207. The numerous and complex questions which we
ate called upon to consider at this twenty-fourth session
provide so many reasons for concern and anguish that I
take the liberty of beginning on a happier note by
conveying my heartiest congratulations to the President on
her brilliant election. There is no African who has not felt
proud and gratified at seeing his continent thus honoured in
the person of this daughter of the new and emancipated
Africa, marching towards progress and unity. Knowing as I
do her great qualities and her vast experience, I am not sure
whether I should rather congratulate her or pay a tribute to
the wisdom of my colleagues who have unanimously
entrusted to her the heavy responsibility of presiding over
our labours. Thanks to her wisdom and patience, I am
certain that she will discharge this noble task in full.
208. As this year draws to a close, the international
situation should incite us to make every effort to
circumscribe the conflicts which are rending asunder the
community of man and to find a way out of the contradictions
paralysing our Organization. In this same year in which man
has affirmed his mastery over his own planet and set out
with magnificent energy to conquer others, wars are still
consuming our world and causing grief, suffering and ruin.
209. Labouring under a strange curse, we seem to be
condemned to reach at one and the same time the peaks of
technology and science and the depths of selfishness and
barbarism. Man in this second half of the twentieth century
is so made that he masters his environment much better
than his own desires and emotions. He has more pity to
spare for animals in distress on the polar cap than for his
fellow men being exterminated in the rice paddies of Asia
or the jungles of Africa. How long and how far will
mankind march in this state of absurdity and indifference?
210. The values which, throughout history, have enabled
the human genius to develop have less and less weight in
modern society where, with every day that passes, the great
are increasingly separated from the small, and the rich from
the poor. The sufferings of the past, the ruin and genocide
of yesterday, have not put an end to the thirst for conquest
and hegemony engendered by material power.
211. The year that is now drawing to a close has not
brought a respite to the small countries. In South-East Asia,
the Middle East and Africa colonialism and imperialism
have redoubled in aggressiveness, proliferating shams and
lies in order to deny the weaker peoples their natural right
to freedom and progress.
212. On the eve of the celebration of the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the proclamation of the Charter of the
United Nations, the international community should not
blind itself to the fact that the principles it solemnly
affirmed are now seriously threatened and that it is facing a
very grave problem: world hegemony finding its most
brutal expression in the less developed continents. That
global hegemony is a challenge both to peoples still under
colonial rule and to progressive societies, which have no
recourse but armed struggle. That opposition of imperialism,
in particular American imperialism, to liberating
ideologies and revolutionary movements is the source of the
present tragic situation with its great dangers for
international peace and security.
213. While we continue our desperate search for solutions
to the conflicts rending the world, new clouds are gathering
and announcing even more sombre morrows. Hotbeds of
war are threatening to spread. Tension and the cold-war
atmosphere are reappearing among the great Powers,
particularly in Europe. The resultant sense of insecurity
leads inevitably to a new arms race, multiplying ad
infinitum the production of missiles and of anti-missile
missiles, and thus increasing existing arsenals. Can this
enormous waste of resources, immeasurably accelerated by
competition, bring any promise of peace?
214. Thus we witness with concern an ever-widening gap
between the principles which men affirm by their actions.
Men speak of peace and negotiations in Viet-Nam, but
multiply military operations and strengthen the murderous
hand of the Saigon regime. Men speak of peace and justice
in the Middle East but continue to arm the Zionist
aggressor and encourage him to treat the despoiled Arab
peoples with greater intransigence and cruelty. Men speak
of peace and aid to development for the third world but
continue to apply to it the brazen law of colonialism,
exploiting its natural wealth and the fruits of its labour.
215. In order to escape from this vicious circle we should
need an organization of unquestionable authority, enjoying
the trust and co-operation of all States. At first our
Organization should have played that part. But we are
compelled to recognize today that it can no longer compel
respect for the Charter or fulfil its mandate. Deprived of
the means of dissuasion and intervention necessary for any
effective action, it sees its decisions systematically ignored
and its authority flouted.
216. Though the great Powers are still far from renouncing
their greed or resolving their own contradictions, they have
been raised by force of circumstances to be guarantors of
order and of something like peace. Concerned, and rightly
so, to avoid a nuclear confrontation which could well
destroy them, they nevertheless tolerate limited conflicts
which bring fire and sword to the nations of the third world.
217. The international community must unhesitatingly
reject that concept of peace by which the nuclear threat is
to be banished only at the cost of endless wars in various
countries of the third world. Apart from its dangers, this
concept of peace is fallacious. It can provide only a false
calm amongst the great Powers which foster and foment
these localized conflicts. So tight is the solidarity of the
various countries in today’s world that, although often
contradictory, their diverse interests are none the less
closely interdependent.
218. It is therefore obvious that the destiny of mankind
cannot be settled privately between the great Powers. The
people who suffer in their flesh the consequences of
international tensions must be among the chief architects of peace.
219. That peace cannot be conceived in terms of a status
quo more or less closely linked to ideological or strategic
considerations. It must be a just and living peace,
compatible with the current of history and with the aspirations
of the peoples to freedom and progress. It cannot result
from a fortuitous balance of the interests of great Powers
dividing the world into spheres of influence. In other
words, to establish a true peace the tasks of the
international community must be redefined in the light not only
of the prerogatives of the great Powers, but also of the
hitherto ignored aspirations of the peoples.
220. While none denies that the road to a just and durable
peace lies through a reduction of armaments, we feel that it
would not be enough to make an agreement between the
nuclear Powers the absolute condition of peace. We have
already pointed out in this very forum the essential
incompleteness of nuclear disarmament in a world where
conventional weapons have been in continuous use for over
30 years. That type of disarmament must be the work of
those who variously encourage colonial adventures and
expansionist enterprises.
221. A just peace cannot be made within a framework of
aggression, domination, discrimination of all sorts, negation
of the right of peoples to settle their own affairs, or denial
of the principles of sovereignty, independence and
territorial integrity.
222. The. rejection of a bipolar political system for the
world has aroused in the countries of the third world a will
to organize for dynamic participation in the maintenance of
the international balance. Non-alignment can be regarded as
one of the essential conditions of that quest, even though in
our view it must not consist in the uniform application of a
now disputed political pattern to an international situation
which has undergone tremendous changes.
223. That situation, marked by a peaceful coexistence
strictly limited to the great Powers, creates more tensions
for the small countries, compromising both their own
existence and the international balance. Hence our attitude,
if it is truly inspired by these considerations, should not be
confused with a base opportunism or with a comfortable
neutrality which would make us utterly indifferent to
anything that might affect, directly or indirectly, the
interests of the third world.
224. Nothing that affects Viet-Nam, Palestine, South
Africa, Rhodesia, Namibia, Guinea (Bissau), Angola or
Mozambique can be squared with this position. That would
amount in the end to an abdication of responsibility and an
acceptance of a fait accompli resulting from the balance of
the strategic, military and economic interests of the great Powers.
225. For over 20 years the Middle East has been ravaged
by a conflict which is deliberately not being traced to its
origins. But no amount of rhetoric can conceal the facts of
history. Once more a Western Power, the United Kingdom,
colonized Palestine. That same Power has acted as the
metropolis of world Zionism, prepared the ground for a
totalitarian take-over, and deprived a people of its right of
self-determination. An occupied territory, a dispossessed
people chased from their homeland: that is the problem of
the Middle East, meaning the Palestine question, The chief
purpose of implanting a European colony in Palestine by
force and terror was to create in the region a rallying-point
for a colonialism at bay, occupy a strategic position in the
Mediterranean basin at the crossroads of three continents,
control their natural wealth and strike at the liberation
movement of the Arab peoples. That is the task assigned to
the Zionist occupation and the Sixth Fleet.
226. Twenty years have passed, but justice has still not
been done to the Palestinian people. Today, weary of
hollow words and legal myths, the Palestinian people is
coming out of its political ghetto to take its destiny into its
own hands. By its irruption on to the international stage it
joins in the courageous struggle of colonial peoples and of
progressive members of the third world, of which it is an
integral part. Algeria, always present where freedom and
progress meet, brings its total and unconditional support,
both material and political, to this struggle which will
brook no compromise on the path to liberation.
227. We must consider the Middle East conflict in terms
of Palestine. The 1967 aggression against the Arab countries
and those which have followed it have been aimed not only
at giving Israel a comfortable negotiating position but also
at thwarting the economic development of the countries of
the region. Though the closure of the Suez Canal deprives
the United Arab Republic of considerable resources for its
development, the imperialist Powers do not seem to be in
any a hurry to reopen this important means of communication.
The pre-1967 stagnation of their merchant shipping
has since given way to a feverish activity for which they had
no longer dared to hope. As a result, the new trade routes
are at present passing round South Africa, so that the
Pretoria racists along with their imperialist allies are the
main beneficiaries of the situation imposed on the
Afro-Asian victims of aggression.
228. The consequences of the Israeli aggression of 1967
and the continued occupation of Arab territories call for a
serious re-examination of the situation, not only by the
imperialist Powers, which have just awarded an additional
prize to the aggressor in the form of the most modern
weapons, but also — and above all — by those smaller
countries which would like to limit themselves to the illusory
role of the non-involved.
229. In this respect the fire in the Al Aqsa Mosque and its
repercussions, particularly in the Moslem world, have given
the Middle East problem a new dimension, The recent
Islamic Summit Conference at Rabat® should awaken all
those who support Israel to the risks which might arise
from their actions.
230. Whereas before 1967 the Middle East problem was
essentially to restore the Palestinian people’s legitimate
rights, since the Israeli aggression it has been broadened by
occupation of the territories of Arab Members of the
United Nations. This process seems to have been started
already by American imperialism when it extended the
front of aggression by the mass bombing of the Democratic
Republic of Viet-Nam.
231. The territories occupied in 1967 are now tending to
become the actual subject of negotiation. This approach is
aimed at legitimizing the aggression of 1947 which resulted
in the creation of Israel and at burying the Palestine
problem by giving it a merely human value.
232. If the occupied Arab countries are able, sovereign
and unaided, to adopt what they consider the best and
most appropriate means of freeing their national territories,
then restoration to the Palestinian people of its lawful
rights is a problem exclusively for themselves.
233. The struggle for national liberation in which the
Palestinian people is engaged is in the noble tradition of
peoples who have decided to fight for freedom and dignity;
and Algeria, which has always identified itself with all just
causes in the world, sees itself clearly reflected in the heroic
Struggle of its sister nation.
234. In the year which has just passed the Palestinian
fighters have increased their efforts. The world now
recognizes their existence and regards them as the true
representatives and spokesmen of their people. They are
working to create a Palestinian society within safe and
recognized frontiers of eternal Palestine, a democratic and
secular State in which all citizens, without distinction of
race or religion, may forget their hatreds and rancours and
live collectively and individually, equal in rights and duties,
as a symbol of harmony and peace in this country which
has cradled ancient civilizations.
235. In Viet-Nam a resistance unprecedented in history
has finally brought the aggressor to the negotiating table.
However, the interminable talks in Paris seem more and
more to disappoint the hopes. aroused in the world for a
speedy and peaceful settlement. The aggression is being
multiplied and is becoming increasingly bitter, sowing ruin
and desolation everywhere. The law of the strongest has
never been so prevalent, and one wonders what glory can be
lawfully gained by exterminating the people of Viet-Nam.
236. This mad enterprise gives the impression that the
United States is willingly playing the game of those who in
Saigon and elsewhere have as their only motive the profits
they derive from operating an enormous war machine.
237. The Viet-Nam affair highlights the failure of the
Asian policy of the United States and demonstrates the
futility of force as a means of making peoples adopt alien
ideologies. To be sure, peace is slow in coming and the
responsibility for the continuation of the war falls squarely
on the aggressors, who are now trying to seize through
negotiation what neither their vast army nor their “special
warfare” could gain on the field of battle. Against this
proud and invincible people, unshakable in their will to
freedom, the interventionist policy of the United States
must cease. It will cease on the day when the aggressor
recognizes unreservedly the right of the people of Viet-Nam
to live in independence, as well as its sovereignty, its unity
and the integrity of its national territory. It will cease on
the day when the aggressor withdraws all its troops from
South Viet-Nam and leaves the people of Viet-Nam to settle
their affairs by themselves without interference or outside
pressure of any kind.
238. It is vain to count on a supposed weariness of peoples
to turn back their inexorable march towards freedom,
peace and progress. The people of Viet-Nam certainly has
enough strength to defeat the aggressor and build an
independent, unified, democratic, peaceful and prosperous
Viet-Nam. The programme of the National Liberation
Front and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of
South Viet-Nam remains the solid basis of a negotiated
settlement.
239. I shall not tell you of the long and painful road
which has led our continent to emancipation and to the
affirmation of its personality, which was recently revealed
in all its splendour at the First Pan-African Cultural
Festival, which my country had the honour of welcoming
and where African civilization astounded the world by its
wealth and vitality.
240. Yet the Africa whose joy in its own rediscovery
shone under the sun of Algiers was a wounded Africa, a
dismembered continent, still a bleeding prey locked in the
dying throes of colonialism.
241. Our Organization has been during the last decade a
helpless spectator of this unequal struggle against the forces
of exploitation and oppression. Indeed, I feel somewhat
embarrassed at speaking of the problems of southern Africa
after the brilliant statement which the President of the
Federal Republic of Cameroon made in this Assembly
[1780th meeting] on behalf of the Organization of African
Unity when he presented the Manifesto on Southern
Africa. But how can we refrain from denouncing the
intolerable sustained indifference of the human conscience
to the liberation movements which still struggle against
colonialism? Still less can we conceive how countries
calling themselves democratic can continue to give such an
anachronism financial and military support. These countries,
which still reject the verdict of history and infringe
this Assembly’s decisions, shoulder a heavy responsibility
before Africa and the world. It is no coincidence that they
are also evading their duty as trustees towards the people of
Zimbabwe, whom they have delivered tied hand and foot to
the regime of Jan Smith. Although the international action
promptly recommended against the Salisbury racists has
not been taken; although the condemnations and ultimatums
of the Security Council have remained dead letters
and the economic sanctions, as is now clear, have failed, the
United Kingdom is still bound first and foremost, as it
always has been, to enable the people of Zimbabwe to
accede to all their national rights.
242. Against the Pretoria regime, whose refusal to evacuate
Namibia we have already recorded, it is high time that
the United Nations took vigorous action, particularly as any
illusion about the possibility of an agreement has been
definitely dispelled. The failure of past efforts should make
the United Nations resolve to take all the steps called for
both by the fate of Namibia, for which our Organization is
responsible before the bar of history, and by the policy of
apartheid. The good faith and good conscience of the
countries maintaining profitable but tainted relations with
Pretoria will, here too, be the test of our Organization’s
capacity for action.
243. In any event the subjugated peoples of southern
Africa are determined to be free, counting first of all on
themselves and on the solidarity of their continent.
244. Africa, emerging bruised from the colonial yoke,
knows that it is still a temptation for all kinds of
adventurers. It is also rightly concerned with that other
tragedy which is tearing Nigeria apart, to the profit only of
those who covet the riches of that great country. The
fratricidal conflict which we are witnessing in that part of
our continent is painful enough because of the human
dramas to which it has given rise. But the real issues require
all African States to rise against secessionist ventures and
safeguard their territorial integrity; otherwise the
independence and unity of Africa will be jeopardized anew.
245. The solution of development problems and the
building of the countries of the third world are one of the
major tasks of our Organization, to which it is devoting a
large part of its resources. The development of institutional
structures in the United Nations, directed towards
specialization of tasks according to study and evaluation of the
needs of economic growth, has not been followed by a
concomitant increase in the necessary funds.
246. There is no doubt that the prime responsibility for
the development of the third world lies with the countries
directly concerned. They are fully aware of this, for they
are devoting four fifths of their internal resources to this
task. At the same time their sacrifices, however great, will
be fruitless unless those who have the necessary means and
resources also take world-wide action to modify an
international situation not designed to favour the development
of our economies.
247. The very idea of instituting a Development Decade in
which national efforts would come first cannot be
conceived unless the developed countries apply consequential
and simultaneous measures to sustain the action of the
developing. This is indeed the very essence of the
development strategy, which should be conceived as a global plan
of action, a perfectly co-ordinated pattern of measures.
248. It was precisely that over all approach that enabled
the Group of 77 to propose to the international community,
in the Charter of Algiers, the essential elements for
genuine international co-operation. There has been no
response yet to our programme of action. The preparations
for the execution of such a programme have not got
beyond the stage of an academic exercise; and the Trade
and Development Board was recently unable to make the
essential contribution which UNCTAD is expected to make.
249. We are fully aware that international co-operation
will not come from pathetic appeals to the virtues of heart
and mind, nor from a sudden desire to respect the
principles of the Charter, but only from a long process in
which the third world countries free themselves from
foreign domination by their national and regional efforts
and reach a position from which they can negotiate.
250. Thus we shall play our due part in hastening the
advent of an era of genuine international co-operation; at
the same time we shall have created in and around our
countries the basis of a durable peace for the greatest good
of our peoples and of mankind. Those are the motives of
the regional and international policy of Algeria.
251. The agreements and treaties of friendship, of
good-neighbourly relations and co-operation which have during
this year set the seal on our links with our brothers in the
Maghreb are further tokens of my country’s adherence to
the fundamental principles of the Charter, and we regard
them as a contribution to the peace and prosperity of
nations, Harmonious relations among the Maghreb countries
are an important element of peace in the Mediterranean;
and to that end Algeria will work unceasingly to
eliminate all factors of tension, actively favouring every
form of co-operation among the coastal countries that is
compatible with its freedom of choice and its
uncompromising idea of national independence.
252. Of course, the United Nations is merely the reflexion
of the preoccupations of its creators in a given international
context. It can be improved if its Members agree to work
sincerely to adapt it to the realities of this world. It would
certainly be surprising if a world divided by antagonisms
and opposing interests were suddenly to find itself firmly
united and harmonious in this chamber. The gaps in
development are too great, the political and ideological
cleavages too deep, and the animosities too keen to permit
such a miracle. The numerous anomalies and flagrant
defects expose the gravity of the illness which afflicts our
Organization and may one day destroy it.
253. Is there indeed a more scandalous anomaly than the
occupation of South Korea for the last 20 years by foreign
troops, in particular United States troops, under the United
Nations flag? Thus our Organization is illegally associated
with an enterprise designed to perpetuate the territorial
division of the Korean nation. The withdrawal of foreign
troops from South Korea and the dissolution of the
so-called United Nations Commission for the Unification
and Rehabilitation of Korea are the essential conditions for
enabling the Korean people as a whole to solve a question
which pertains to its sovereignty.
254. Is there a more scandalous anomaly than that which
denies the representatives of the great Chinese people the
right to take their lawful place among us? Is the Organization
so paralysed that it cannot give effect to the need for
universality, simply because of the obstinacy of one State
which still refuses to admit the full reality of the Chinese nation?
255. In opening this session [1753rd meeting] the President
spoke of the need to make this Organization more
dynamic and readier to act on its decisions. The great
danger threatening it and condemning it to sterility lies, in
our view, in its inability to grasp the essential facts of a
world in motion. The reality of the People’s Republic of
China is irreversible and does not need to be affirmed by a
seat in the United Nations, though China is fully entitled to
one. The United Nations is bound to build a stable, pacific
and coherent world, and must therefore do what is needed
to enlist the aid of that great country, which has a special
part to play in any world-wide undertaking.
256. It is high time our Organization gave all the peoples
that renewed hope and confidence without which nothing
durable can be built. In this great space age, which is
making us aware of the full though limited dimensions of
our own planet and of the vanity of some of our
undertakings, it is high time we regained our solidarity and
our common destiny within the universe. It is high time we
asked ourselves about the ultimate. purpose of man. It is
precisely here that our Organization’s universal vocation
must be unequivocally affirmed; this is the crucible in
which, in an all-embracing fraternity, the great aspirations
and dreams of mankind must be fulfilled.
257. Speaking as I am for a courageous people that has
suffered greatly from war and is therefore deeply dedicated
to peace, for a hard-working people determined to build a
new society, I have no need to assure you again that for
Algeria adherence to the spirit of the Charter of the United
Nations is a cardinal principle and an irrevocable commitment,
since it is rooted in the great ideals for which my
country has sacrificed and fought and for which it will
continue unceasingly to work.