I should like first to congratulate the President on his election and the Assembly on having placed him in that high office. For me, it will be a particular privilege to work under his leadership, for my long and fruitful association with him has been a stimulating experience in the past and will, I am sure, continue to be so in the future.
2. I also consider it my duty to comment on the high- minded action of Mr. Charles Malik, whom we all have known for years as one of the figures who, by strength of character alone, has enhanced the prestige of the United Nations.
3. On behalf of the Government of Costa Rica, I should like to extend a warm welcome to the two new Member States, Ghana and the Federation of Malaya, the latest products of the remarkable movement for independence of the peoples of Asia and Africa and of the progressive and constructive policy of the United Kingdom.
4. My Government is also happy to express its gratification at the reappointment of Mr. Hammarskjold as Secretary-General of the United Nations. We are proud of having voted for him on the two occasions when he was appointed to that high office, and we are grateful to him for having placed his ability, devotion, tact and generosity in the service of the United Nations. We can and we do expect a great deal from his work and his zeal.
5. When we suspended the work of the eleventh session in March of this year, there was an atmosphere of optimism in the United Nations. The Assembly had shown its effectiveness by achieving a reasonably satisfactory solution of the Middle East situation, which three months earlier had been so threatening and difficult; it had demonstrated practical wisdom by adopting compromise resolutions on the thorny questions of Algeria [resolution 1012 (XI)] and Cyprus [resolution 1013 (XI)], on which debate had been expected to be bitter and turbulent. Moreover, the circumstances in which the resolution [1011 (XI)] on disarmament had been adopted gave promise of a clear and final agreement of the great Powers on that question.
6. Unfortunately, the optimism inspired by the latter resolution was of short duration. The long months of discussion in London did not produce the result for which the peoples of the world had hoped. One by one, all the proposals put forward were rejected, and it is a bitter blow that the Soviet Union did not consider it in its interests to accept the final proposals, which constituted a serious and honest contribution to the settlement of the problem. The tone in which they were rejected by the Soviet Union may lend force to the views of the pessimists who argue that the Soviet Union has no interest in the achievement of any real progress towards disarmament. Nevertheless, here in the United Nations, it is our duty to profess our faith by setting aside our pessimism and continuing to hope against hope that intransigent positions will be modified and that effective progress will be made in the matter of disarmament
7. We are encouraged in that hope by the fact that none of the great Powers involved considers the time spent in negotiation wasted, that each is preparing to discuss the question in this Assembly, apparently with fresh enthusiasm, and that none of them has closed the door to the possibility of a new understanding. Moreover, we must recognize that the text of the proposals rejected in London is in itself a substantial step forward. There have been times in the last eleven years when the very existence of such proposals would have seemed fantastic, the pipe-dream of political visionaries. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that in future - and not in the remote future, but in the near and foreseeable future - the Soviet Union will become convinced of the good faith and honesty of the Western proposals.
8. All that the small countries can do is to offer their disinterested co-operation and their devoted efforts in the search for an effective solution to this question. Perhaps during this session, we shall witness the result of the common efforts of all Member States, and the encouraging response to the appeal of the small nations that the proposals on disarmament should not be rejected arbitrarily or out of hand, but should be discussed and negotiated until the last drop of patience has been exhausted.
9. During the ninth session, we saw how the Soviet Union gradually withdrew its categorical objections to the bold "atoms for peace" plan, and the representatives of the small nations sometimes felt, with understandable vanity, that the weight of their number and their sincerity might have induced it to adopt the constructive attitude towards that question which it ultimately did adopt and of which we are already seeing the effects. We hope the Soviet Union will take a similar course this year in the case of disarmament.
10. The months of relative peace on the borders between Israel and its neighbours have shown the effectiveness of the General Assembly’s resolutions on the Middle East, on which we spent so much effort at our last session. The many problems created by Israel’s offensive against Egypt and the participation of the United Kingdom and France in simultaneous military operations have gradually become less acute. Perhaps the day is not far distant when we shall achieve a true coexistence of races and nations, of religions and peoples in that troubled area.
11. The United Nations Emergency Force has been a notable factor in restoring calm in the area, and the world is indebted to the countries which have provided troops for that Force for their selfless and substantial contribution to world peace. In my delegation’s view, we should give careful consideration to the argument that this Force, or a similar one, should become a permanent United Nations police force. The advantage of having troops to act as observers or to be prepared for action on short notice has been dramatically illustrated, and Costa Rica will support any proposals to that end.
12. Once again our agenda includes the proposal put forward by the Latin American countries and Spain for a revision of the Charter with a view to increasing the number of non-permanent members of the Security Council and the number of seats on the Economic and Social Council. We believe that the substantial increase in the membership of the United Nations in recent years warrants a change in the number of elective seats on the two Councils and in other subsidiary organs. The proposed change is a matter of form; its sole purpose is to bring the provisions of the Charter into line with reality of the United Nations. Accordingly, we would consider it deplorable if a vote in favour of those proposals were made conditional on concessions or even political considerations entirely extraneous to the problem we are trying to resolve; the equitable representation of the various geographical areas in the basic organs of the United Nations.
13. In recent years, many anomalies have arisen in connexion with geographical representation and the definition of the various geographical areas. We believe that it would be useful to consider, in conjunction with the question of increasing the membership of the Councils, the possibility of drafting a formal document clearly defining the geographical areas which are to be represented, with a list of the States in the different areas and the number of seats to be assigned to each area. Such a document would be more formal than the London agreement and would bring it up to date and into line with the present membership of the United Nations.
14. The present composition of the United Nations is the best proof that the world is changing and that we must adapt our ways of thinking to these changing times and circumstances. It is natural that there should be concern in some quarters because the increase in the membership of this world Assembly is depriving the original members of certain prerogatives, possibly of some influence, perhaps of guarantees regarding the outcome of its deliberations. We are living in uncertain times, times in which problems are not always settled as we would wish, or by the methods used in the not so distant past. But we cannot halt the course of history, although there are always those who urge us to build a dike against change.
15. It comes as a shock to find one of the most venerable and respected figures in the world joining in that chorus and calling upon us to abandon the system of voting in this Assembly and to replace it by a system of weighted voting in which the raised hands of some delegations would count and weigh more than those of others. There are few countries in which it has not at some time or another been suggested, in scarcely veiled aristocratic tones, that the votes of some citizens are worth more than those of their humbler fellows. Generally, such ideas do not prosper, but in the few cases in which they have prevailed, the result has been the dictatorship of one class, party, man or race.
16. We should bear in mind that of all the organs of the United Nations, the one which has not fulfilled the hopes cherished by the peoples of the world in 1945 is the one in which all the votes do not have the same weight. It is not explained how such a system of weighted voting would be established, whether on the basis of seniority or material wealth or military power, or perhaps on the basis of spiritual wealth, which cannot be measured; whether greater weight would be given to countries with larger populations or larger armies, or to those like my own where the power of governments traditionally is derived from the freely expressed wishes of the people.
17. The weight of a vote in this Assembly is a moral question. And if the time should come - and I hope it never does - when anyone claims that the vote of any one representative should be given greater numerical weight than that of any other representative, I am sure that those countries among us which are not economically or militarily powerful, but which can boast a clean record of service in the cause of the United Nations and adherence to the letter of the lofty principles of its Charter, never having violated it either as Members of this Assembly or within the limits of our own territories - and we are not so few - would demand of world opinion that those factors should also be weighted, and not merely the brute force used at times against the principles of coexistence to which we subscribed at San Francisco, and which we reaffirmed in good faith during the final meetings of the eleventh session of this Assembly.
18. But I fear I am wearying this Assembly by speculating on a dreary prospect. The legal equality of States may be what lawyers call a legal fiction, but there are many legal fictions here, and we live by them. The equality of the votes of the permanent members in the Security Council is one of them and I cite it as an example. Sometimes the results of the voting in this hall may not please us, but reason and truth ultimately prevail. We do not need a logarithmic weighing of every vote to ensure the triumph of a good cause. Those of us whose hands are clean will always raise them, in overwhelming numbers, to condemn what should be condemned, irrespective of the differences between us on questions of lesser importance.
19. We, the small countries, come here with the past as our example and our hope in the future. The past provides us with an example, and that example should also be given by the great Powers. As for the future, we are building it in this very hall, and in the task of building the hands of all the workers are needed.