YouSaid · the spoken record

Krishna MENON

lines on the record: 599
first: 1956-09-24
most recent: 1961-09-24
sittings or episodes: 5
sources: un-general-debate

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It is our view, since such doubts are entertained, that the whole problem of the suspension of nuclear tests and the prevention of evasions is closely linked with the subject of inspection and control, which should be carried out by a body of people who would be selected in equal numbers from those holding differing points of view, who should then invite other countries which are not nearly so committed on this matter, so that the whole problem could be looked at technically in that way. 177. We do not see how a suggestion of this kind can be regarded as anything but reasonable. The time has come, if disarmament is to be achieved at all, in view of the present state of distrust in the world, to realize that it is not possible to achieve it without the machinery of inspection and control.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“We recognize the apprehension that is felt in some quarters about non-detectability and about evasion, and we are willing to admit that there is an arguable case on those grounds, though we do not accept it ourselves. Our advice leads us to the conclusion that it is possible to detect explosions and to avoid evasions; scientific advance is so great today that it would be very wrong for anyone to say that science cannot do this or that if it is faced with the task. 176.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“As the representative of Lebanon has said, not a gun, not a bomb nor any other instrument has been thrown away. But the Sub-Committee did make very great progress; the very fact that the countries which have unfortunately divided themselves into two camps were able to sit down together and discuss these matters was in itself a great progress. 174. I propose to deal briefly with three aspects of this question. It is the intention of my delegation to submit to the General Assembly a suggestion to the effect that each of the countries now capable of carrying out test explosions should inform the Secretary-General of its willingness to suspend them. No time limit should be specified, because that would amount to licensing them. 175.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“Therefore we want to submit to this General Assembly that there should be some method of suspending these tests, because after all, if after a period of suspension no progress at all was made in the lowering of tensions — and we agree with the representative of Ireland [682nd meeting] that what is required is a change of outlook and feeling in the world — it would be possible to resume them. We cannot, of course, deal merely with sentiment; we have to go into operational matters which have a bearing upon it. 173. There is a vast degree of agreement on these matters, and I think it would be wrong of the General Assembly not to pay its tribute to the Sub-Committee of the Disarmament Commission which has worked laboriously for some time, though without much success as far as results are concerned.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“It would be a step away from nuclear weapons and from the idea of mass destruction, a step towards the laying aside of arms. 171. There are various other reasons. It was said some years ago that there were only two countries in the world which had those weapons and that therefore it would probably be easier to come to some arrangement. Now there are three countries, and next year there may be four, five or six. The area of potential destruction is being extended, and the problems of control are becoming more and more difficult. 172.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“These nuclear tests have gone on from 1945 to 1957; I will deal with their history later, but during this twelve-year period there have been 127 nuclear explosions in the world, 86 by the United States, 22 by the Soviet Union and 19 by the United Kingdom. These already constitute a serious danger to humanity. 170. The representative of the United Kingdom, Mr. Lloyd, told us [685th meeting] that the suspension of nuclear tests was not disarmament. I fully subscribe to that. It is true that just because we suspend the tests we do not get disarmament, but I shall ask Mr. Lloyd to bear that in mind, so that when the tests have been suspended he will proceed to the next step. However, you cannot on that basis argue that there should be no suspension, which we say would be an initial step in the process of disarmament.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I am sure the General Assembly will not look upon this as a hardy annual. In 1954, in the Parliament of India, we appealed to the world for the suspension of those tests. Our proposals were well received at that time; indeed, we thought we had very wide support, including the support of the United Kingdom during some six months. In June of last year the Government of India presented its views before the Disarmament Commission, and I am happy to say that the views we presented appeared to be welcomed and we were told that they would be considered. What happened afterwards is not known. 169.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“Those of us who have no bombs to destroy, those of us who have no bases in other countries, those of us who have no concern lest someone should attack us, whether in the name of the Warsaw Pact or of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the opportunity is presented to us to add our moral strength, so that the voice of the small man may be a collective and effective voice. We are accountable to ourselves, and we should all ask ourselves whether we have voted on the right side and for the right cause, and I am sure that there can be no two answers to that question. 168. There are three aspects of this proposal, the details of which I do not propose to deal with because it will come up before the First Committee. The first deals with the cessation of thermonuclear tests.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“The only true agreements are those that have behind them the enormous volume of public opinion in the world, and, what is more, as I said in the case of South Africa, the one vote we want is the vote of South Africa. 167. Therefore it is necessary that the smaller countries, so-called, should rise to the fulness of their sovereign stature and proclaim the conscience of mankind. It is not that other people do not respond, but they are weighted down by their own difficulties and responsibilities.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I shall deal with these matters a little later, but I should like to say, on this problem of disarmament, which is the problem before us, that it would be entirely wrong for any one of us to be greatly burdened by the difficulties that have arisen, by the deadlocks that face us, or even by party and political alignments, because here, more than anywhere else, we speak for the present and future generations. We speak in the name of the human legacy of the past, and therefore we as a country look to every single nation here, not in order to be against anybody, not in order to be in any other group, not to secure a voting victory, or anything of that kind. 166. We all know, as the Secretary-General points out in the introduction to his report, that voting victories are of a limited value.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“Measures to solve this problem cannot and should not be dictated by the tactical and strategic considerations of the great Powers concerned." [680th meeting, para. 81.] 165. We are happy to have this emphatic declaration from a sister country in Asia, which has come under the direct impact of radiation. The people and Government of Japan, from their own experience and from a humanitarian motivation, attach great importance to the suspension of nuclear test explosions.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“Even more, are we to resort to these engines of destruction, the consequences of which, as I shall point out In a moment, are not even known to the people, though they are known to be very bad, and therefore take upon ourselves the responsibility of making a holocaust not only for the present time, but of making this world into a barren desert, or, rather, not a barren desert, since no one knows what it would be? It may be that one of the reasons people wish to travel to the moon is because they think they cannot live here. 164. Therefore, in our submission, the problem of disarmament should be approached more from the point of view stated by the representative of Japan, who said: "It is equally the problem of all Member States, and indeed the unending concern of all mankind.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I make no apology for appealing to the delegations concerned to remember that this disarmament question, whether it be suspension of test explosions or making an advance on the main issue or on the other issue of the machinery, is a matter which concerns each nation individually. It is not a question of alignments or commitments; it is a question of world survival. 163. In addition, we have as a human race a great legacy going back, as far as we know, to the paleolithic ages. Are we to see all this destroyed because we cannot get over our small prejudices, or are we to make our lives so onerous and difficult by leading to inflations in various countries, by creating this kind of war neurosis in which every country lives under the threat of an explosion somewhere else?”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“In this connexion, I do not share the view of the representative of New Zealand, who said: "The Assembly is now faced with a choice. It is a choice between deceptively simple proposals whose purpose is propaganda, and more complex proposals genuinely intended to bring about a solution." [683rd meeting, para. 152.] 162. Our task is not to allot blame or praise. Our task is to find ways of reconciliation. The world cannot be destroyed by halves; if it is going to be destroyed, it will be destroyed as a whole. War somewhere means war everywhere. It is necessary for us to approach this problem with a degree of independence of mind and also taking into account the consequences of our lack of action in this matter.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“So this mutual exchange takes place, and we are happy that in spite of political disabilities, some sixty-eight countries, including the Federal Republic of Germany, have entered into trade relations with China. We hope again that world public opinion will soon develop to the extent where we will be able to take a realistic view of the situation and, while in no way subscribing to the form of government or affording approval, we can do what is necessary under the terms of the Charter. 161. These are the main problems that confront us regionally. But really the problem that is before the United Nations is the problem of human survival, and if this Assembly did nothing beyond making some small advance to halt the race in armaments, if it did something to reverse the engines of war, we would have deserved well of ourselves and of humanity.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“It would not be doing a service to the General Assembly if we did not point out that it is not possible for this Assembly to perform its functions and that it could never become a United Nations when 600 million people who have a constituted government are excluded from its competence and its purview. In addition, there are many outstanding problems of disarmament and the development of nuclear energy for industrial purposes which cannot be solved without the co-operation of these vast numbers of people. 160. I have no desire to go into this question of representation, but I should say that we have found that the industrial and economic advances that have taken place there are of some value to us from the lessons they give. In a similar way, the Chinese come to see how we control floods or run factories, or whatever it may be.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“So far as the Government of India is concerned, so long as it can perform any duties and it is wanted, or, at least, it is not pushed out, it will continue to do so. 158. Korea still remains sundered. Thanks to the initiative of the United Nations in 1952, war came to an end, but Korea is still an unhappy land awaiting its freedom. Our views on this question have been expressed in the First Committee; they remain the same. 159. A few days ago, in asking the General Assembly to inscribe the item concerning Chinese representation on the agenda, we referred to the problems of the Far East [686th meeting].”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“Since then, attempts have been made to try to settle the problem. A representative of India is chairman of die Commission that deals with the matter. The best we can say about it is that no further conflicts are taking place, but I believe that, given good will on all sides and the recognition that these countries must be allowed to live under their own conditions of sovereignty, it is possible to obtain solutions. 157. Over there in the last eighteen months our people have been trained diplomatically and otherwise in order to carry out their tasks. While this is not directly and organizationally a United Nations problem, we think that a settlement of the problem of Indo-China, in which three countries in conditions of unity will settle down as democratic nations, would be to our advantage.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I should like to draw the attention of the General Assembly to this document because it contains an enormous amount of information about the way that assistance is given to under-developed areas, and it contains all the facts and figures. It was prepared by the Economic and Social Council as a result of the request made last year by the General Assembly. 156. The other outstanding problems are the problems of the Far East. My country, together with Canada and Poland, is engaged in Indo-China. This, again, is not a task we sought, but we found ourselves there. In 1954, thanks largely to the initiative of the United Kingdom Prime Minister of that time, large-scale war was averted in that area, and on 11 August 1954, for the first time since the invasion of China by Japan twenty-five years earlier, the guns were silenced.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“As compared with that, the aggregate amount of loans that went into Pakistan, shall we say, was $309 million, making $3.9 per head of the population. Or we can take a country like Jordan, where the assistance given amounted to $80 per head of the population, or South Korea, where the amount was $31 per head of the population. 154. I do not grudge these peoples this money; all I am saying is that, when we tie up economic questions with political considerations, we get that kind of distorted result. On the other hand, it is a good thing for countries that the amount of foreign aid they receive, while it must be adequate for getting them over certain humps, should not be such as to take away from them their sense of self-reliance. 155.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I have made reference to the assistance given by various countries in regard to the financing of economic development. In this connexion I would refer to a document which has just come into my hands on this subject [E/3047]. In this document there is no reference to any particular country. All the countries are given, whether it be the United States, the Soviet Union, Belgium or Norway. But it is interesting to notice, for example, table XXVII contained in this document, in which the aggregate amounts of money, in kind or otherwise, that have gone into the various countries, are listed. 153. What do we find? India has a population of 376 million, and the total amount of aid that went into India during the three years of 1954, 1955 and 1956 was $245 million. That works out at 70 cents per head of the population.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“Therefore, while we have no desire to make any further protest about these pact areas — we are a people who believe that the extension of the peace areas in the world of nations which are comparatively backward, whose arms are not adequate even for their own defence, simply bringing them into a scheme where they, in the long run, will become hewers of wood and drawers of water, and their territory would be theatres of war — we believe that is not the way to promote peace. We are not at the present moment saying anything about the alliances between military countries. But the drawing in of vast areas where economic progress should take place unhindered by this business — and what is more, where economic aid, as I shall point out in a short time, is tied to other things — is not at all a helpful factor. 152.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“In the old days, in the inter-war years particularly, people who were in public affairs used to refer to those dealing in the arms traffic in the world as "merchants of death". At least, in those days, countries that wanted arms had to pay for them. But nowadays, with political alignments of various kinds, these military alignments stand in the way of the United Nations. This should be the great pact of nations. As a result of the events of last year, thanks to the initiative taken by the United States, which we all joined, we proved to the world that aggression cannot pay and will not work. What is more, it proved negatively that no pacts of any kind have any value. 151. With respect to the Middle East, it would be unrealistic for us not to recognize the force of Arab nationalism.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“No solution is possible where opinions strongly held, either by majorities or by minorities, can be totally ignored. In other words, solutions have to be agreed solutions and not imposed ones. 149. This takes us to the other big problem that confronts us, and that is the projection of the "cold war" apparatus in our areas. We have always recognized the right of any sovereign country to do what it likes with its riches, with its arms, or whatever it is, but equally we claim the right to express our opinions about them. We cannot say: "this should not be done; it cannot be done". We can only say what its consequences are. The distribution of arms all over the world without the recipients having to pay for them is one of the main causes of friction in the world. 150.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“If it were possible for those people who are most concerned, namely, the German people, if it were possible for the countries of the Soviet Union which have diplomatic representation in both East and West Germany to make contributions to their unity, if it were possible for the United States with its great idealism and great economic power to realize, even more than it has done, that the present continuance of the state of war — because there is no peace — is preventing that great country with its vast industrial potential, a country which now has trade relations with almost every country in the world, including China, that would be a move in the right direction. 148. In our opinion, it is a great mistake to be wedded to doctrines that have been recited so often instead of seeking the path of peaceful and democratic solutions.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“Then we have the outstanding problem which, though we come from Asia, is as much our problem as anyone else’s, because it is a world problem — that of Germany. The Government of India hopes that peaceful and diplomatic solutions will enable the world to close the chapter of the war and enable the German people to take their place in this Assembly. 147. Those solutions have to be peaceful and they have to be democratic. We have to give up the idea of victor and vanquished in this matter. What is more, any solution of that kind should carry with itself the removal of any fears that may be entertained by either side, in view of the last seventy years of German history.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“A degree of neighbourliness should be shown, so that if they require defence materials for their own defences they, as national sovereign countries, may make their own choice; but we hope that none of them will so starve their peoples as to load themselves with arms while the population suffers. But, of course, it is an internal matter. 145. Therefore our position is: respect for the sovereignty of these countries, non-interference in their affairs, a degree of reciprocity in their relationship, and, what is more, recognition that a small country is as conscious of its dignity and of its position and independence as the mightiest country in the world. In fact, smaller countries are even more conscious of their positions than powerful countries which can afford to forget them. 146.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“It is our conviction that Syria, for instance, has no intention whatsoever of becoming involved in the "cold war". The Syrians, like ourselves, are a people who want to be left free to build their own lives; we hope that, if they are allowed to do so, they will make a greater contribution to the extension of peace areas in the world, where countries are not committed beforehand and are not standing as seconds in a duel. Our position with regard to these areas is that their sovereignty should be respected and that there should be no interference by other people.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I have no desire to venture into this problem because much talking about it does not get it very far. But, committed as we are in many ways. It is necessary for us to express our position so _that neither the United Nations nor our Arab friends will have any misunderstanding of our position. We do not regard the Middle East as a problem. It is composed of the countries and of the peoples that inhabit them. We do not believe in countries being backward in various ways. That is to look at it from the point of view of another country. What the Middle East requires is economic development and comparative peace. 143. If the nations of the world would agree not to strew their arms everywhere, especially without the recipients having to pay for them, then I think we should have greater peace in the world. 144.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“It is not working according to the plan of the Charter, it is not responsible to the Security Council — it is very difficult to find out to whom it is responsible — but at any rate the troops are there, they stopped the fighting. I hope the Secretary-General will not ask me to send more troops; we do not have any. 141. The Emergency Force has not merely kept the peace in that part of the world, but its members have performed a very great international operation in bringing about friendship between the peoples where they are and themselves. We have not had one single incident of an anti-social character in regard to our troops in the Gaza area. 142. It has been said that the Middle East is a problem with possibilities of tumult, of catastrophe and of conflict.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“While it is a great sacrifice for the countries concerned, particularly countries like ourselves and the small Scandinavian countries whose resources are not commensurate with the tasks they have to perform, I feel that we are doing something which is very much in furtherance of the Charter. 140. We do not subscribe to the view that this Emergency Force should be regarded as a pilot project or an embryonic international force of the future. That is a problem by itself, and some development can come about, should come about and will come about when the great Powers have resolved their problems among themselves. This Force was conceived and improvised for a specific purpose.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“In this connexion, I should like to say that my country carries a heavy responsibility, both financial and otherwise, in affording on the armistice line the kind of facilities and services which the United Nations called upon it to provide. 139. We are, as I said, a new nation with a very small armed force entirely conditioned and conceived for the defence of our frontiers, without any apparatus for operations abroad. But, as a result of the call of the United Nations and also because we knew that it would be a contribution towards bringing about peace, a battalion of the Indian army stands guard on this armistice line in order to prevent any skirmishes and to further the cause of peace.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“But the time has come, it appears to me, for the Secretary-General's idea to afford permanent recruitment facilities of this character where people will be hallmarked as being fit for this purpose. While they would still be nationals of their countries, they may serve others in the interests of humanity. That will take place and side by side with it the more international character of our Organization and its servants will also emerge. 137. Having said this, it would be wrong for us to sit back and think that everything is going well and that there are no problems. When we met last time, we were faced with two of the biggest problems that we had ever had, and the Assembly was very much preoccupied by them. 138. In the course of the speeches before the Assembly, reference has been made to the problems of the Middle East.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“We hope that in the years before us this development of cooperative enterprises between nations, where nations both large and small, rich and poor, will contribute to each other's development, will receive the implementation of the General Assembly and that a beginning will be made. 136. We are also glad to notice in the introduction to the Secretary-General's annual report a reference to an international administrative service. I think no greater contribution could be made than by drawing from various nations the talents of their people to the services of the countries which want them. We are one of those countries where, in a haphazard way or by bilateral arrangements, large numbers of people in our area come in, expert professional people of various kinds.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“We have had discussions about this year after year, and we are in the happy position that the Economic and Social Council has recommended the inauguration of this Fund. 135. We hope that the United States with its characteristic generosity and foresight will come forward and speed up this process and be able to appreciate the fact more fully that multilateral aid of this kind does not displace bilateral aid, any more than our membership of the United Nations in any way vitiates our ties, shall we say, with the Commonwealth or our friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the United States,, Nepal or whatever country it may be.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“There has been a considerable amount of aid from other countries to under-developed countries. After all, this is a new idea. It is only since the Second World War that countries have come forward and given out of their hard-earned wealth, having to fight their national legislatures and to convince them — and after all, no one pays income taxes cheerfully, I am told; I do not pay any, they collect it before I get any money. So much of this aid has flowed into these places and the various countries concerned in this matter are to be congratulated. 134. In this connexion, I should like to congratulate the President's country — and in fact all the countries of the United Nations, bar one or two which I hope will soon join the rest — which has been engaged in promoting the Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I feel sure that the income from the Canal will largely go into the development of the Canal, because not only the countries that use it, but also Egypt, through whose land the Canal flows and whose waters belong to it, need it more than anything else. 133. Our main concern in this twelfth year of our existence in the United Nations is with regard to those problems to which the Secretary-General has again referred in the section of his report dealing with economic and social questions, that is, the problem of the development of the under-developed countries. This is not a question of providing charity for those who are helpless, but a common-sense question of establishing a world equilibrium. You cannot have a political equilibrium if there is not economic equilibrium.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“Once more I should like to pay my tribute to the Egyptian Government for the great patience and wisdom it has shown in not saying, "The Canal is ours; you can pay and go", but making a free, open-handed declaration to the peoples of the world which, by the announcement of its international instrument and by registration with the United Nations, under the procedures of the Court, has created a bond which is very different, so far as we are concerned, from what was expressed by the representative of New Zealand [683rd meeting]. We think it is a good settlement which will lead to further settlements. I am convinced that, given good will, the cooperation between the users of the Canal and the Suez Canal Authority will grow.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“The great Powers, the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom and others would do well to recognize quite fully the changes that are taking place, taking into account the national aspirations of peoples and, what is more, the pride of peoples in doing things themselves — the Egyptians are very proud of running the Suez Canal and at no time has it been mechanically run as well as it is now, carrying heavier traffic than at any time before.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“It is not because we poorer peoples are any more high-minded or idealistic; our interests lead that way. We could not live in the nursing of past grievances; neither individuals nor countries can look in two directions at the same time. Either you look forward and march on or you look backward and nurse your glories and grievances, and this leads to a deterioration. Thus we are happy to think that in all these matters, both financial and other, some progress is being made. 132.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I am also happy to feel and my Government is happy to feel that, while some problems, like paying for the various expenses incurred in connexion with the Suez Canal, the maintenance of the United Nations Emergency Force, the settling of various accounts with regard to the nationalization or other incidents arising from the events that took place last year, still remain, progress is being made in this direction without in any way trespassing upon the free will of Egypt or of the other countries concerned. 131. It is our view that there is an enormous desire on the part of the peoples concerned to let the past be buried and to proceed in an era of co-operation. It is not our experience that there is a nursing of grievances in these lands but that there is a stretching forward to the new.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I believe that one of the historic documents of the year is what is called the unilateral declaration by the Government of Egypt where, with great ingenuity, it has created a situation where it has made itself part of an international commitment and introduced the sanctity and authority of the United Nations in the enforcement of laws. 130.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“In this twelfth year of the United Nations, while there are still many unfinished tasks, we may congratulate ourselves on the resolving of, or at least on the developments that have taken place in regard to the problem we discussed arising from the invasion of Egypt last year. We are happy to think that the Government of Egypt, of its own free will, has made itself a party to international commitments whereby it reiterates and fully accepts the Constantinople Convention of 1888 and, what is more, subjects itself, in so far as the Convention is concerned, to the authority of the International Court of Justice to which it is not a party, not having signed the optional clause.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I take the liberty of asking both of them — nations that are characterized by their sense of logic— to pursue this a little further and to say that this groupism is a bad thing whether it be in our national parliaments — where you do not get any stable government if there are too many groups, as some countries know to their cost — or whether it is applied to the whole world, so this Assembly does not become a gathering of good nations and bad nations; it does not become a collection of one Holy Alliance against another Holy Alliance, but makes something of the Charter where it becomes a centre for harmonizing interests. 129.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“In this connexion, I will particularly say to the President, who come from that part of the world, that at the Bandung Conference one of the main insistences was that, while it represented a resurgence of Asia and Africa, we should not subscribe in any form to a continental regionalism. Therefore, with great respect, I should like to agree with the representatives of the Netherlands and of France who referred to these groups and who are as one with us in re cognizing their good functioning and being against the bad in it.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“They are not blocs in any sense; their policies are different, their military alignments are different, they do not all vote together; but when it comes to a question of an attack on the national liberty of a country they, in common with other countries like the United States or the Soviet Union, which do not belong to these groups, as was seen last year, band together. It is true that it is a good thing for countries which are near to each other or like-minded or have similar backgrounds or histories to be able to get together, and it may contribute to those factors to which the Secretary-General refers in his report of the United Nations as a scene of diplomacy or of mutual understanding as between nations. 128. Our Government and our country will never be a party to creating continental regionalisms.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I hope that the representative of France, with the logical mind of his people, will carry this further and not form, military groups in the world. After all, if groups are bad for the United Nations, groups are equally bad for the world, and if we want a free and united world and a world of peoples it is better that we do not divide it into compartments by harrow domestic walls, where it is the impediment of the flow of knowledge and information, and of the contact of man with man or mind with mind, that creates the impediments to traffic between nations. 127. I suppose the reference here is largely to the groups of countries that have been here. For years, ever since the Organization was formed, there have been meetings of groups.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“I believe that it was the Secretary-General who said that it was not the United Nations that had created the renaissance of Asia. The United Nations simply reflects the renaissance of Asia. The United Nations did not perform a creative act in bringing about the independence of those countries. Only those countries that have become independent are here. I entirely agree with the representative of France in thinking that "groupism" is a very bad thing in community life, whether in a country or in the world as a whole. It would develop the disease which the Greeks used to call stasis — in this case a rancorous, prejudicial form of war. We on our side have no desire to cut this Assembly into groups. 126.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“So, under the President’s wise guidance, I hope that this Assembly — without rancour but with a sense of the practical, an appreciation of the fundamental rights of peoples and, what is more, an admission and recognition of the territorial character of nationalist movements — will realize that countries are not problems to their peoples. Countries are their homelands; they are the places where they are born and where their bodies are buried or burned when they die. Unless we look at this question in this way we shall not make much progress. Our own country, within the ways that are open to it, makes its own contribution. 125. In this connexion, reference has been made by one or two delegations to a fact which I might us well mention here. It concerns the existence of groups within the United Nations.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)
“We have lived through this, and we not only understand it but feel it every time. 123. We believe that the extension of these areas of freedom is an asset to the community. Who would say that the new countries, fifteen or twenty of them, that have joined this United Nations, with their millions of people who but a generation ago were under bondage, are not an asset to the international community? Every time we disenfranchise a people, every time we make a people non-functional, we are depriving the world community of what they could contribute. It is quite true that they bring problems, but they bring their contributions also. 124.”
1957-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 12 (1957)