YouSaid · the spoken record

Kardelj

THE RECORD WRITES THIS SPEAKER AS KARDELJ

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171
first
1948-09-24
most recent
1951-09-24
sittings or episodes
4
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un-general-debate

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  1. “It was also typical that the work of the Special Committee in Greece was connected with numerous frontier incidents and other acts of provocation, directed against Yugoslavia and apparently organized for the purpose of providing the Committee with the evidence it required. The Yugoslav delegation would deal with the question in detail in the course of the debate on the Greek question. Those facts fully explained the following statement in the memorandum issued by General Markos in August 1948: «Anyone not entirely devoid of good faith will ask himself why a plan for a democratic solution has not been drawn up, a plan which would exclude the possibility of any intrigue on the part of one side or the other.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  2. “How far the Special Committee on the Balkans had lost the ability to distinguish between provocation and fact was best exemplified by a short phrase in its supplementary report which stated: « In recent months, there had been less evidence of receipt of supplies from Yugoslavia by the guerrillas» (A/644, page 19). Yugoslavia had never interfered in the internal affairs of Greece, and it was therefore obvious that that assertion in the Special Committee’s report was nothing but a transparent and cheap provocation, adapted to present-day conditions, the motives and aims of which were quite obvious.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  3. “The so-called Greek question obviously formed part of the expansionist policy of the most influential American circles, a policy which was finding expression in the creation and development of Western Germany as a military and economic base for the United States of America in Western Europe; in the retention of troops in the territories of Allied and other countries; in intrigues in the Near East; in the reconstruction of Japan as an anti-Soviet base; in the non-fulfilment of pledges assumed under peace treaties; in the organization of an extensive system of military bases, and in the refusal to consider disarmament and the prohibition of atomic energy as a means of waging war. Hence the Greek people were today obliged to fight for their liberty and independence. No special committee could deny those facts.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  4. “All that was accompanied by a rising tide of mass terrorism, stimulated by the statement made by the American General Van Fleet on 27 February 1948, in which he announced the slogan, « Capture and kill». The mass atrocities perpetrated in Greece had evoked revulsion and protest throughout the world, but they had apparently had no influence upon the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  5. “For example, the newspaper Elefteria had written as follows on 2 September 1948: «By the way Van Fleet is poking his nose everywhere, raising a stir, strutting around, talking about himself, writing and pushing himself to the fore, he would appear to be harbouring the illusion that the Chief of the General Staff of the Greek Army is his own orderly. » The key positions of the Greek economy were similarly now in American hands. United States representatives in Greece had assumed prerogatives, which, in an independent country, belonged to the Government. They were preparing draft bills, regulations and rides, while consulting representatives of political parties, ministers, members of parliament, delegations and others.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  6. “The contrary had, however, been the case. The Special Committee had disregarded all such initiative, while blindly clutching at every act of provocation organized against Yugoslavia and Greece’s other northern neighbours. While, however, the Committee had been collecting false charges against Greece’s northern neighbours, Greece itself was becoming to an increasing degree the domain of United States expansion. Large numbers of American military personnel had assumed complete control of the army of the Athens Government. United States representatives had become the real masters of Greece. Matters had reached such a pass that even right-wing Athens newspapers were protesting against the existing state of affairs.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  7. “A statement issued by the provisional democratic Government of Greece in May 1948 contained the following passage: «With the object of easing the tension prevailing in world public opinion, which has recently been showing a keen interest in Greece and in the struggle of the Greek people, and desirous of contributing to the efforts being made by democratic forces throughout the world to attain peace and democratic agreement in the world, the provisional democratic Government of Greece declares its constant readiness to accept and support any initiative, irrespective of its source, designed to help Greece to achieve recovery and to attain tranquillity at home, on condition that a democratic life is guaranteed to the people without any limitations whatsoever, that national sovereignty and independence be secured without any foreign influence and that the Greek people be free to decide their own fate.» The so-called United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans might have been expected to follow up that peaceful initiative and to undertake some measures to that end.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  8. “Today it could be shown by concrete facts that the Special Committee on the Balkans, far from helping to solve the so-called Greek question in a democratic sense and in the interests of peace, had aggravated the situation in Greece by its unlimited support of monarcho-fascist elements and of intervention by the United States and the United Kingdom. The provisional democratic Government of Greece had repeatedly announced that the liberation movement was willing to accept a peaceful solution of the conflict in Greece.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  9. “The representatives of the democratic countries of Eastern Europe had, in the name of their Governments, refused to collaborate with that Committee, on the ground that its competence, powers and functions were contrary to the principles of the United Nations and represented a violation of the sovereignty of Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria; hence the Committee was illegal and was not recognized by those countries. Yugoslavia had been reproached for having taken such a stand. It was however entitled to defend itself against attempts to saddle it with the faults of others.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  10. “The assertion that only a small minority was in revolt in Greece, with the encouragement of the northern countries, was almost entirely untrue as increased foreign intervention obviously resulted in increased resistance on the part of the people, since nations did not gladly suffer the presence of armed missionaries from abroad. The present conflagration in Greece was the consequence of and the answer to the foreign intervention begun by Mr. Winston Churchill. That intervention had already suffered one setback, but had later been taken over by the United States of America. A nation was defending itself against foreign expansion. That was the core of the Greek problem, and it was there that a solution must be found. The so-called United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans had been created at the second session of the General Assembly.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  11. “Nevertheless, all the evidence which the various special committees had, with the aid of every sort of machination, been able to gather in Greece in support of those charges was so trivial that, even if true, it would be a mere drop in the ocean by comparison with the funds which the United States and British interventionists were pouring into Greece. It was moreover evident that that so-called evidence against Greece’s northern neighbours bore the trade mark: «Made in Athens». The Greek people as a whole were nevertheless fighting.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  12. “Hence the cessation of that intervention and the withdrawal of foreign troops, missions and so-called experts from Greece would be the first step towards the only correct solution of the Greek problem in the spirit of the United Nations Charter, which condemned interference in the internal affairs of other States. Another road had been taken, however; namely, the intensification of foreign intervention in Greece and of attributing responsibility for conditions in that country to Greece’s northern neighbours. The war in Greece had been in progress for several years, and during that period Yugoslavia and Greece’s other northern neighbours had been charged with responsibility for it.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  13. “Together with the representatives of the USSR and of the other peoples’ democracies the representatives of Yugoslavia had constantly pointed out that the real causes of the national rising in Greece were to be sought not in alleged intervention or instigation by Greece’s northern neighbours but, on the one hand, in the undemocratic establishment of a Government to which the majority of the Greek people was hostile and, on the other hand, in the crude interference of the United States of America and of the United Kingdom in the internal affairs of Greece, as a result of which the overwhelming majority of the Greek people was unable to express its will.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  14. “Experience of the work of the Organization to date showed what would become of its work if it abandoned the very instrument which gave it the right to exist. Witness the fate which had befallen some of the most important decisions of the United Nations in the period between the two sessions. There was the Greek problem, which clearly revealed the true meaning of the tendency shown by certain States of the majority to use the United Nations and its organs for their own specific aims.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  15. “Those who were today persistently striving to liquidate the principle of great-Power unanimity must be reminded that they were in fact attempting to abolish the raison d'être of the United Nations, in other words, they were on the way to liquidating the Organization itself as an efficient instrument for international co-operation. For all those reasons the Yugoslav delegation considered it necessary to liquidate the Interim Committee and to uphold the principles of the Charter. Such a step was necessary because those who had originated the idea of that Committee, set up in contradiction to the Charter, had intended it to contribute to the weakening of the Organization, to its complete disarmament as an instrument of international co-operation and its subordination to the interests of a group of States, or even of one single State.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  16. “The abrogation of the principle of unanimity of the great Powers or the weakening of other instruments of agreement, for which the United Nations Charter made provision, would mean weakening the United Nations; transforming it from an organ of international co-operation into an organ of coercion in the hands of one State or group of States, and finally to the collapse of the whole post-war system of international co-operation. For obviously the United Nations must either be an organ of mutual agreement and of co-operation among sovereign States on the most important international questions or else should not exist at all.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  17. “It was of course both absurd and insincere to attempt to attribute the present regrettable situation in the United Nations, or in the international situation as a whole, to alleged blunders or defects in the machinery of the United Nations. Such attempts were in fact intended to conceal the true cause of the many difficulties arising in the work of the United Nations; namely, the unwillingness of the leading group of States of the majority in the Organization to co-operate or to reach agreement with other countries, especially with the Soviet Union.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  18. “The majority of representatives, however, were seeking a solution which would in fact lead to the downfall of the United Nations as an organization of international co-operation. They were seeking a solution through the revision of the Charter and particularly the liquidation or substantial limitation of the principle of unanimity of the great Powers. The authors of those proposals must certainly realize that those attempts were therefore tantamount to an abandonment of the policy of international co-operation and collective security and a gradual drift into a policy of blocs and renunciation of the United Nations system.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  19. “The leading group of States of the majority had nevertheless adopted a different course; namely, the unilateral accomplishment of its aims and the imposition of its will, with the aid of a formal and arithmetical majority within the Organization. Such conditions would naturally not promote agreement but would transform the United Nations into an instrument promoting the policy of a certain group of States or even of a single State. Such a course, if pursued in future, would clearly be a source of ever-increasing difficulties and would result in deadlock for the United Nations itself. That danger was evident to almost everyone and had been mentioned by many representatives in the course of the general debate.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  20. “The political « lesson » to be drawn from such forecasts and such sensational theories, which were being projected into international life from various centres of warmongering, lay in the need for the speediest possible acceptance and for wholehearted support of an uncompromising policy towards the Soviet Union, the peoples’ democracies and democratic movements in general. Otherwise, those propagandists asserted, a third world war was liable to break out at any moment. The Yugoslav delegation considered that those very tendencies were among the major causes of the relatively poor results achieved by the United Nations. The United Nations should make use of instruments which would promote agreement, particularly among the great Powers, since without harmony among those Powers international co-operation became a mere fiction.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)

  21. “Mr. KARDELJ began by pointing out that in the course of the general debate some speakers had, in what he described as a state of panic, expressed their fears with regard to the fate of peace. Such an exaggerated anxiety was clearly a reflection of the warmongering atmosphere which was being created at the present moment by a large section of international reactionary propaganda; it was tormenting the wide masses of the people, still suffering from the horrors and devastations of the Second World War, with « forecasts» that a third world war was close upon them.”

    1948-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 3 (1948)