YouSaid · the spoken record

TOMEH

lines on the record: 230
first: 1965-09-24
most recent: 1969-09-24
sittings or episodes: 4
sources: un-general-debate

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“The socialism of the Arab countries which adopted it as a system, like socialism in other developed countries, is a revolution of suffering — the search for dignity and the thirst for love. Consequently, it is a revolution to correct a human situation and, finally, a contribution in the service of humanity at large. 68. I come now to the problem of Palestine. My country, Syria, considers Palestine to be the southern part of Syria. This problem, which was first brought to the United Nations in April 1947, has been before it ever since. Alone among the scores of problems discussed by the United Nations, the Palestine question has been dealt with by all six organs designated by the Charter as the principal organs of the United Nations. These organs and their main committees have devoted 985 meetings to the Palestine question.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“Like any other political system, it is dynamic, self-generating, and an expression of the need of the hungry, ignorant masses who so far have lived on the crumbs of feudalism, political and economic exploitation, and imperialism, which have formed an alliance among themselves. The revolution of rising expectations in the developing countries is the greatest historical factor which has characterized the last half century, and which ultimately expressed itself in the social revolution to free man from ignorance, sickness, poverty and hunger. It is the revolution of man to realize his natural right. The denial of this right, like the denial of any other right, can lead only to complication, instability, and anarchy.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“Unfortunately, this nationalism was and is being distorted and misrepresented, primarily because we do not possess the international propaganda machine which international Zionism has at its disposal. However, it is necessary to mention here that, unlike European nationalism, Asian and African nationalism grew in part as a reaction to Western colonialism and its economic exploitation. No sooner was political independence realized that there grew among our peoples a social consciousness which found, and is finding, expression in socialism. It is necessary for the developed countries to realize that socialism is at the present time historically determining the trend of development in the developing countries. But this economic-political system is not static.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“Jewish philosophy and theology also prospered and gave some of its great minds, as Maimonides (Moussa ibn Maimoun), author of The Guide of the Perplexed, a classic in Judaic philosophy and theology, written in Arabic, about whom the Jews say, "From Moses to Moses, there is nobody like Moses” — all this side by side with Arab Muslim philosophy in a continuous dialogue in the spirit of community and fellowship. In this way Arab civilization gave one of the first instances of peaceful coexistence and religious and political toleration. 67. These great values, namely, openness, tolerance, and interchange, are still the fountainhead of Arab nationalism today, which gazes upon wide human horizons.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“When the Arabs declined, as have a great many peoples in history, and when the European renaissance began in Italy, the Italian scholars took Arabic science in the fields of physics, chemistry, astronomy, medicine, mathematics, and became, as historians of culture recognize today, not only an incentive to the Italian renaissance, but also one of its basic factors. 66. When Arab civilization reached its zenith — and let us remember again that it is the basic source of Arab nationalism about which I am talking — it was characterized by openness to other cultures, the Greek, the Indian and Persian. It was also characterized by tolerance among the adherents to the various religions. Thus Christian philosophy prospered and gave more of its great minds, like John the Damascene, an authority in Christian theology.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“When the Arab period came, the Arabs inherited the legacy of Greece, translated it into Arabic, and expanded it with their comments. The social and intellectual problems of Arab society interacted with this legacy. Our philosophers and scientists played their role in the great conflicts of human thought. Historians in the science refer to this magnificent Arab renaissance as a miracle in the history of science. Their commentaries and great books of learning were transmitted to the West through Sicily and Padua, not to mention Spain and southern France. 65.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“It would take me long to .dwell in that field, but may I quickly recall that when the scholars and philosophers of Greece and Rome, their great scientists, thinkers and theologians, were not able to carry on freely their meditations there, they found refuge in our cities — Damascus, Antioch, Baghdad, Beirut, Tyre and Alexandria; they found in those cities the necessary freedom for their minds to explore the hidden meanings of the world, to lift its veils and to clear the way for humanity in its search after the truth. 64. The schools of neo-Platonism and Stoicism, Jewish, Christian and Muslim theology, the schools of Roman law, grew, developed, and contributed to human culture within our cities that I mentioned.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“We cannot disregard in this context the lack of understanding of the revolutionary liberating movements in the developing world and the distortions they have been subjected to. It has become common now to speak of the revolution of rising expectations, and of the nationalism of Asia and Africa. As an instance in point, may I take the case of Arab nationalism. 63. Arab nationalism, which grew in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and developed in this one, was the result of a historical crisis and the outcome of suffering within the Arab soul and mind. When I speak of the historical crisis, I refer primarily to the awakening of the Arabs and their subsequent contributions to human civilization throughout history.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“We sincerely hope that the deep wisdom embedded in these two great countries will prevail over the existing conflict and that they are both find in the United Nations Charter and its various counsels what will contribute towards a peaceful settlement of their dispute. As a necessary prerequisite, we hope and urge that the exchange of fire between the two sides will stop soon and that a solution may be found in accordance with the United Nations resolutions which recognized the right of self-determination to the people of Kashmir. 62. We are enquiring about the handicaps that stand in the way of fulfilling the great ideals of the Charter and the creation of a healthy international atmosphere that would guarantee for the peoples of the world, peace and stability.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“Our unbounded faith in the Charter of the United Nations, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in the new international order impels us to emphasize the necessity of reviewing the United Nations Charter, so that it may accord with the developments that have taken place on the world scene, which we cannot in any way forget or disregard. 60. We also believe that the People’s Republic of China should be within the United Nations family. To keep this great nation outside is an error. Our delegation has consistently supported the admittance of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations, ever since the problem was raised at the United Nations. 61. I would like also to mention that my Country, the Syrian Arab Republic, has the best of friendly relations equally with India and Pakistan.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“The fact that some of the most important developed market economies, that is to say the main potential contributors, opposed them renders their implementation most unlikely. 58. We feel it our bounden duty to affirm unequivocally the right of peoples to self-determination whenever the situation calls for it. That is why we deny the British occupation of Aden, Oman and the Southern Protectorates against the will of their peoples. We equally deplore the existence of remnants of colonialism, wherever they may be found, in Asia, Africa, or any other part of the world. The problem of Aden is a basically Arab problem. We firmly believe that any Arab country cannot be considered fully independent if any other single Arab country remains under foreign domination. 59.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“(b) We regret that the Conference was not able to adopt a recommendation for the establishment of a contemporary finance scheme similar to the development insurance fund which was proposed by United Nations experts, and which would compensate developing countries for short-term declines in their export earnings. Compensation would be in the form of either contingent loans or grants. Though we feel that the increase in the International Monetary Fund special compensatory finance facility is beneficial, it nevertheless suffers from the fact that the structure of interest rates charged on this facility is high. (c) It is unfortunate that the two recommendations on the gradual transformation of the Special Fund and the initiation of the work of the Capital Development Fund were not adopted unanimously by the Conference.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“The statement in sub-paragraph (e) of paragraph 1, section II of this recommendation, which states that elimination of trade barriers should be completed to the fullest extent possible by the end of the United Nations Development Decade, does not express any precise undertaking on the part of the developed market economies. This is due to the fact that it will be these latter countries who will be the sole judges of what is ^possible" for them to do. Moreover, the end of 1970 is too far away a deadline, and we would have preferred it to be much earlier.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“The Syrian delegation was among the first five nations who presented the plan for the establishment of a new specialized agency for trade and development. Though the results of the Trade Conference were fruitful, they did not, nevertheless, fulfil all the expectations of all the developing countries. As illustrations, I should like to give the following examples: (a) We would have liked the recommendation on "International Commodity Arrangements and Removal of Obstacles and Expansion of Trade" to have been more precise and explicit with regard to the elimination of trade barriers by the developed market economies.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“It is at least two-thirds of — and, according to some estimates, may be of the same order of magnitude as — the entire national income of all the under-developed countries. It is close to the value of the world's annual exports of all commodities and it corresponds to about half of the total resources set aside each year for gross capital formation throughout the world. If an agreement on disarmament could be reached and a part of this money released for development, the foundations could be very well established. That is why we wholeheartedly support the convening of a world conference on disarmament that would include the People's Republic of China. 57. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development held in Geneva in the spring of 1964 decided for the establishment of a trade development board.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“The measures taken so far to bridge this ever-widening gap are mere palliatives, whereas the crying need is to take radical measures on the international plane, inside the United Nations and its specialized agencies. Such measures are not out of reach. The United Nations has dealt with the problem of the economic and social consequences of disarmament. The United Nations publication, Economic and Social Consequences of Disarmament, states that on the basis of available data there appears to be general agreement that the world is spending roughly $120,000 million annually on military expenditures at the present time. This figure is equivalent to about 8 or 9 per cent of the world's annual output of all goods and services.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“If this Euphrates Dam project is executed, the national income of Syria will be doubled in less than five years. Two hundred thousand hectares of land will be reclaimed. Electricity will spread to all parts of the Syrian countryside. The industrial output will be doubled. And yet, because of international intrigues and nothing but international intrigues, this project is being frustrated. 55. Should we expand on this whole situation, we would affirm that, if the oil revenues of the Arab countries were put for the benefit of the whole area, they would alone be sufficient to raise the standard of living of the Arab peoples and to create a civilization that could compete with the highest in the world. 56.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“This division of the nations of the world into poor ones and rich ones constitutes, as adequately referred to by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in various parts of his report, a greater danger to world stability and peace than the division of the world into two great camps on ideological bases. For the rate of growth in these under-developed countries is still much less than it should be. 54. Let us take one illustration. Whereas the net profits of the oil companies, as reported in the United Nations statistics from the Middle East, amounted last year to $1,500 million, a country like Syria is unable to find $150 million in foreign exchange in order to execute the Euphrates Dam project, the feasibility and necessity of which, after long studies by well-known international institutes, have been established beyond any doubt.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“This problem is related to the problem of the sovereignty of developing countries over their natural resources. It has been dealt with by the United Nations since 1958, and it will be returned to this year. The struggle has been sharp between the developing countries that want to liberate themselves from this neo-colonialism and the colonial Powers. But the colonial Powers will find, themselves, this year that the developing countries have been forcing their way in spite of all the handicaps. It is therefore the duty of the great Powers to awaken to this historic fact, and to retreat from their positions of strength, for this is in their own interest.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“To quote a Western authority — in fact, an American professor of economics — Professor Heilbroner, a well-known economist, had this to say in his hook, The Making of Economic Society; "In the eyes of the imperialist nations, the colonies were viewed not as areas to be brought along in balanced development, but essentially as immense supply dumps to be attached to the mother countries' industrial economies. Malaya became a vast tin mine; Indonesia, a huge tea and rubber plantation; Arabia, an oil field. In other words, the direction of economic development was steadily pushed in the direction which most benefited the imperial owner and not the colonial peoples themselves. The result today is that the typical underdeveloped nation has a badly lopsided economy, unable to supply itself with a wide variety of goods." 53.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“The grave implications of these developments can be judged from the fact that agricultural products account for more than half the total export earnings of the developing countries, or nearly three-quarters, if earnings from petroleum products, which benefit relatively few countries, are excluded. This is a result of the fact that the colonial Powers stick to their exploitation of the developing countries, a fact to which we refer as neo-imperialism.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“But one report after the other by the United Nations and the specialized agencies has consistently stressed the fact that this gap is getting wider and wider. I may mention here briefly the report entitled "The State of Food and Agriculture 1965", that was issued last week by the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization, Dr. Sen. In it he points out that trade problems have figured largely in the past decade, and that the almost continuous downward trend in the terms of trade and of agricultural exports have done much to frustrate the plans for economic growth in the developing countries.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“Political independence and sovereignly remain ineffective as long as the poorer nations of the world are dominated by the richer ones. The United Nations has handled this problem from its foundation up till the present time, as it has been dealt with by the specialized agencies. How to bridge the gap between the poorer nations that are getting poorer and the richer nations that are getting richer is a problem to which we have come back year after year in its various aspects and manifestations. Although a great deal has been done by the United Nations and its specialized agencies in this field, yet whatever has been achieved is but a very small proportion of what should have been accomplished. 52. I am not going to enter into the details of these problems, as they are to be dealt with by the Second Committee.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“The realization has not been made yet that this is an outdated policy and that the peoples of the world cannot anymore be subjected to such humiliation. The only solution is to grant immediately Aden, Oman, the Southern Protectorates of Arabia, Angola, Mozambique, Southern Rhodesia, the peoples of the Union of South Africa their independence and complete equality. But what amazes me most is the fact that we are unable to find any difference in the foreign policy, as far as the Arab countries are concerned, of the Conservatives of England, who conducted a war against Egypt in 1956, and the Socialists of England today, who are following in their footsteps, or, in fact, between both of them and nineteenth century imperialism. 51. Thirdly, economic imperialism remains a fact today in spite of the independence won by many countries.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“It might seem that such an assertion is outdated. But what is happening in South Africa up to this very moment, in Angola, in Mozambique and in Southern Rhodesia, or what has taken place in Aden and now is taking place in Southern Arabia including Oman is a continuation of the deplorable mentality that I am describing. On 25 September Aden's so-called constitution was suspended and the British High Commissioner became the sole ruler of Aden. The people who revolted against this long-imposed rule have been subjected to the utmost cruelly. Significantly enough, two warships have sailed into the area. We are thus being reminded of what took place in Suez in 1956. 50. All this goes to prove that the gunboat diplomacy of the nineteenth century is still prevalent when colonial Powers find it necessary to show their muscles.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“Secondly, this mental attitude is a natural outcome and continuation of colonialism and imperialism, which is basically an immoral relation between force and absence of force. This relationship, throughout modern history, has been the outcome of competition among the great nations for strategic bases of force. When they occupied the Arab countries, for instance, these served as a jumping-off point to occupy other places, India and the Far East. Hence the odious sin of racialism, or the claim that some human beings are inherently superior to others, and that there cannot be an equality of rights between the powerful and the weak. Nazism made a philosophy of this doctrine, but the European Powers practised it in their relations with the peoples of Asia and Africa one hundred years before Nazism. 49.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“In answering this question, I humbly recall the experience of a small nation on this vast earth, an experience similar to that of all small nations, whose struggle for life is characterized by suffering and stumbling progress. It seems to me that the following are basic among those handicaps. 47. First, in spite of the great and lofty ideals embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, the peoples of the world are divided into two categories, strong nations and weak nations. The former still believe in their heart of hearts that they have a right to a better life than the weak nations. It is unfortunately a truth which stains with its dark colour the modern world, in spite of statements to the contrary. 48.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“The important thing is to have a historic sense in times of crisis, and such a sense means being able to judge an age in relation to its needs, its problems and its achievements, and to set its failures against the satisfactions given. The peoples of the world, wherever they are, look towards peace and stability in order to realize an existence which is more complete than mere biological existence. Man, wherever he may be found, is basically and primarily a man. If, therefore, we ask whether the United Nations has fulfilled the urgent hopes of suffering humanity, and we find that it has not done so, the question duly arises: what are the handicaps that have stood in the way?”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“May I also take this opportunity to welcome the new Members of the United Nations, Singapore, the Maldive Islands and the Gambia, and also to thank the Secretary-General for his excellent report presented to the Assembly [A/6001 and Add.1.] and to express the appreciation of my Government for his untiring efforts to save world peace. 46. While this session opened in a tense international atmosphere, it is undoubtedly a matter for rejoicing that now there is relative relaxation. This session reminds us of others in the past that have taken place in similar conditions. It has been customary to describe such periods of crisis as historic; but all times and, basically, the life of man, are historic.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)
“44. Allow me to join all those who have preceded me in the general debate in congratulating Mr. Fanfani, on my own behalf and that of the delegation of the Syrian Arab Republic, on his election as President of this twentieth session of the General Assembly. We should also like to express our regret at the accident which he has suffered and to wish him a speedy recovery. The problems that are being raised and discussed here are a matter of concern to the peoples of the world. The election of Mr. Fanfani to this high office is a testimony to the qualifications which have made of him a statesman of merit not only in his own country, but also on the international plane. I am sure that his objectivity and great experience will be a positive factor in guiding our discussions towards the truth. 45.”
1965-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 20 (1965)