to
be faithful to the Charter and to the interests of the many
small, and not so small, States which are now so much a
part of this Organization — that all such arrangements
proceed from a clear acknowledgment of the distinction
between peace-keeping operations of a preventive character
and operations for peace enforcement contemplated under
chapter 7 of the Charter. It is imperative that the distinction
should be acknowledged, for the distinction is fundamental
and not merely terminological. Indeed, the distinction
has become more obvious and the need to acknowledge
it has become more pressing for two quite separate
reasons: first, because of the changed character of international
society consequent on the process of de-colonization
and, secondly, because of the experience of the United
Nations in the exercise of peace-keeping and peace enforcement
functions over the last 24 years.
98. Change in the character of international society
actually began, if only formally, with the coming into force
of the Charter; for in formulating and in signing the Charter
the major powers, at the very least, signified their will to
move beyond the doctrine of raison d’état in the conduct
of their affairs. The admission to membership of the new
States, most of them small, many of them weak, at once
dramatized and bore witness to this change; for the world
community — as represented by this Organization — is
founded upon acceptance of the sovereign equality of all
Member States, not upon their capacity to prove by force
of arms that they are so equal. It is both reasonable and
logical, therefore, that there should be an explicit expectation
on the part of the new States, and indeed, of all small
States, that from this evolving concept of nationhood it
should follow that admission to this Organization carries
with it the assurance of a security concomitant with the
right to self-determination.
99. Let us remember that resolution 1514 (XV) — itself the
chapter of decolonization — expressly affirmed that the
tight to self-determination and nationhood was not dependent
on the trappings of wealth and power associated with
the nation state of long ago. Having thus affirmed the right
of men to govern themselves, the right of new nations to
exist, this Organization must provide just and effective
means of protecting those rights and to secure those States,
for it would be to argue a curious logic — having given life to
the small States under conditions in no way related to the
material power they might later exercise in affairs of the
world, but which had everything to do with the rights of
their peoples as men—that Member States of this Organization
should remain unmoved as these new nations fall prey
to the expansionist ambitions of older or far more powerful
neighbours and the aspirations of their peoples are crushed.
100. It is of more than passing interest to recall resolution
1954 (XVIII) on the question of Basutoland, Bechuanaland
and Swaziland which was adopted by the General Assembly
on 11 December 1963. Paragraph 4 of that resolution reads
as follows:
“Solemnly warns the Government of the Republic of
South Africa that any attempt to annex or encroach upon
the territorial integrity of these three Territories shall be
considered an act of aggression”.
Such a warning might be salutary for others besides South
Africa, and might find new expression in a vigorous concept
of peace-keeping operations which would be explicitly
related to the changed character of United Nations membership
and to the vital need of so many States for
international guarantees of their territorial security.
101. The second reason which makes it imperative to
acknowledge the distinction between peace-keeping and
peace enforcement functions is the actual experience of this
Organization. That experience over the years has clearly
shown an inverse relationship between the degree of success
attending peace-keeping efforts and the extent of their
involvement in the struggle for supremacy between the
super-Powers. If the new initiative for the structuring of a
peace-keeping régime is to be successful, the arrangements
devised must avoid procedures which permit the objectives
of power to stultify the objective of international peace.
Given the susceptibility of the Security Council to the
paralysing stresses of the power conflict, the veto of the
permanent members of the Security Council must not be
allowed to frustrate the discharge by this Organization of
its most fundamental duty—the preservation of international peace.
102. Experience points to still another reason, quite apart
from the veto, why it would be unwise to acknowledge an
exclusive authority in the Security Council in relation to
preventive peace-keeping measures. I refer, of course, to the
tendency — so graphically described in the opening statement
of this debate delivered by the Foreign Minister of
Brazil — “to deal with certain questions in narrow and
ever-dwindling circles” by a process of transference from
the General Assembly to the Security Council to the
permanent members to the “super-Powers” — the trend, as
he described it, to “a new world directorate” [1755th
meeting, para, 15].
103. Certainly in the area of peace-keeping, all our
experience should lead this Assembly to assert that jurisdiction
which it possesses under the Charter stricto sensu and
under its equally valid interpretation through application.
We are advocating an approach to the question of peace-keeping
operations which will permit States under threat of
aggression to ask for international machinery in advance of
conflict since we believe that such a system in itself would
be a deterrent to aggression and so a major factor in
securing international peace. It would also of necessity help
to avoid the current diversion of energies and resources
within small States from the urgent tasks of development to
the essential requirements of defence — a diversion which
small States have no option but to make when faced with
hostility from across their borders and the absence of
effective international machinery that will deter or restrain
the intruder.
104. I should like to repeat what I said to the Assembly a
year ago [1680th meeting] in this context: if the world
Organization is serious in its commitment to the economic
growth of developing countries, it must acknowledge that
international guarantees of territorial security must be the
prerequisite for an international effort for development.
The dilemma of development or defence which faces many
a small State is a dilemma which can be resolved in favour
of development only at the international level. The threatened
State has no option. My own country’s experience has
led us to advocate this; but it could and would be the
experience of many another State, and not only the small
ones, if there continues to be no effective machinery for
international security and if the practice were once established
that treaties, however solemnly concluded and
however consistently acknowledged and respected, could be
repudiated unilaterally at the whim of the more powerful
signatory.
1O5. It is, therefore, with considerable satisfaction that
my Government recognizes the positive contribution to
international peace and security made at the United
Nations Conference on the Law of Treaties convened under
the auspices of this Organization at Vienna. With the
conclusion of the Treaty the world community has taken
one step further towards the ordered society that is our
common goal. We must now trust that the solemn
commitment to the rule of law in international relations
which this Treaty endorses will make less likely that resort
to naked force which has hitherto characterized relations
between the weak and the strong in the international
community.
106. In this context, too, my Government has a modest
satisfaction in the progress so far made in the work of the
Special Committee on Principles of International Law
concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among
States and in the work of the Special Committee on the
Question of Defining Aggression. Given the satisfactory
conclusion of the Vienna Convention on the Law of
Treaties and assuming satisfactory results from the current
work of the Special Committee on Peace-keeping Operations,
and of the above-mentioned committees on the
definition of aggression and on friendly relations among
States, it is possible that as we celebrate the twenty-fifth
anniversary of this Organization next year we can record, at
last, some real progress in fulfilling the purposes of the
Charter in the area of international peace and understanding.
107. Meanwhile, as we struggle to achieve a satisfactory
framework of international legality, the problems of the
Middle East are all too vivid reminders of the inadequacies
of the present. My Government believes, however, that
Security Council resolution 242 (1967) does provide a
practical basis for securing a settlement that will endure,
and we join our voices with all those who call upon the
parties to put into operation, as it is their duty to do under
the Charter, the balanced arrangements for which the
resolution provides. We are convinced that the acquisition
of territory by force, contrary to the relevant provisions of
the Charter, should never be sanctioned by the international
community.
108. Last year, I spoke [1680th meeting] at length and in
great detail on the issue of Venezuelan hostility and
aggression against Guyana. Excluded as we are from
participation in the hemisphere’s regional organization and
in its collective security arrangements, it is inevitable that
Guyana should raise these matters before the world body.
Even so, it is no part of the purpose of my Government to
escalate tensions that already exist by protracted verbal
exchanges. It remains the case, however, that that hostility
directed to the acquisition of over two thirds of the
territory of Guyana has continued.
109. I explained last October to the Assembly that this
programme of hostility was one which suffered no lack of
financial resources and which functioned through agents
working under direction from the Venezuelan side of our
border. To some, who are unfamiliar with our problems,
these statements may have seemed unduly alarmist. Within
three months of that date, however, and in the first days of
this year, the then Venezuelan Government gave positive
confirmation of them when they launched into unsuccessful
rebellion, in the south-west region of my country, a
body of men who had been trained, armed and supplied in
Venezuela, and whose leaders were drawn mainly from a
group of ranchers, many of them not even citizens of
Guyana, and all of whom, from the date of Guyana’s
independence, have resented the authority of our Government.
110. These events took place at a time of change in the
Government of Venezuela and I do not enlarge upon them
here; for it has been my Government’s hope that the
statesmen who now lead the Venezuelan people will bring
to bear on the problems which confront them a vision of
the future in which respect for international legality, and
for the rights and aspirations of the new State on its
borders — a State which has so recently won its freedom
from a colonial overlordship — would be the dominant
feature. The leaders of that Government have made public
asseverations of their peaceful intentions. We place these
before the international community, who are the best
judges of the honour of all States.
111. I would be less than candid if I did not convey the
concern of my Government over other aspects of our
relations with Venezuela. Within the last month for
example, in the early days of this session of the Assembly,
the Venezuelan Government issued a statement adopting
and reiterating intimidatory warnings that were first issued
by the previous administration, to the effect that Venezuela
would not recognize mining concessions granted by the
Government of Guyana in respect of the area of my
country which they claim. The present Venezuelan Government
has now gone even further and has said that it will not
recognize the right of private firms to carry out mineral
exploitation in that region. I explained last year that it was
part of the pressure being brought to bear upon us that
Venezuela sought to intimidate all who were willing to
invest in the development of the region. When it is
remembered that this region represents two thirds of
Guyana and includes some of the richest areas of our
country in terms of mineral and forest resources, it will be
appreciated that what is being attempted is direct pressure
to stifle development. It is no accident that this pressure
has been re-exerted at a moment when the possibility of
producing uranium in sizable quantities and of harnessing
of hydro-electric power promise an economic break-
through for Guyana of the kind that oil has already
provided for Venezuela.
112. This is aggression of another sort. It is aggression of
the type that the Special Committee on Principles of
International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation
among States has in fact been discussing. Indeed,
it is aggression of the type that the Latin American region,
of which we are a part, itself recently proscribed when, in
the Consensus of Viña del Mar, it stipulated respect for
the principle that “no State may apply or encourage
economic and political coercion to compel another State to
grant it advantages of any kind; on the contrary, every
effort must be made to avoid policies, actions and measures
which may endanger the economic and social development
of another State“. It could never be the case that this
principle, so central to relations between Latin American
countries and the United States, would lose validity when
applied to relations between countries of Latin America
itself. On the contrary, its validity lies precisely in the
inhibition it places upon destructive forces anywhere within
the hemisphere which, if left unchecked, would make a
mockery of that effort for development which the drafters
of the Consensus were concerned to promote. Economic
pressures levelled against us by Venezuela may succeed, not
in depriving us of our land — for we have not so recently
won our freedom only to yield it to another imperialism — but
in preventing development, in retarding the economic
progress of Guyana, in making it more difficult for us to
make the changes necessary in our society if all our people
are to share in a better life. We cannot remain silent in the
face of statements made within four days of the beginning
of this twenty-fourth session of the Assembly and which
were calculated to stifle our economic growth and frustrate
all our efforts for development. It is necessary for these
things to be known, for silence about them here helps only
those who exert the pressures by word and deed outside
these walls. It is necessary for these things to be said; and
they must be said here, for there is no other place for us to
say them.
113. I do not know what future course our relations with
Venezuela will take. What I do know is that the major
decisions of war and peace are seldom taken in deliberate
ways or on the basis of programmed escalation. The resort
to force will invariably have behind it a history which can,
in retrospect, be seen to be leading inexorably step by step
to calamity — each step conditioned by the one that went
before and unmindful of the next which it is making
inevitable. In relations between States and peoples it is not
a new phenomenon that what starts as a political diversion
soon becomes transformed: first into a semantic exercise,
then into dogma, then into an issue of national honour, and
so to enmity and hate. Almost at any stage, save perhaps
the last, the process might be stopped by men of wisdom
and courage.
114. If the cause of international understanding and
international peace is to be saved, it is not enough for
Governments to assert their peaceful intentions. Those
intentions alone can never be a guarantee of peace if
attitudes of hostility are being engendered and policies of
enmity are being pursued. It is not only the resort to force
that threatens the peace of the world; it is the whole range
of devices which States have created to pursue their goals of
power or of national ambition. Propaganda, pressure,
intimidation, clandestine activity, subversion, exclusionary
arrangements, economic strangulation—all these form part
of the weaponry of aggression. States that employ them in
their service can never justly assert peaceful intentions; and
until they are outlawed by international society and
brought under the sanction of a code of international
behaviour, we can never be sure that we have brought peace
to the world because men have ceased to wage war.
115. I now turn to the subject of the world’s continuing
racial confrontation. It is the view of my Government that,
despite the untiring efforts of so many agencies of this
Organization and, let it not be forgotten, of the
non-governmental organizations, the world’s racial crisis shows
no sign of abating. What is more, that crisis is being made
more intractable as the white and non-white peoples of the
world divide across the development barrier. The facts are
not pleasant, but they are real. The vast majority of the
non-white people of the world to whom the dismantling of
the colonial apparatus since 1945 has brought freedom
today represent the world’s economically under-privileged,
whose natural resources have been systematically exploited
for the enrichment of others. Their States are sometimes
euphemistically described as the developing countries.
Many are not developing at all; some which have a chance
of developing find it necessary, as I have just illustrated, to
divert their scarce human and financial resources away from
development, merely to ensure their survival as States
against avarice and expansionism across their borders;
others find their development forever illusory as the deeds
of the developed countries fail to match their words and as
the gap between them widens during every year of the
United Nations Development Decade.
116. It is my Government’s view that the world racial
crisis will not recede while the distinctions of wealth and
poverty, of advance and stagnation, of smugness and
despair, that now mark the boundaries between the
developed and the developing nations, mark also in large
measure the boundaries between the white and non-white
worlds. The whole international effort in the area of race
relations may yet fail, unless international guarantees of
social justice for all people are matched by effective action
towards economic justice for all States. The responsibilities
of the international community, and of the developed
countries in particular, in ensuring the success of the
Second United Nations Development Decade have a significance
which goes well beyond matters of trade and development.
117. Meanwhile, areas of the world in which racial
bigotry, repression and discrimination have become the
creed of minority regimes continue to defile a planet which
must still sustain us all. From Mozambique to Angola,
Southern Rhodesia to South Africa, outrages against human
dignity continue to furnish both cause and effect in respect
of the black man’s anguish. In South Africa, apartheid has
long since been converted into an article of faith and,
encouraged by the refusal of the representatives of the
major Powers to go beyond protestations of moral outrage
at this inhuman system, the South African regime has now
exported its product to Southern Rhodesia. Here, the illegal
regime — permitted to become entrenched, and now establishing
itself through a process of gradual, if tacit, recognition — has
installed a constitutional system that regards as
axiomatic the inability of the peoples of Zimbabwe to rule
themselves and provides a flexible framework for the
intensification of repressive measures against them.
118. In Namibia, the South African regime persists in
destroying the national unity of the indigenous people and
instituting a reign of terror against them in brazen defiance
of the resolutions of the Security Council and the General
Assembly. In the absence of any positive indication on the
part of the permanent members of the Security Council
fully to discharge their responsibilities under the Charter in
respect of that Territory — responsibilities which would
appear to follow logically from the Security Council’s
explicit recognition of the General Assembly’s decision
terminating the mandate of South Africa [resolution
2145 (XXI)] — an even greater burden now devolves on the
United Nations Council for Namibia and on the remaining
membership of this Organization. To assist the Council in
its unenviable task, it is necessary for the General Assembly
to take a second look at the Council’s present structure
with a view to adopting measures calculated to enhance its
effectiveness. In particular, it may be useful to consider a
reconstitution of the Council to provide for representation
from those countries which are not at present represented
on it but whose commitments to the cause of African
freedom has never been in doubt.
119. We welcome, also, the consideration now being given
to the question of appointing a permanent President to
assist in defining the direction in which the Council must
proceed in view of South Africa’s intransigence and
Security Council inaction; for there can be little doubt that
our failure to define an effective approach to the problems
posed by apartheid in South Africa, by the illegal regime in
Southern Rhodesia and by South Africa’s continuing
unlawful presence in a territory that is now a ward of the
international community, proceeds mainly from the refusal
of the permanent members of the Security Council to
accept the responsibilities which their power and authority
confer. My Government will continue to work in all ways
open to it - indeed it is already working on the United
Nations Council for Namibia — to put an end to the
injustices, indignities and oppressions now meted out to the
indigenous people of southern Africa.
120. I spoke a moment ago about the Second United
Nations Development Decade. The failure of the first
Development Decade to fulfil the aspirations of the
developing countries cannot but cause us to be sceptical of
the projections for the second. The growth rates anticipated
have not been achieved. The aid hoped for, and indeed
promised, has not been provided. Contrary to decision
29 (II) of the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development and to General Assembly resolution
2415 (XXHI) endorsing that decision, the terms and conditions
of aid have not improved and the problems of
external indebtedness have not been alleviated despite these
several exhortations to the developed countries. The lowering
of trade barriers has in the main benefited the already
favoured few. In addition, skilled people vital to development
and trained by the developing countries at great
expense continue to be attracted from them without any
serious effort by the developed countries to neutralize the
effect of this drain upon already slender resources. There
has been development in the first decade; but it has been
almost entirely to the advantage of the already developed.
Can we realistically expect any improvement in the second?
121. In addition, we have been concerned in recent
months with certain trends in regard to United Nations
activities in the developmental area. My Government has
noted with regret what appears to be a hardening of
attitudes by the developed world in regard to normal
expectations of expansion in the development activities
carried on the budget of the United Nations and its
associated agencies. My delegation will give its support to
every effort in this Organization to secure a tangible
reaffirmation of faith by the developed world in the
promotion of the development process through the United Nations.
122. Within the last few days the Commission on International
Development under the Chairmanship of the Right
Honourable Lester Pearson of Canada and including in its
membership Sir Arthur Lewis, the eminent West Indian
economist who has been so closely identified with my own
country’s programme of development, has published its
report. In our view, this report deserves the most careful
consideration by this Organization and by all its agencies
concerned with promoting the cause of development
throughout the world. In particular, may I commend to the
developed countries the timely urgings of the Commission
that they take up the great challenge of international
development in the awareness that their response to it:
“will show whether we understand the implications of
interdependence or whether we prefer to delude ourselves
that the poverty and deprivation of the great majority of
mankind can be ignored without tragic consequences for
all“
123. The total experience of the past decade has served to
confirm a basic truth that the developing countries have
acknowledged from the first, namely, that their economic
and social advancement must depend chiefly on their own
efforts. National goals must inevitably take account of
regional and international activity and just as the achievement
of those goals may be materially helped by external
assistance, so must the chance of success continue to be
influenced by forces far beyond the national control. The
basic effort, however, must be a national one; and my
Government fully endorses the observation of the Pearson
Commission that development must come from within and
that no foreign help will suffice where there is no national
will to make the fundamental changes which are needed.
Guyana has accepted this from the beginning and we have
attempted to make that effort in a variety of ways—not
east among them the promotion of the co-operative. The
Economic and Social Council in its resolution 1413 (XLVI)
of 6 June 1969, has already taken note of the important
role that the co-operative movement can play in economic
and social development and the Council has, by this
resolution, requested that the preparatory plans for the
Second United Nations Development Decade should contain
2 recognition of the utility of the co-operative effort.
We have found in Guyana that co-operative activity
founded, as it has been, on the principle of self-help has
tapped the natural vigour of our people and involved them
in a significant way in wide-ranging community action.
Indeed, so convinced are we of the possibilities for
co-operative action that when in February 1970, Guyana,
in fulfilment of the processes of independence, becomes a
Republic, it will be a Republic committed to the concept of
the co-operative as a fundamental instrument of social and
economic change. My Government urges that both the
spirit and terms of Economic and Social Council resolution
1413 (XLVI) be reflected in the final plans for the Second
United Nations Development Decade.
124. The Decade must establish an equilibrium between
man’s giant strides in science and technology and his
relatively ineffectual efforts in the social and economic
fields. It must establish a balance between the wealth and
strength and prosperity of the developed countries and the
poverty, weakness and misery of the undeveloped countries.
It must bring a better and more equitable distribution
of the riches of our planet among all the people destined to
dwell on it; and it must witness a more vigorous, more
experimental, and more courageous role played by this
Organization in the achievement of those results. In a few
weeks this Assembly will be discussing the report of the
Preparatory Committee for the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of
the United Nations [A/7690]. The decisions of the
Assembly on this report can be of far-reaching importance
to the future of this Organization, for it must be our
purpose to ensure that these decisions encompass matters
of substance relating to the effective working of the
Organization and its agencies. Our activities next year must
go beyond ceremonial and self-appreciation. We can best do
honour to those who conceived and developed this Organization
by re-equipping it to fulfil in the seventies and
beyond the lofty purposes it was designed to serve in the
post-war world.
125. We can best honour the end of the first 25 years of
the United Nations by ensuring that there is cause for
celebration at the end of the next 25. My delegation
exhorts this Assembly to approach the consideration of the
report of the Committee in this spirit of commitment
- commitment not merely to the principles of the Charter,
but to their effective application through the machinery of
this Organization. If in the decisions we make this year we
demonstrate such a commitment, and display both courage
and inventiveness in pursuit of the practical fulfilment of
the principles of the Charter, we will have begun the work
of reclaiming the faith of the peoples of the world in this
Organization — a faith without which there is little cause for
celebration of years past, and little hope for the years
ahead. To that work of reclamation, my delegation pledges itself.