May I offer Sir Leslie Munro my country’s congratulations on his well-deserved election as President of the Assembly. I wish also to express my Government's gratitude to all the delegations present for their virtually unanimous election of Paraguay to a vice-presidency of the Assembly. I am proud to have the opportunity of making this statement of Paraguay's position with respect to the United Nations.
2. Paraguay whole-heartedly believes in international organization under legal and moral rules to promote beneficial international co-operation. Our faith in the United Nations grows ever stronger and we consider that its capacity to guide the destiny of mankind is steadily increasing.
3. It is true that certain events of the past year do not seem to have found a wholly satisfactory solution, or at least the solution desired by the majority of States represented here. I refer, to cite but one example, to the case of Hungary. But the Hungarian problem, far from demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the United Nations, emphasizes the need for its existence and for its improvement, having regard to the differing and opposed conceptions of international law and morality which are the reflection of differing cultures and civilizations.
4. No one would suggest that because some patients still die, medicine and surgery should be prohibited. The injustices committed daily by national courts and the abuses committed throughout the ages and in every country by national authorities are not an argument for the abolition of courts and government authorities. Similarly, the relative inability of the United Nations to impose a solution in certain very special cases - an inability of which it is fully conscious - reveals, not so much shortcomings in the Organization, as substantial defects in the conduct of certain Member States, and those defects can be remedied only by a greater degree of submission on the part of all Member States to the authority of the United Nations.
5. This is what is referred to in international law as the surrender to the legal community of a portion of absolute national sovereignty. In our view, the majority of the political difficulties encountered by our Organization derive from the circumstance that Member States have not yet been able to make the transition from absolute sovereignty to voluntary submission to an international legal order ruled by international laws, international courts and international forces - the ideal to which we should all aspire.
6. To attain this goal, we need time, experience and, above all, a willingness to accept realities and situations which are manifestly unjust in the present opinion of the majority of States, but which will soon be no more than episodes in history, necessary milestones towards the attainment of a universal legal order.
7. As an association of nations, a world organization can be no more than the sum of its parts. Accordingly each State can best contribute towards the improvement of the United Nations by improving itself through the promotion of its own economic, cultural, social, legal and moral development.
8. In this connexion, Paraguay fully appreciates and is grateful to the United Nations and its specialized agencies for the invaluable co-operation which it is at present receiving, and which is enabling it to advance more rapidly along the path of peace and progress. Thanks to the co-operation, both financial and technical, of the United Nations, Paraguay is enjoying a period of unprecedented well-being and tranquillity, made possible by the execution of public works, measures in the fields of health and education, the development of productive resources, the expansion of consumption and the provision of comprehensive benefits for workers.
9. In recent months, the policy of austerity and financial and administrative integrity followed by the Government over a period of several years has permitted the revalorization and the stabilization of the currency, followed by broad measures to liberalize imports, exports and monetary transactions, thus opening the country's frontiers to a full and free flow of trade.
10. The country's most serious problem, from its earliest days as an independent nation, has been the fact that it is land-locked, and my Government feels that it is entitled to raise the problem in the United Nations and to request the latter's assistance in solving it.
11. In this connexion, I should like publicly to acknowledge before the representatives of the nations of the world in this Assembly the invaluable and disinterested co-operation which the Government of Brazil has afforded us by financing international roads which will give us access to the sea, by providing us with free port facilities on the Atlantic Ocean, and by building - as it is now doing - a great international bridge over the Parana which will link the Brazilian and Paraguayan highway systems, thus making available to us the benefits of Brazil's seacoast, as extensive as is its sense of international solidarity. In addition, the Brazilian Government has undertaken technical and financial responsibility for the construction of hydroelectric stations.
12. Paraguay's problems as a land-locked country require further measures for their solution and we intend in due course to lay before the appropriate bodies of the United Nations two proposals to which we attach essential importance: substantial assistance in the development of the Paraguayan merchant fleet, and the development of the potentialities which Paraguay, thanks to its position at the heart of the continent, possesses as South America’s natural air base and centre.
13. I wish also to emphasize the substantial financial and technical assistance we have received from the Government of the United States through its cooperative services and official agencies and departments. This co-operation, which has already become traditional for Paraguay, and is increasing daily, will, by helping us to solve our domestic problems, one day enable us to help other countries to solve their problems.
14. We are firm supporters of the principle of nonintervention in the domestic affairs of other States, and we faithfully follow that principle in practice. We interfere with no one and desire that no one shall interfere with us. We respect freedom of thought and of expression, but we believe that such freedoms must be exercised with respect and in a disinterested spirit; they must never be associated with petty interests or used with systematically evil intent. We do not believe in general panaceas. Each State has its own problems, which it must solve in its own way.
15. I shall not take up the valuable time of the Assembly in presenting a statement of Paraguay's position on specific items of the agenda. On each item, Paraguay will express its views and lend its support in the appropriate committee.
16. This statement may be summarized as a message of faith in the United Nations; of optimism with regard to the Organization’s future; of gratitude for its cooperation in our progress and well-being, and of hope that we may receive greater assistance, which may one day enable us to return the invaluable aid and benefits we are now receiving.