YouSaid · the spoken record

Ramani

lines on the record: 63
first: 1964-09-24
most recent: 1964-09-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: un-general-debate

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“That will not wave a magic wand over our troubles and make them disappear, but let us resolve, in the concluding words of the Prime Minister of India in his address to the Cairo Conference, to "continue to strive for peace, to resolve all differences through peaceful methods of conciliation, as distinct from confrontation, and by trust instead of suspicion". 190. To that end, Malaysia, as exemplified by its conduct in the year that is passing, dedicates herself anew to the principles and purposes of the Charter.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“If every State can be persuaded to guide itself in the pursuit of its State interests, that pursuit must not involve the sacrifice of the larger interest of the United Nations. That attitude of mind alone will help to promote the larger loyally of all of us to the United Nations. 188. I hope I have not transgressed the bounds of propriety in offering humbly and respectfully this comment. There is no other way, in my judgement, by which we can keep faith with ourselves and with the United Nations. 189. I have done, and I apologize for the length of time I have occupied. We are standing almost on the threshold of a new year which has been christened the International Co-operation Year in the context of the United Nations.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“It is not, and should not be, inconsistent with our allegiance to our own country. 187. Whether we ultimately go on to a supranational world State or not, it is essential for each of us even now to endeavour to school ourselves to the discipline that, by pledging support to the United Nations and undertaking the obligations of the Charter, we have assumed a superior loyalty, coexisting with our loyalty to our own State. This necessarily involves occasional and minor conflicts of interest which, I venture to think, we must always endeavour to resolve in favour of the larger loyalty to the United Nations. One may sacrifice, if at all, one’s own interests alone. One may not sacrifice what is not one’s own to sacrifice: the. common interest of the world.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The Council would thereby have earned the right to retain the primacy that is claimed for it, and the question of “primary" or "exclusive" will lose all practical significance. 185. This, I venture to submit, is an area of thought which representatives might consider worth exploring. Whatever might have happened in the past, we shall have taken a positive step towards securing peace in the future and restoring primacy to the Security Council, the sole cause of the present impasse. 186. I think I have said enough — perhaps more than enough — to emphasize my Government's view that we should be ever conscious of our duties to the United Nations, as our Organization, before we look to it as the guardian of our rights and the fairy godmother of our hopes. These duties, in my humble judgement, involve allegiance to the United Nations ideal.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“My humble suggestion is that, when a problem of such desperate urgency arises, the permanent members, by a gentleman’s agreement, should accept the convention that they should act, and act promptly, to separate the combatants and quench the fire. For tins purpose, and for this interim remedy only, none should exercise the veto power. The fighting having been stopped and its spread prevented by the interposition of appropriate personnel at the behest of the Security Council, then the Council can proceed with its leisurely debate on the causes of the strife and the apportioning of blame. 184. The second stage can be pursued without any inhibitions about the exercise of the veto power, but by then the Security Council, by its peremptory act in the first instance, would have saved the peace and by so doing have justified its existence.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The Security Council embarks on a leisurely programme of debate on the rights and wrongs of the incidents and no great ingenuity is needed to find air the adequate reasons to take the view that one Power feels compelled to take solely because another Power has taken the opposite view. Interminable arguments go on while the flames that began as a small fire have been expanding the areas of destruction and, as the days pass, less and less confidence can be maintained that the fire can even be isolated, if not snuffed out. In the end, the result is that the Security Council effectively demonstrates to all the world its fatal ineffectiveness. 183. Surely this is capable of a simple remedy.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The sole objective of Chapters VI and VII of the Charter is to provide the method by which the Security Council may take cognizance of a dispute or situation of the type mentioned, and quickly come to grips with a newly developing, and possibly explosive, situation. In nine cases out of ten the situation cries for immediate action. Hostilities have unexpectedly broken out, and unless the fire is put out at once it will assume the proportions of a conflagration. 182. In almost every case the antagonists appearing- before the Council wish to make the best use of and exploit the patent cleavages of opinion among the permanent members of the Council.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“It was supported by the Minister of External Affairs of Australia [1299th meeting]. I hope I am not derogating from the value of that important suggestion if I point out that it does not deal with the specific problem of this sharp difference over peace-keeping operations and, moreover, involves substantial amendments to the Charter which, as we all know, can be too painfully long to be of immediate relevance. 180. May I, in all humility, make a suggestion which may be found simpler to carry out, and, being free of the complexities of the amending process, could be of immediate usefulness. 181.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The other view is that the Security Council’ s power and responsibility are only primary and not exclusive, and that where it fails, due either to inability or unwillingness to exercise that power or discharge that responsibility, then the General Assembly can and must step in to deal with a situation that might otherwise lead to unpreventable catastrophe. It needs no saying that the significant difference between the two views rests on the use of the veto power; and powerful forces are ranged on both sides of the dividing line. 179. I realize this is — and has been for a long time — a difficult and complex problem not readily capable of any easy solution or agreeable compromise. Many suggestions have been made to bridge this difference. One was made the other day by the Minister for External Relations of Brazil [1289th meeting].”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“It is obvious that the problem has arisen as the result of two directly contradictory views of the scope and functions of the Security Council. That the views are honest and sincere on either side is demonstrated by the passion with which these views have been presented and pressed before us on many an occasion. The one view holds that the Security Council, and the Security Council alone, is the repository of all the effective peace-keeping power and all the consequences of it, and the exercise of it is the lone, unshared obligation of the Security Council.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“It is erroneous to assume that any1 active anti calculated effort at promoting neo-imperialism must necessarily come from the old imperialists. The imperialists of the past may have had their excuses, if not their justification, in carrying out what were called "civilizing missions" to the distant corners of Asia and Africa, but modern attempts at territorial expansion, under colour of taking up arms against neo-colonialism, by a State which has accepted the obligations of the Charter as a condition precedent to its membership of the United Nations, are not only unjustified but inexcusable. 178. It is against this particular background, and the general background of world conditions, that I should like to return to the vexed question of Article 19.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Even the right of self-defence of a State is carefully and precisely circumscribed in the Charter, lest it should provide an excuse for aggression. 176. Newly independent States were warned the other day to guard against the insidious penetrating influences of foreign Powers, which in many ways and many guises sought deliberately to hold the substance of power behind the shadow of independence. May I, as the representative of a small country which has learned its lessons in the hard school of experience, by the same token warn the new small States against permitting the creation of new power bases by foreign Governments to intervene in their territories, in situations which, in comparable terms, one is compelled to call "neo-imperialism". 177.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Here I speak only for Malaysia, and all I can say is that it supports my thesis that it has become fashionable, if I may borrow his phrase, to describe any State that one does not like, and which one cannot find an adequate reason for disliking, as "neocolonialist", so as to enable one to promote and pursue one's own brand of intervention. 175. But may I now humbly inquire — even if one is a "neo-colonialist" — whence came the authority for any State that has subscribed to the obligations of the Charter to hang a label of its own, even if it is "neo-colonialist", on to any other State, and thereby derive the sacred duty to don shining armour, mount a charger and with unsheathed sword in hand carry a holy war into the territories of another State, leaving death and destruction and misery in its wake?”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“He expressed these categories in these terms: "The present world picture shows us many kinds of such interventionist activities — open or disguised — coming from forces which no longer have a cause to defend in the new emerging world of the new nations. There is the Viet-Nam fashion of intervention, the Laos fashion of intervention, the Cuba fashion, the South Arabian fashion, the Cyprus fashion, the Israel fashion, the Malaysian fashion, the apartheid fashion and the Congo fashion — many fashions but, in essence, with the same design and goal." [1300th meeting, para. 171,] 174.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“It would be worse still if that should provide an excuse for any State to interfere in the affairs of a neighbouring State on the pretext, based on subjective standards of its own, of seeing interventionist activity in the neighbour. If this is to be accepted as a valid thesis in international relations, then out of the window goes the Charter ideal of practising tolerance and living together in peace as good neighbours, and the doctrine of peaceful coexistence proceeding from it. 173. I have dwelt a little on this thesis, because the other day the representative of Indonesia cited my country as an. example of one brand of interventionist activity that his special perspicacity in this field saw all around the world.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“But I venture to suggest that the ultimate test whether or not such vestiges of colonialism are to be equated with "interventionist activities" — a phrase used by the First Deputy Prime Minister of Indonesia — is to discover the type of government that controls its destiny. 172. If at all points of a political relationship between two States, one of which has the power to dominate, such relationship continues with the willing assent of the representatives of its people, under a freely elected government responsible to the legislature, that relationship is not to be described as "neo-colonialist" or "interventionist" merely because it is not to the taste of some other State.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“But it is sad to find that, with the unlimited permutations that are being presented on this neocolonialist theme, it has, as Malaysia has reason to know from experience, become a mere vituperative epithet, a convenient stick — because its content is so vague — with which to beat anyone that you do not like. 171. I grant that in the very nature of things colonialism as a profitable creed tends to outlast its termination. I grant that habits of exploitation are not unlearnt on the symbolic stroke of a midnight hour. I grant, too, that new communities may continue to suffer the effects of the hangover, after the heady wine of colonialism had been drunk deep and long.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Its form, content and contours have so changed from time to time that it is impossible to say, at any one time or as used by any particular person, what precisely the speaker has in mind. Mr. President, you Sir, on 5 April 1958 are recorded as having told the United Nations: "By neo-colonialism we mean the practice of granting a sort of independence with the concealed intention of making the liberated country a client-State, and controlling it effectively by means other than political ones.” 169. I accept that as a fair definition of the term and I am willing to declare, here and now, that my Government has no reservations in condemning such spurious independence. In so doing we echo the sentiments eloquently expressed on neo-colonialism at the recent Cairo conference. 170.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“It should be our duty to expand and render more effective this role before the calculated ineffectiveness of the Security Council, by its very continuance, tends to expand and activate dormant conflicts between other small States and fan the embers into further flames. Small States starving for developmental funds cannot afford the luxury of a modern army with all its mechanization and sophistication. We do not wish to throw away the smallest coin of our currencies in unproductive instruments of war and destruction, nor would we like to dispose any part of our manpower potential in non-economic fields. 168. In this context, I should like to say a word about, the new and ever-expanding concept of neocolonialism.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The United Nations has no independent, inexhaustible resources; it is not as if all that was needed was to persuade the Secretary-General to dig deep into his pockets and provide the finance that all these programmes need. These resources come from all of us. We have therefore need for all of us to hold together. We cannot afford the smallest of us to be sacrificed and compelled to withdraw from the United Nations. By the same token we have larger need of the larger States, whatever the material of the alleged curtains before or behind them. 167. But some of us, the small States, which are victims of aggression, need the United Nations, most of all, in its peace-keeping role. We cannot do without it.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“I have heard it said frequently — even in serious debate — that the small nations should not lend themselves as pawns in the political game between the great Powers, and must insist on playing their vigorous role, uninfluenced by this Power politics. Stated in general terms it is impossible not to agree to such a proposition: nobody likes to be a pawn in any game, political or other, waiting to be sacrificed in the opening moves of the major contestants. But this argument is not appropriate to the present context. We, the small States, need the United Nations — all of them, not merely this large State or that other — for development, for technical assistance, for professional skills and aid in a host of other sectors that make the full circle of the United Nations activities, which are designed for the benefit of us all. 166.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The United States alone has openly expressed its view; it is entitled to hold its view and I am not here to support it, or defend it. I am merely anxious that we now confront the reality, the actual fact. 164. May I at this stage be permitted to give expression to the thoughts uppermost in the minds of us all, our hopes and prayers for the speedy recovery of the Secretary-General- so that he may soon return to the United Nations seat, where, today more than ever, we have need of his invaluable assistance in the solution of this problem which requires all the patience and persuasiveness of which he alone is capable. 165.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“It is notorious that the corridors of the United Nations have, over the last several weeks, hummed to the tune of confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. This is wholly unfortunate. May I be permitted to bring the picture back into focus. The question of arrears and the application of Article 19 arise in no such confrontation. If confrontation there is, it is one between the Soviet Union and like-minded States on the one hand, and the Secretary-General of the United Nations, that is, all of us, on the other. And all of us should give all the strength we have to his — the Secretary-General's — elbow. Indeed, I have often wondered if the very best assistance we may give him in the crucial days ahead is not keeping our thoughts to ourselves.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The Malaysian Government has no doubts whatever that Article 19 must have its full effect, and cannot be avoided by distinguishing between general and special expenses, an argument especially animadverted to by the International Court of Justice. 162. This is not, however, to say that the political effects of the strict legal interpretations can be minimized or ignored. My Government, therefore, hopes that the talks now proceeding towards a settlement of this crisis will succeed. Even the chief protagonists of the opposing views have stated that their Governments wish to see the United Nations continue with its myriad activities, and they are no more anxious to see the United Nations falter or flounder than anyone else in this Assembly. We have, therefore, every reason to remain hopeful. 163.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The Malaysian Government has not changed its view that the Congo and other peace-keeping operations initiated or continued by the General Assembly, where the Security Council, for reasons not wholly relevant to the merits of the conflict, disabled itself from acting, were entirely competent. Nor have we changed our view that assessment made on Members for the sharing of the costs of those operations were entirely within the competence of the General Assembly. 161. In any event, having asked for and accepted the decision of the International Court of Justice, it is regrettable that the argument should still be kept alive.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“It needs no prescience to remind ourselves that the larger we grow in number the larger will grow the permutations and combinations, potential of conflict, that require the watchful and vigilant eyes of the Security Council, trained like the rotating beam of a searchlight all around the globe. 159. At the fourth special session of the Assembly, in 1963, my delegation drew attention in the Fifth Committee [993rd meeting] to the fact that the institutional structure of the Charter demonstrated, even as the language of the Charter underlined, that at all times the Security Council acted on behalf of the General Assembly. This point was again made on 11 December by the Minister of External Affairs of the Commonwealth of Australia [1299th meeting]. 160.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Frustrated and disappointed as we are at the result of the Security Council debate, we have learnt in the school of experience the urgent need to strengthen the United Nations and its principal organ in the peace-keeping sphere. Malaysia asks its sister States here assembled to learn from its experience. 158. The framers of the Charter, duly conscious that mere signatures to the Charter do not alone help to avoid all wars, big or small, created the Security Council as the executive arm of the General Assembly, to be primarily concerned with acts disturbing, or likely to disturb, the peace. That the Security Council has had its hands full with problems of peace-keeping for these nineteen years, as the records of the United Nations demonstrate, is a sobering reminder to us all not to allow our ideals to outrun the realities.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Among the principal signatories to the Cairo declaration [A/5763] is Indonesia, by the hand of the First Deputy Prime Minister, whom we had the privilege to hear. How does one reconcile the signature on that declaration with the activities I have described? Of course, under his patent authority — both before and after the signing of the declaration. As I should not like to infringe the rules of decorum in debate, I shall not attempt to answer those questions. 157. I do trust representatives gathered in this Assembly will be amazed at Malaysia's moderation throughout this unhappy history. We have even desisted from the exercise of our right of self-defence, lest the area of the conflict should expand. I have said enough to show why Malaysia desperately needs the United Nations.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Just the other day, on 11 December, even as the distinguished First Deputy Prime Minister of Indonesia was on his feet at this very rostrum addressing this Assembly, propounding the philosophic bases of these so-called new emerging forces, a group of sea-borne Indonesian infiltrators was landing on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula under cover of darkness and being captured as they landed. Permanent representatives of all nations assembled here will have had circulated to them today details of these latest acts of brigandage in our last letter to the President of the Security Council. My Government is grievously conscious that this is not going to be the last letter we shall have to write. 156. What is one to make of such an attitude on the part of a Member State of this Organization?”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“A near unanimously acceptable resolution of the Security Council, deploring this aggression and reaffirming the obligation of all States to respect the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of States was killed by the usual process of a significant negative vote. I shall not proceed with that sorry story. 154. But I do wish to state that, in spite of that expression of world opinion, including that of all the Afro-Asian States represented on the Council, these incursions have continued; and we have from time to time notified the President of the Security Council of full particulars of these. There have actually occurred as many as twenty-two incidents since the Security Council debate in September. 155.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“This is no secret. And, in the absence of a peaceful solution to the problem of 'Malaysia,' to the conflict between 'Malaysia' and Indonesia, particularly after the inconclusive end of the summit conference at Tokyo last June, the fighting and activities on both sides could only become aggravated or even escalate. And now this fighting has spread to other areas of 'Malaysia' such as Malaya. Why is 'Malaysia' so greatly concerned now that it. requests a meeting of the Security Council? Why was it not equally concerned much earlier when the fighting broke out in Sarawak and Sabah, which is also a part of this 'Malaysia'? As a matter of fact, the fighting now in Malaya is on a very small scale compared to the magnitude of the fighting in Sarawak and Sabah. " That was the reply to the Security Council. 153.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Malaysia need only answer that Indonesia's unprovoked and inexcusable aggression against it has provided at once the justification and the vindication of the defence agreement. 152. When, after a particularly daring and blatant act of aggression, involving three plane-loads of paratroopers being dropped in the jungle fastnesses of Malaysian territory under cover of darkness, a complaint was brought to the Security Council last September, the Indonesian answer to our allegation, presented by its Deputy Foreign Minister, was unabashed admission in the Council, in these words: "I would not deny that our volunteers, our guerrillas, together with the militant youth of Sarawak and Sabah, some of whom had been trained in our territory, have entered so-called Malaysian territory in Sarawak and Sabah. They have been fighting there for some time.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“It is noteworthy that for six long years after 1957, neither Malaya — nor Malaysia, as it became — felt the need to invoke that defence agreement; it was not invoked until open military confrontation was begun by Indonesia in the closing days of 1963. At our urgent request, on the faith of that agreement, Malaysia has received military assistance from the United Kingdom, and, later, similar assistance has also been received from Australia and New Zealand. 151. In a clever and ingenious attempt at confusing cause with consequence, Indonesia has now turned round to claim that it is our defence agreement with the United Kingdom that is the primary cause for Malaysia becoming unacceptable as a State to Indonesia.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Our security forces have suffered casualties, including dead and wounded, of over 100 personnel. Indonesian army personnel, as well as irregulars, captured, killed and wounded amount to over 500. These are only the known incursions: the undetected ones will be many more, since Malaysia shares a 1,000-mile-long jungle border with Indonesia. 149. It is because of these military interventions against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of my country that my Government has had to seek external assistance for its defence against this unprovoked aggression. Malaysia, when as Malaya it achieved it independence in 1957, had entered into a defence agreement with the United Kingdom, by which the latter agreed to provide such assistance when there was external aggression. 150.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Representatives are aware that the attitudes that I have patiently described have natually and inevitably led Indonesia to the use of force, which it foreswore when it became a Member of the United Nations. This has resulted in its declared policy of military confrontation, with the proclaimed objective of "crush Malaysia”, and Indonesia has moved with a courage worthy of a better cause from covert subversion to open aggression against Malaysia. 148. Since December last, over the past twelve months, there have been more than 200 incursions and military adventures into the territory, of Malaysia, both in the peninsula and in the eastern States, involving casualties both military and civilian, apart from untold misery and privation to the peoples in the respective areas.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“There is, however, one vital thing in common between the two countries — we are both signatories to the obligations of the Charter as sovereign independent States. We in Malaysia profoundly wish that our acts should correspond to, and be guided and controlled by, the spirit and letter of the Charter. Indonesia wishes — I grant equally profoundly — as the statement made the other day by its First Deputy Prime Minister showed, to refashion the spirit and language of the Charter to suit its attitudes to the present and the future, and has started on a course of what he so happily termed reorganizing the United Nations mentally and revising its Charter mentally. 147.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Indonesia’s attitude, with its 100 million people, to Malaysia, with its mere 11 million, is not even nominally one of equality as between sovereign States, but that of a big brother inclined to bullying. But Malaysia asks only to be left alone to plough its lonely furrow. Malaysia's military strength must appear contemptible to Indonesia's reputedly fourth largest army in the world. This disparity, Malaysia readily appreciates, is not particularly conducive to, any softening of Indonesia's attitude towards Malaysia. 145. I have said enough to show that there is nothing about Malaysia that Indonesia, either on a long view or on a closer look, wants to like, notwithstanding the fact that its population, in terms, of language, race and religion, colour and culture, is most closely allied to the people of Malaysia. 146.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Indonesia does not like the passionate moderation with which Malaysia faces its tasks of nation-building — that is easy to understand. Indonesia does not like the moderate success our leaders have achieved in trying to meet the revolution of rising expectations of our peoples, which is far and away different from the revolution patented in Indonesia, and which Malaysia has no desire to infringe. It is welcome to hold its opinions. 144. Indonesia does not wish to translate into action its Treaty of Friendship of 17 April 1959 with Malaya, the only treaty of any kind that independent Malaya - before it became Malaysia — entered into with any State. It has not hugged it to its bosom, nor has it denounced it openly.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Indonesia does not recognize Malaysia — that is its sovereign right. Indonesia does not like the political structure of the Government in Malaysia — again, it is its sovereign right to entertain its views. Indonesia has made no secret of its intense dislike of Malaysia's leaders — that again is its privilege. Indonesia does not like the type of democracy that we in Malaysia practise and do not preach — that again is its pleasure. Indonesia does not like the Malaysian type of parliamentary democracy that receives its guidance from the people upwards—that again we understand. 143. Indonesia too, perhaps, disdains a prosperous and maybe a property-owning democracy in Malaysia, where a stable economy provides three meals a day to every worker and peasant, and clothing and shelter besides — that again is its sovereign privilege.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The Charter becomes no more than a scrap of paper — to use a notorious historical phrase. Soon after the First World War, a well-known writer quoted one of the ablest ambassadors, reiterating his conviction that nothing except force has any influence in international politics, that treaties and agreements are made to gain time and then to be repudiated, that a nation which is known to be pacific must expect to be insulted, abused and wronged at every turn. 141. The 115 States that are represented here, and others which are not, are aware of the disputes and dissensions in the South-East Asian region, to which reference was made by the representative of New Zealand only yesterday [1305th meeting] and, in particular, of our own persistent and persisting troubles with Indonesia. 142.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“But if we wish to have our own attitudes accepted by another, the Charter enjoins that we enter into a dialogue, that we seek to persuade, to understand the other man’s point of view, and not clobber him — if I may use that colloquial phrase — into accepting our own view, however convinced we are that the other view is wholly wrong, illogical, disingenuous, even dishonest. Otherwise, our periodic protestations of support for peaceful coexistence remain a transparent facade behind which the reality is only too visible. 140. If this basic right of each State to be left alone in the pursuit of its own destiny — however ideologically unacceptable to another — is not the foundation of the purposes and principles of the Charter, then we determine to turn round and go back to the pre-1945 world and the law of the jungle.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“These indeed are the four main pillars of the many-storeyed structure that is the United Nations. As long as we want to be counted as Members of the Organization, have we not the sacred duty to keep our own two feet firmly planted on the realities of the Charter obligations we have freely undertaken, howsoever widely our minds may range, as indeed they must, over intellectual attitudes to new problems? 139. There is perhaps no single problem in the world which cannot be seen or approached in different, even if not in antithetical ways. And humans that we are, we tend-to regard our own thinking as superior to that of another.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“They had every reason to be aware that a new page had opened in human history, and the dawn of the atomic age had startled an unsuspecting world that is still rubbing its eyes with wonder. 138. But all of us who contemplate these new phenomena created in and by a world of technological development, which appears to be rushing man on this pitiful planet towards the unknown at a disastrous pace, should we not bear in mind that our basic approach to these new problems must indeed stem from the fundamental principles of the Charter — first, of sovereign equality of Members; secondly, of the need to fulfil in good faith the obligations assumed under the Charter; thirdly, not to seek settlement of disputes except by peaceful means; and, lastly, not to use force or the threat of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of any other State.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“It was mentioned by the representative of Indonesia, who addressed this Assembly [1300thmeeting], that the world is not a static body, that the framers of the Charter could not have visualized the problems that the liberation of new communities all over the world have created, that the wine they helped to distil cannot quench the thirst of nations and States yet unborn in 1945. This is indeed true; and, in fairness to the framers of the Charter, it must be recalled that it is implicit in the Charter that the framers felt that in the comparatively short span of ten years there might evolve a world which would have outgrown the empirical formulae they helped to create. That is why they provided for the compulsory consideration of a review of the Charter.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“Organization exists. Should we desire a future for the United Nations to open on to new horizons of usefulness and new vistas of influence, it is essential that we take a long look at where we are going so that we may not merely move forward aimless, gazing misty-eyed towards an unclear future. 136. If the Preamble and the opening Articles of the Charter, to which all of us have subscribed — and one hopes without mental reservations — mean to us something much more than a euphonious catalogue of high-sounding ideals, then it follows that States Members of this Organization must make it their duty to follow in practice the ideals that they proclaim and not merely claim the right to preach them to others. 137.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The world situation has changed significantly as a result of that treaty. It occurs to us that a further and fresh approach to the idea of the non-nuclear club may well be worth while. This will help to attack the problem of proliferation of nuclear weapons from two sides — the giver as well as the taker. Even by way of mobilizing world opinion against proliferation, even if its effectiveness is limited, it is worth pursuing. 134. There are a variety of other matters due for discussion at this session, and my delegation will express its views on them at the appropriate time. 135. The most important problem that has dominated our thinking in recent weeks has been the question of peace-keeping operations and, more especially, their financing. It takes us to the very centre and core of the principles mid purposes for which the whole.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“My delegation suggests the creation of a convention directly proceeding from a resolution of this Assembly — without being side-tracked and killed in the Committee on Disarmament — calling upon all nonnuclear Powers to declare that they will neither develop nuclear capacity nor acquire or accept nuclear weapons for any purpose. The effect of all the States signing the test-ban treaty was to freeze further development of nuclear weaponry even in the hands of the nuclear Powers. The convention that I propose will deal with the problem of what not to do with the weapons that exist. 133. I recall that, at the sixteenth session of the Assembly, this problem was debated at the initiative of Sweden. Not unexpectedly, it evoked a myriad objections. But that was before the test-ban treaty.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The history of disarmament debates in the several organs of the United Nations and special committees warns one against hoping to offer any suggestions that may be either new or original, which either in whole or in part had not been considered and, of course, rejected some time or other in the recent or distant past. It may be thought that it is perhaps too easy for us smaller States to advise the larger States to disarm, but I venture to think that there is one positive step all States, large and small, with or without nuclear capability, can take. This will be a natural corollary to the formal act of adhesion to the nuclear test-ban treaty, which has been signed by 105 States. 132.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The denial of human rights anywhere is a cause of concern to human beings everywhere, but the shadows that have fallen on the breath-taking beauty of that fair land are deepening into darkness, and we have a duty to its people, hounded from their homes, deprived of even their pitiful personal possessions and, last but not least, denied even the solace that a religion of infinite compassion can bring to the agonies of their souls. My delegation, in due time, will support the discussion of this item proposed by El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Philippines. 131. One other matter to which I should like to refer briefly is the question of disarmament, particularly nuclear disarmament.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)
“The debate on the special committee’s report and recommendation to the General Assembly [A/5825 and Add.l] will be the appropriate occasion when we hope to lay bare the art, the artistry and the artifice with which this shadow play has beguiled the world, so that an effective enforcement measure to end, once and for all, this crime against humanity may find no further excuses for postponement. 130. I cannot conclude this brief outline of my country’s attitudes towards international problems without referring to the tragedy of Tibet.”
1964-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 19 (1964)