YouSaid · the spoken record

Tsaldaris

THE RECORD WRITES THIS SPEAKER AS TSALDARIS

lines on the record: 32
first: 1948-09-24
most recent: 1949-09-24
sittings or episodes: 2
sources: un-general-debate

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“Provided united defensive action was taken and friendship offered to all who chose to live in friendship, the principles of freedom, justice and well being would be preserved and restored in the Balkans and fostered throughout the world.”
1949-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 4 (1949)
“The Government and people of Greece believed that the Assembly would take every measure it could to ensure effective collective action to prevent a continuance of their sufferings. They joined the vast majority of the peoples and Governments represented at the Assembly in recognizing the importance of maintaining and enhancing the moral prestige of the United Nations, and were convinced that the peoples of the countries whose rulers had flouted the recommendations of the Assembly would increasingly insist that their Governments should comply with the duties entailed by membership in the United Nations. 117.”
1949-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 4 (1949)
“The Greek army, while it remained along the border of Greece, was a defensive army which was there to help guarantee international peace. In the future, as in the past, Greece would maintain its policy of respecting the principle of pacific settlement of all disputes, as Members of the United Nations had agreed to do. Greece would defend itself when attacked, but Greece would not attack. 116. Mr. Tsaldaris stated that the Greek people and their Government wished to stress once more their desire to co-operate in every way in the work of the United Nations. Their confidence in their own will to survive, and in the support of the United Nations and the Members which upheld the principles of the Charter, had not been misplaced.”
1949-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 4 (1949)
“The established facts demonstrated the hollowness of the protestations dictated by the Cominform. The Assembly was not unaware of the abuse being levelled at other Members of the United Nations, similar to the propaganda against Greece. The problem had never been only a Greek problem. It was, however, clearer than ever before that it concerned the rights of peoples everywhere, particularly in the Balkans, to continue to be loyal to their own God, their own country and their own ideals of human dignity and honour. 115. Greece sought no vengeance for the destruction and misery brought upon it. The people of Greece wanted peace, the return of their children, the rehabilitation of their fellow citizens, the chance to perform constructive work.”
1949-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 4 (1949)
“If the efforts to make the Security Council effective continued to be frustrated, it was inevitable that similar conventions to ensure collective action in defence of the integrity of the Members of the United Nations would be developed. Eventually it was to be hoped that all such conventions would become unnecessary through self-imposed or agreed limitations on the use of the veto, which would enable the Security Council to exercise the responsibilities entrusted primarily to it under the Charter. In the meantime, Greece was confident that if peace in the Balkans were further jeopardized, means would be found, in accordance with the Charter, to support the efforts of the countries there defending their independence. 114. The facts were set forth clearly and succinctly in the reports of the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans.”
1949-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 4 (1949)
“The purpose of the Charter was to ensure that any threat to the security of any Member would be resisted by collective action under the authority of the Security Council. Unfortunately, abuse of the principle of great Power unanimity in that body had so far dashed the hopes of the authors of that basic document. Fortunately, Article 51 pointed the way towards collective defensive action until the Security Council could itself employ effective enforcement measures. 113. In other areas where peace had been threatened, Members of the United Nations had established means of ensuring collective action to support the pacific purposes of the Charter. Reference had been made before the General Assembly to the Treaty of Rio de Janeiro and the North Atlantic Treaty.”
1949-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 4 (1949)
“What would it do? Would the Governments of those countries be permitted to fulfil their international obligation to disarm those forces or would they be instructed to use them further to attack Greece? 110. In that respect the political and military leadership in Greece continued to be faced with a dilemma that could be solved only with United Nations support. 111. When the guerrillas, under the cover of Albanian fire, had retreated into Albania, Greece, under international law, had had every right to pursue them. The Greek Government, mindful of the explosive situation existing in the Balkans and resolved to co-operate towards a peaceful solution of the problems of the Balkan peoples, had ordered its armies to stop at the borders. 112.”
1949-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 4 (1949)
“Within Greece, more and more of the people who had been lured into taking up arms against their Government had learned that they were being used as tools to destroy their country and endanger their own welfare. The virtual elimination of guerrilla bands from within its borders permitted Greece to go forward with carefully prepared plans of human rehabilitation and economic reconstruction. The success of Greece in defending its national integrity was a fact which was heartening to every other country marked out for subjugation to Cominform dictation. 109. The real source of the threat to the peace in the Balkans had been unmasked. The agents used in the attacks against Greece had fled to Albania and, to a lesser degree, Bulgaria. The forces that had been launched against Greece were once more physically under the control of the Cominform.”
1949-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 4 (1949)
“The delegation of Greece had listened with special attention to the references of preceding speakers to the threat to peace in the Balkans. It deeply appreciated and emphatically endorsed the insistence of the Member nations that the purposes and principles of the Charter and the recommendations of the Assembly must not be flouted with impunity. It agreed that the Assembly and the Members of the United Nations had an interest, an interest as direct as that of Greece, in seeing that armed attacks upon Members of the United Nations were stopped. It agreed that its northern neighbours should realize that their own self-interest demanded that they should support every effort to ensure respect for the independence of small as well as large nations. 108. The Balkan situation had entered upon a new phase.”
1949-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 4 (1949)
“The economic development and the social progress of humanity and of each Member nation, in particular, were among the cornerstones of the United Nations and as such were given the utmost attention by the Greek Government. Greece was therefore eager to co-operate with fellow Members of the United Nations in the common effort to shape a new and universal policy capable of meeting the economic and social needs of mankind. 106. In addition, however, the Greek people faced other extremely grave problems. Without dwelling upon the price the Greek people had paid in defence of freedom and justice, Mr. Tsaldaris, speaking on behalf of the innumerable innocent victims of unjust aggression against his country, stated that those foreign attacks upon Greece must not be permitted to be launched again. 107.”
1949-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 4 (1949)
“Mr. TSALDARIS stated that Greece had come to the fourth session of the General Assembly of the United Nations with the confidence which it had always placed in that body as an instrument of understanding and good will among peoples. The task facing the Assembly was a heavy one, and the Greek delegation would not fail to join in the common effort of studying and solving the international problems enumerated in the agenda. The Greek delegation believed, indeed, that the work to be accomplished by the fourth session of the General Assembly would strengthen the structure of international peace, which was the common concern of all. 105. Greece attached particular importance to the work of the United Nations in respect of the world’s economic and social problems.”
1949-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 4 (1949)
“Greece had fulfilled its duty towards the United Nations; what Greece expected from it was that the Charter should be respected.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“The Greek people could not and did not draw any distinction among them. All, including the observers of the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans, had offered their lives for those principles which formed the very basis of the Charter. It had, therefore, to be admitted that the so-called «Greek questions was a problem of the actual survival of the United Nations. The Greek people appealed to the sovereign Assembly of the United Nations to put an end to their sufferings. Mr. Tsaldaris did not wish, in the course of the general discussion, to go into the details of the whole question, crucial as it was for Greece and the United Nations. The Greek delegation would do so at the proper time and place and reserved its right to suggest appropriate measures.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Incited to hatred of their country, one day they would be used to form new bands of janissaries. Reconstruction work was placed in jeopardy and the whole terrible tragedy was unfolding itself before the eyes of the world in defiance of the decisions taken by the United Nations. The assassination of Count Bernadotte had caused general mourning throughout Greece. He, together with Colonel Serot and all the other victims — noble American, French and Norwegian — of the campaign for peace which the United Nations was conducting in Palestine, had been mourned by the Greek people in the same way that they mourned the thousands of Greek officers and men who had given their lives in the fight against terrorist bands since the Greek Government had had recourse to the Security Council in December 1946.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Those who were fighting in the mountains and marshes of northern Greece knew for what they were dying. One and all they knew that it was their duty before the bar of history, their duty towards humanity, and that duty they were carrying out without hesitation or faint-heartedness. The weighty questions which he had just put before the Assembly stared the Greek people in the face in all their grim reality. Greece was bled white, refugees fleeing before terrorist bands exceeded 650.000 in number. Thousands of children, torn from their parents, had already been deported by the anarchist hordes to countries bordering on Greece. If those children did not perish on the road as a result of privations or ill-treatment, a moral death awaited them at their destination.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“But what better way was there of serving that exalted ideal than for each and every nation to submit, without reservation, to the decision of the United Nations and its institutions? The Greek people replied to those questions by acts. The pattern of day-to-day events sometimes became so complicated that it was impossible to see the wood for the trees. But there were moments when the issue at stake became clearly visible not only to historians and the learned but also to ordinary mortals. There were moments when a nation as one man became conscious of the part which it was called upon to play for the future of humanity, conscious of the responsibility which destiny had placed on its shoulders. It was with all due humility and gratitude towards the Almighty that he could say that the Greek people were conscious of their responsibility.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Or would the failure of peaceful means of settlement offered by the Charter drive Member States victims of aggression to have recourse to the natural right of legitimate defence, whether individual or collective? A number of eloquent appeals had been made to safeguard the authority of the United Nations. The representative of Poland had declared from the Assembly’s rostrum, at the IB9th plenary meeting, that his Government «was still convinced of the need to raise the prestige of the United Nations» and «that it is therefore determined to defend the Charter of the United Nations... and to turn the Organization into an efficient instrument for the defence of peace throughout the world».”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Was the United Nations prepared to see its decisions scorned by certain Member States and by certain non-member States and the resolutions of its institutions flouted and brought to nought? Was the United Nations going to look on, without taking any effective measures, while certain countries which had undertaken loyally to carry out the obligations flowing from the Charter persisted under various pretexts in evading the injunctions of the United Nations institution whenever those injunctions did not correspond to their political aspirations? Was the United Nations prepared to suffer the contagious spread of an international state of mind in which law was trampled under foot? Or would it decide to use its immense moral force to nip the evil in the bud?”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Had Greece been left to make the best of its own resources and of the measures of assistance offered by its friends, it would be a happy country at the present moment. The revival of Greece was, however, not desired by those who wrongly held that ideological differences had to be an insurmountable barrier to the establishment of a policy of good-neighbourliness. That fact was in reality the whole gist of the problem which quite erroneously they had become accustomed to refer to as «the Greek question». In point of fact, that question was only a phase of a worldwide problem. What really was at stake was a question of rights and of the United Nations’ ability to make itself respected among the peoples.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Its territory had been ravaged, its population decimated and its chores devastated. And yet the Greek people had not lost courage and had gone back to work hard, aided by the most generous assistance of their great friends, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Mr. Tsaldaris wished to point out in that connexion that that admirable proof of human solidarity, so consistent with the spirit of the Charter, was now bringing back life to Greek countryside, the Greek transport system and the deserted ports of Greece. The Greek population did not regard it as a sign of «capitalist imperialism» but on the contrary as a splendid example of devotion to the cause of humanity.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“After being re-equipped and re-grouped there they had just reappeared on another sector of the frontier. An untenable situation had just been created on the frontiers of Greece and had recently assumed alarming proportions. Having that in mind, the Special Committee had spoken of its conviction that the continuation of such a situation constituted an insurmountable obstacle to the establishment of «good neighbourly relations» between Greece and its northern neighbours, as recommended in the General Assembly resolution. Still more, it constituted a threat to the political independence and territorial integrity of Greece and to peace in the Balkans. The conduct of Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia had been inconsistent with the purposes and the principles of the Charter. Greece had been one of the greatest victims of the war.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Further, the guerrillas had frequently moved at will in territory across the frontier for tactical reasons, and had thus been able to concentrate their forces without interference by the Greek Army, and to return to Greece when they wished. Lastly, they had frequently retired safely into the territory of Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia when the Greek Army exerted great pressure. The recent victories won by Greek troops may have created the impression that the gravity of the so-called Greek question had diminished. But that was not the case. Despite the successes which had brought the Greek Army to the frontier lines, or rather because of the fighting, the situation had become extremely serious. Driven back during the latest mopping-up operations of the Greek Army, the terrorist gangs had found shelter in neighbouring territory.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Furthermore, it found that those Governments had not complied with the injunction laid down in the General Assembly resolution « to do nothing which could furnish aid and assistance» to the guerrillas in Greece. The Greek guerrillas had continued to receive aid and assistance on a large scale from Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, with the knowledge of the Governments of those countries. The Special Committee was convinced that the guerrillas in the frontier zones had been largely dependent on external supply. Great quantities of arms, ammunition and other military stores had come across the border. Strongly held positions of the guerrillas had protected their vital supply lines from Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and particularly from Albania. In recent months, there had been less evidence of receipt of supplies from Yugoslavia by the guerrillas.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Evatt, had referred during the previous meeting to the paradoxical situation that the essential function of the United Nations was to maintain the peace, yet there was no peace in the world to maintain. Mr. Evatt was usually a vigorous optimist and that pessimistic remark might have escaped him in a moment of depression. Mr. Tsaldaris could state, however, that, as far as his country was concerned, that statement was only too tragically true. In that connexion he wished to draw the Assembly’s attention to some of the conclusions reached by the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans after systematic work, to the perfect impartiality of which he wished to pay public tribute. The Special Committee pointed out that the Governments of Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia still refused to co-operate with it.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“All the successive Greek Governments had been inspired by the same desire to contribute to the consolidation of peace in that part of the world, and had displayed the same good will towards the three countries in question. Greece’s complete good will had been noted by the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans in its two reports to the third session of the General Assembly. The Committee referred to the co-operation of the Greek Government in implementing resolution 109 (II) of the General Assembly of 21 October 1947, whereas the Governments of Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, had refused to co-operate with the Special Committee or even to recognize it as a duly constituted body of the United Nations. Those tenacious efforts on the part of Greece had not yielded the results expected. The President of the Assembly, Mr.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“The Greek Government and the Greek people were resolved not to miss a single opportunity for the appeasement of conflicts or the lessening of friction. While pursuing that policy of collaboration with its neighbours, the Greek Government was striving to lay the foundations of a larger association of peoples of good will within a regional framework that would strengthen the efforts of the United Nations. At a time when the general endeavours of the United Nations in that direction were meeting with well-known difficulties, such a policy of regional integration could only be greeted with satisfaction by all those who sincerely desired the creation of a new world. Greece had neglected nothing in trying to establish normal relations with its three northern neighbours, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Greece’s relations with its eastern neighbour, the Turkish Republic, were imbued with a fraternal spirit which it would be desirable to find at the basis of the United Nations. Relations with the other States of the Eastern Mediterranean basin were developing along the same cordial lines. To the West, Greece was now settling material and psychological differences brought about by the Fascist aggression of 28 October 1940. An agreement in principle had already been concluded in Rome and would soon give official consecration to the friendly relations existing between Greece and the new Italy. That happy event, which he felt would enable two nations separated by the ravages of war to renew their ancient bond of friendship, provided a positive proof of what would be accomplished by the spirit of understanding and good will among peoples.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Strengthened by that will and firm in that faith, Greece had always striven, as a Member of the United Nations, to fulfil the specific and implicit obligations it had assumed when it signed the Charter. The voice of Greece, which in the course of centuries had often been raised in defence of mankind’s attempts to uphold peace based on justice, could now claim attention in the capital of Descartes and Montesquieu with the authority conferred by the consciousness of having never betrayed the principles underlying the Charter of the United Nations. In the difficult circumstances with which all were familiar, Greece’s policy had never ceased to be directed towards pacification and understanding with all the nations.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Greece was profoundly devoted to the ideals of peace, liberty and friendly co-operation between all nations, and had from the very outset placed its hopes in the United Nations. More than that, the Greek Government believed that supporting the United Nations was a major principle of its foreign policy. Greece believed in the efficacy of the United Nations, based upon the unchangeable principles of international law. It regarded the General Assembly as an international rostrum which, thanks to its immense possibilities and the confidence in which it was held by men of good will, might enable nations to achieve their greatest wish: the liberation from fear and the liberation from want.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“In accordance with those ideas the Greek delegation would support all proposals aimed at strengthening the machinery of the United Nations and at imposing respect for its decisions. The Greek delegation, therefore, attached particular importance to the progress of the work of the Interim Committee, which had already displayed its usefulness in several fields. The delegation would also support the suggestions put forward in the Assembly by the Turkish representative on the subject of a less rigid system of voting. Efforts to perfect the machinery of the United Nations were, however, themselves dependent on the spirit in which they were undertaken, and that was the crux of the problem.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“That was the only way to end the apprehension which haunted men at present and which, as experience had shown, could easily degenerate into a real psychosis of mistrust and fear. The United Nations had been born of a great hope. Nothing useful could be built save in the spirit of faith and optimism. The United Nations must not depart from that spirit, but great and bold decisions were needed at the present juncture. Whatever their nature or the concrete problems to which they referred, those decisions must, unless they were to become useless, have but one aim, namely, to enhance the force of law. Indeed, what would be the scope of any resolution of the United Nations if it did not have the means to implement it?”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)
“Mr. TSALDARIS said that previous speakers had already stressed the gravity of the circumstances in which the present Assembly had met. Indeed, the time had come for all to make their decisions and to proclaim the truth frankly and without any reservations. Only thus could the cause of peace be served. The lessons of experience had a compelling force. That had been shown by several speeches made at the Assembly and it was for the representatives to draw the necessary conclusions so that the debate might produce the results awaited by anxious mankind. What was the problem facing the Assembly? Mr. Tsaldaris felt that it consisted above all in inspiring complete confidence in the United Nations in all peoples wherever they might be.”
1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)