EQUIPO NIZKOR |
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24Oct46
Minutes of the 36th Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly during which the
"Spanish Question" was addressed
THIRTY-SIXTH PLENARY MEETING
Held on Thursday, 24 October 1946 at 4 p.m.90. General discussion (continuation): Speeches by Mr. van Langenhove (Belgium), Mr. Velloso (Brazil), Mr, Charles (Haiti) and Mr. Ulloa (Peru)
President: Mr. P.-H. Spaak (Belgium).
90. General discussion (continuation) The President (translated from French) : In accordance with our agenda, we shall continue the general discussion.
I call upon Mr. van Langenhove, representative of Belgium.
Mr. van Langenhove (Belgium) (translated from French): The principal organs of the United Nations have now been functioning for nearly nine months. The Assembly has before it the reports which they have made on their work. We may thus form our first opinion on their activities. It is an opportunity for us to ask ourselves in what measure these answer our expectations.
The Security Council occupies an eminent position in our Organization. Under the terms of the Charter, it has the principal responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Its activities, since its establishment, have been considerable. To report on them, a volume of no less than 300 pages was required. Is this first account satisfactory? Has the Council fulfilled the mission assigned to it?
During the past few months, security was not really threatened. The Council, nevertheless, was faced with many delicate questions. The resounding debates to which they gave rise have a special feature which should be noted. They brought into conflict, in particular, the representatives of the permanent members of the Council.
The authors of the Charter set out from the perfectly sound idea that the maintenance of peace depends above ail on the agreement and joint action of the great Powers. That is the fundamental condition of the system of security established by the Charter, and the unanimity rule is bound up with that condition.
From the beginning, the anticipations of the authors of the Charter were shown to be wrong on this point, and the security mechanism has been paralyzed. The Security Council has in practice proved to be an institution where the Powers bring before public opinion the questions on which they are divided. The controversies which they arouse may present drawbacks or lead to abuses; yet they also have their advantage, for it is salutary that States may have the opportunity both of expressing their grievances openly, and of replying to those of which they are themselves the object.
Such discussions result from the functions which the Security Council is called upon to fulfill in the peaceful settlement of disputes, but the authors of the Charter had laid the main emphasis on the action which the Council must exercise in the event of threats to peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression. It is in this field that they made the greatest innovation in com-parison with the provisions of the League of Nations Covenant, the weaknesses of which they had tried to rectify.
The United Nations have undertaken to implement the decisions of the Council. The latter must have at its disposal the necessary power to see that the decisions are carried out, and to be in a position to intervene immediately; but this promptness and this power of execution presuppose certain decisions; yet, from the first months of its work, the Council has been unable to take decisions with the required majorities, even in matters of limited importance.
It is true that hitherto no consequences endangering peace have resulted; but the United Nations cannot but deduce from this a lesson for the future. So long as relations between the permanent members remain as they are at present, the United Nations cannot expect from the Council those guarantees of security with which it ought to provide them.
At the San Francisco conference, the Belgian delegation criticized the veto rules. But it bowed to the decisions taken, and was prepared to apply the system loyally.
Experience has justified its objections. It is, however, ready to continue this experiment. It does not now propose a repeal of the veto, any more than it did before. It recognizes, while regretting the fact, that the nations are not yet sufficiently conscious of their interdependence, and that ail are not yet ready to yield to the decision of the majority.
What the Belgian delegation has fought, and still fights against, is the excessive extension of the veto rule, and the way in which its application is abused. The facts have confirmed this opinion.
If the members of the Council do not make prudent use of the special powers which have been conferred upon them, an amendment of the Charter will eventually become essential, or, if such an amendment is not made, the Security Council, reduced to impotence and incapable of fulfilling its mission, will find that the authority which it should enjoy has completely vanished.
Among the matters in regard to which the veto rules have paralyzed the action of the Security Council, there is one which has called for the intervention of the Belgian Government, and which I should like, for this reason, to mention especially.
The inclusion of the Spanish question in the Council's agenda was requested by the representative of Poland on 8 and 9 April last. In the course of the proceedings, the Belgian Government was led, by means of communications made in May and in September, to contribute to the inquiry into the role of the Spanish Government.
The information which it supplied to the Council bears chiefly on the help which the Spanish Government gave to the traitor Degrelle, one of the principal German agents in Belgium, in allowing him to escape the fate he deserved for his political crimes and his crimes under common law. This information showed that the attitude of complicity of the Spanish Government with regard to agents of the Axis Powers during the war constitutes a disturbing element in Europe, and a threat to security.
The Belgian Government cannot remain indifferent to the fact that the various draft resolutions submitted to the Council with a view to positive measures being taken, have hitherto led to no result, since the requisite majority has not been obtained and the matter remains unsolved.
The resolution unanimously adopted by the Assembly on 9 February adopts the Potsdam Declaration which states that the Spanish Government "having been founded with the support of the Axis Powers, in view of its origins, its nature, its record and its close association with the aggressor States does not possess the necessary qualifications to justify its admission."
The resolution recommends that Members of the United Nations should act in accordance with the letter and spirit of this statement in the conduct of their future relations with Spain.
It is useless to formulate declarations if they are to have no practical effect. Such methods cannot enhance the prestige of the Organization.
Limited in its efforts by the provisions of the Charter, as by the rules of procedure, the Belgian delegation can only, submit a proposal that the Assembly should draw the attention of the Security Council to the advantage of taking definite measures capable of solving the Spanish problem. We will submit such a proposal to you in the course of the present session.
Since the meeting of the General Assembly last January, the Economic and Social Council has held three sessions. Its discussions related mainly to the setting up of its Commissions, the agreements to be reached with the specialized agencies, co-operation with non-governmental organizations, the International Health Conference, the question of refugees, the International Trade and Employment Conference, the economic reconstruction of devastated areas, matters concerning UNRRA, and the world shortage of cereals.
The field thus covered is indeed vast, yet the Belgian delegation feels obliged to note that the decisions reached mainly relate to questions of organization.
If the results are, to a certain extent, disappointing, it would seem that the reason for this lies chiefly in errors of method. The same discussions were conducted before bodies placed one above another and composed of representatives, for the most part, from the same countries. They have been renewed before each of them without sufficient account being taken of the previous discussions.
On the other hand, political preoccupations have too often been interposed in discussions which would have gained by remaining more within the limits of the specific problem to which they referred.
In technical matters, co-operation in the economic and social field seems to be carried on more effectively by the specialized agencies. They should be allowed the autonomy provided for in the agreements which the Council has concluded with them, and which we hope will gain the unreserved approval of the Assembly.
The Charter has entrusted the Economic and Social Council with a particular mission: that of co-ordinating the work of the specialized agencies. This task is of supreme importance, particularly in the economic field.
The lack of balance, which gave rise to serious upheavals in. the economic, financial and social field between the two wars, can only be avoided in the future if this task is carried out under satisfactory conditions. The Economic and Social Council will only succeed in this if it has at its disposal qualified advisory bodies. That is why the manner in which the Economic and Employment Commission will be constituted and will fulfil its functions presents an importance which it would be difficult to exaggerate.
In the field of agriculture and food, as in the monetary and financial field, the specialized agencies have begun to function. That is not yet the case with regard to international trade.
The Preparatory Committee established by the Economic and Social Council has already been meeting for some days in London. Its discussions, the object of which is to draft a charter of commerce, will be facilitated by the detailed draft prepared by the United States Government, which seems to be a useful basis of discussion.
Belgium, closely associated in this field with the Netherlands and Luxembourg, will give its unreserved assistance to the accomplishment of this vast enterprise.
The Assembly has before it the reports which the Economic and Social Council has addressed to it on the question of refugees and the draft relating to the establishment of the International Refugee Organization; on the measures taken in order to provide for the functions and powers formerly exercised by the League of Nations under various international conventions relating to narcotics; and on the transfer of other functions and activities of the League of Nations.
The Council has also drafted agreements with several specialized agencies. The Belgian delegation will, in general, give its approval to these reports and agreements.
An Assembly resolution, dated 2 February, brought before the Economic and Social Council the problem of the economic reconstruction of devastated areas. The Sub-Commission set up to undertake the enquiry has carried out extensive investigations in the limited time at its disposal, and has made suggestions of great interest. The Belgian delegation regrets that the Economic and Social Council has not yet adopted them in their entirety. The Council would not wholly fufil its task if it limited its investigations to the direct help to be given to countries which have suffered most from the war. It is necessary to avoid disorganized reconstruction, which would lead to fresh economic dislocation and to fresh obstacles to international co-operation. On the contrary, plans for economic reconstruction should be brought into harmony with each other, and contribute to the economic development of Europe as a whole.
In this connection, the establishment of a co-ordinating body, of a European Economic Commission, which the Sub-Commission has proposed and consideration of which the Council has postponed until its next session, seems to be indispensable.
The Belgian Government intends to abide loyally by the provisions of Chapters XI and XII of the Charter. It is now in a position to submit to the General Assembly for approval a draft trusteeship agreement for the territory of Ruanda-Urundi, administered by Belgium. This agreement follows faithfully the principles of the Charter. It confirms the strict obligation, which Belgium will observe scrupulously, to ad-minister the territory under trusteeship primarily in the interests of its inhabitants, to promote the increasing participation of qualified representatives of the population in the administration of the territory, to promote the political, economic and social progress of the territory, in accordance with the objects of the trusteeship System, to ensure for the nationals of the United Nations complete equality with Belgian nationals in social, economic, industrial and commercial matters, and finally to fulfill the obligations of the territory with a view to the maintenance of international peace and security.
The work accomplished in the last thirty years by Belgium in the administration of Ruanda-Urundi for the benefit of the peoples who inhabit this territory is a pledge of the new progress which the trusteeship System will make possible.
The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. By its advisory opinions, it strengthens the action of the General Assembly and the Security Council, which can have recourse to it for the solution of any difficulty susceptible of legal consideration. By its judgments, the Court makes final decisions on the international disputes which are brought before it. Members of the United Nations must, by an express provision of the Charter, comply with its decisions, and the Security Council must take care to see that this obligation is fulfilled.
Furthermore, it is provided that the Council should bear in mind, in the exercise of its own powers, the fact that, according to the provisions of the Charter, it is to the Court that disputes of a legal nature must normally be submitted by the States concerned.
Finally, in a special clause, the Statute of the Court, which is an integral part of the Charter, provides that States may recognize as compulsory the jurisdiction of the Court in legal disputes.
The International Court of Justice is therefore shown to be one of the essential parts of the machinery established by the Charter for safe-guarding world peace.
Belgium is traditionally attached to the cause of arbitration and international justice. The Belgian Government cannot insist too much on the importance which it attributes to the part played by the Court as one of the factors of which the effect should be to lead progressively to the establishment of an effective System of international law. Belgium had accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of International Justice. The Belgian Government will immediately table a bill in Parliament authorizing it to accept similarly the jurisdiction of the new Court.
The conclusion of a trusteeship agreement, the recognition of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, these are the two principal steps which Belgium has taken, or proposes to take, within the framework of our Organization, and which we have thought use-ful to bring to the knowledge of the Assembly.
The Belgian delegation has sought to formulate at the same time observations suggested to it by the principal activities of the Organization. We have done this without reticence. It is doing a service to the Organization to express our criticisms frankly, if we do so in a constructive spirit. To point out shortcomings and weaknesses is not, for us, a sign of discouragement. It is, on the .contrary, a manifestation of our wish to see our institution expand and its efficiency increase for the benefit of ail peoples. This wish will not cease to dominate our actions.
The President (translated from French) : I call upon Mr. Velloso, representative of Brazil.
Mr. Velloso (Brazil) (translated from French ) : I would first like to express to the city of New York, on behalf of the Brazilian delegation, our sincere gratitude for its kind hospitality to us during the period of the General Assembly.
The United Nations first saw the light of day on the soil of the United States ; its creation was inspired by the great President Roosevelt, assisted by his eminent Secretary of State, the Honourable Cordell Hull. The plan drawn up at Dumbarton Oaks was approved at San Francisco by the States which form the United Nations. They drew up a Charter which was henceforth to govern their mutual relations. Those facts have a significance which should not escape us and which, as a son of this continent, I am happy to stress.
America, land of liberty, inhabited by peoples who are without the prejudices accumulated in other continents by centuries of endless struggles, cradle of the greatest of ail democracies, offers the United Nations an opportunity without precedent to flourish and fulfill its great political, economic, social and cultural mission.
Brazil, in its two-fold capacity as a member of the community of nations and as a State forming an integral part of this hemisphere, is proud to have contributed to the creation of the United Nations Charter. Its past, its peaceful tradition, its love of order, its respect for law and its democratic sentiments made it ready to welcome keenly the idea of the organization of an international society to maintain justice, the respect of treaties and the other sources of the law of nations.
That is why my country has given whole-hearted support to the initiative of the great Powers. It took part not only in the San Francisco Conference, but also, in August 1945, in the preparatory work which preceded the first part of the first session of the General Assembly.
The United Nations has been functioning for only a few months. The fact that the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council and other organs have had regular meetings since January of the present year does not mean that they are not still in the process of being organized, with an incomplete personnel, a tentative budget, the problem of permanent headquarters as yet undecided, and so on.
To that must be added the post-war conditions throughout the world resulting from the delay in drawing up and signing the peace treaties.
Ail things considered, we have only been in existence for a very short time, during which we have been busily engaged in organizing our-selves in a world which is still waiting to return to normal. It would be entirely premature, in the circumstances, to attempt to judge the part played by the United Nations up to the present.
I wish to say that my country has very great faith in the cause of the United Nations. After the painful years we have just passed through, we cannot conceive of the world on the thresh-hold of which we now stand without support of the kind which the United Nations proposes to offer for the benefit of mankind, namely, a guarantee of the maintenance of order and of international security in a political and legal System which guarantees to both victor and vanquished respect for their lives, their rights and their liberties.
As you see, I am speaking to you with my eyes fixed on the Charter. The latter represents the second attempt within twenty-five years to give to the peoples a statute enabling them to live as a society in an orderly and civilized world.
An attempt was made at Dumbarton Oaks, and afterwards at San Francisco, to improve on the Covenant of the League of Nations by the introduction, in the Charter of the United Nations, of more realistic provisions than those contained in the instrument of which the invasion of Manchuria marked the failure. The most important of the provisions marking a difference between the Covenant and the Charter is that establishing a Staff Committee to help the Security Council in case of a threat against the peace, a breach of the peace, or aggression.
The United Nations has, however, been established on the basis of a very far-reaching principle. This principle, to which the creators of our Organization attached the greatest importance, both before and during the San Francisco Conference, has been embodied in Article 27 of the Charter. In their view, in order that the United Nations should survive, and fulfill its task, unanimity among the permanent members of the Security Council, that is to say among the great Powers, was essential; without that the United Nations would cease to be.
Article 27, if it is considered in the light of the principle of the equality of ail States before the law, was a very heavy price paid by small and medium-sized nations in order to obtain a charter. That provision of our statute is more generally known as the right of veto granted to the permanent members of the Security Council.
Brazil, although theoretically opposed to the veto, accepted it in a constructive spirit in order to get results. We thought that, whereas ail States are equal before the law theoretically, their responsibilities as regards the maintenance of peace are in direct proportion to their means of action and, consequently, vary greatly. For that reason we decided that it was necessary to place trust in the great Powers.
It is, however, obvious that this trust which was placed in them in the same spirit by the majority of the Members of the United Nations, lays an obligation on the great Powers, which benefit from it, to honour it. They will succed in doing so, in the first place, by working to-gether for the reorganization of the world. We ail realize that the task is not easy. But we are equally convinced that, however difficult the obstacles may be, they will not prove insurmountable when confronted with the good will and sincere desire of the great Powers to achieve ail the purposes to which we have subscribed since the Atlantic Charter.
Today the peoples of the world have one supreme desire. After the terrible sufferings of the last war they long for order and peace. They are anxious for two things: they wish for a return to order and they hope that it will be lasting. They will not tolerate the idea that every generation will have to undergo the horrors, more terrible each time, resulting from the illusion of solving by war problems which war can never solve. Peace rests, no doubt, in the hands of the great Powers; but the world will never accept the idea that their conflicts of interest can justify the sacrifice of the well-being of mankind.
Let us look again at the Preamble to our Charter, which says that we are "determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind". Nations have frequently an historic mission to fulfil in the world; if that is their destiny nothing can hinder it. Today, it would, however, be madness, it would be a crime, to attempt to fulfill it outside the framework of the United Nations to which they belong.
A heavy task awaits us. We have met here, in /the first place, to finish the work started in London at the beginning of the year. In the meantime, many additional subjects have been put forward for us to study. We are faced with an extermely heavy agenda. Moreover, we are meeting after a considerable delay resulting from a double adjournment.
AU the subjects before us are naturally of very great importance; whatever their nature, they deserve the same attention from us. At the stage the United Nations has now reached, however, I have no hesitation in saying that some of those subjects have a predominant interest. These are, in the first place those connected with its organization; and, secondly, those which have been submitted to us for examination by organs such as the Economic and Social Council, et cetera. We must concentrate our efforts on them if we wish the work of the United Nations to give the fullest results and if we desire the United Nations, which is at last emerging from the preparatory phase which has lasted quite long enough, to play the part for which it was created.
Such is the purpose of the Brazilian delegation in coming to participate in the second part of the first session of the General Assembly which is now meeting in New York. Brazil is thus continuing to act in accordance with the objective and constructive attitude which she adopted at San Francisco, of which the essential purpose is the formation and development of the United Nations in the world. This General Assembly can count on our whole-hearted support in carrying out the work we have undertaken in the shortest possible time.
The President (translated from French): I call upon Mr. Charles, representative of Haiti.
Mr. Charles (Haiti) (translated from French) ; A new world is being born from the fragments of the world which was torn asunder by the most terrifying of wars. The peoples of the world have given their chosen representatives the task of ensuring that the new-born child should have stability and strength in an atmosphere of lasting, fruitful and happy peace.
The delegation of the Republic of Haiti has, with enthusiastic faith, come also to join her modest efforts to those of the eminent ambassadors of the United Nations.
Anguish, torments and sufferings in common --what powerful and unbreakable bonds in the hours of danger!
Throughout five years, closely linked without distinction of race, creed, speech or religion, merging in common their wealth, their energy and their blood, the Allied nations fought with unbelievable bravery, with a superhuman courage unequalled in history.
They fought thus to preserve that which gives to life its very meaning : freedom.
Now, however, that the war is over, ideas still remain in opposition; the battle for peace goes on; for peace is something more than the end of a state of war. Its radiance is that of liberty. The citizen who is struggling with his conscience is not at peace; nor is a world at peace if it lives in a state of constant alarm. For the individual, as for the State, peace means freedom from tragic anxieties; freedom from hunger, from fear and from ignorance; freedom from the shameful weaknesses which so dread-fully mutilated that fine civilization of which our century was so proud; the abolition of ail barriers, of ail bastilles.
Advances in science have rendered international unity indispensable. Yesterday, the world broke up into hostile blocs with disconcerting speed because it lacked the one thing essential for unity : the spirit of brotherhood.
There we find the true source of the freedom, justice and peace for which mankind has such a burning thirst. The spirit of brotherhood alone is the true foundation of the law of mutual assistance which is as binding on ail States as on citizens; it, alone can account for noble crusades and the tremendous responsibilities of leadership ; it, alone, can destroy the poison of hate among peoples, and replace it with that incomparable force of all the ages: love.
That is what Professor Jacques Maritain means when he asserts that democracy is more than a philosophical system, more than a frame of mind, more than a political doctrine, more than a form of government--it is nothing less than a condition of the soul, a condition of the soul imbued with the love of man as was so well exemplified in that great citizen of the world, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Brotherhood! Radiant being, giving forth flame and warmth. May you shed your light on the labours of this august Assembly and guide the conscience of all peoples so that "the buildings of the future may never turn into tombs".
The President (translated from French) : I call upon Mr. Ulloa, representative of Peru.
Mr. Ulloa (Peru) (translated from Spanish): When I had the honour of addressing the General Assembly at the first part of its first session in London, I had occasion to express certain ideas illustrating the Peruvian delegation's point of view on the international situation at that moment. I am going to do so again today and, through force of circumstances, I must revert to the same subjects.
I said then that, within the Organization of the United Nations, it was of fundamental importance that, on the one hand, the great Powers should realize that any abuse of their rights and privileges would lead to international dictatorship, and that, on the other hand, the small nations should be alive to the fact that any excessive ambition would lead to international anarchy. I added that the avoidance of an international dictatorship, which is the guarantee of the survival of an international democracy, requires that these two groups should keep within their reasonable limits. If either of them should overstep those limits, by an abuse of the rights derived from new treaties or by giving too free a rein to that ambition which is latent in individuals and nations alike, neither group could fulfill its historic task.
From London to New York, international relations have followed a short but eventful path. The great Powers, or some of them, have marked their supremacy in world questions in a manner that surely is derived from an excessive interpretation of the facts and from excessive sensitiveness placed at the service of excessive ambition.
Thus, the danger of disproportionate claims which might have logically been expected on the part of the small States, whose international positions had been collectively and individually impaired, proved to be, in reality, a further manifestation of the supremacy of the great Powers, and has increased the privileges which they derived from victory as well as from the rights conferred on them by the Charter of the United Nations.
Thus, too, the lack of international harmony has been expressed in the opposition or contrast of the interests of the great States. The differences created by the new Organization, which were principally of a juridical type, are now being extended to the point that they threaten to create a spiritual abyss. Thus, finally, the right of the veto, which the small States accepted as an inevitable consequence of the antecedents of the new international status, appears not to be limited--either in reality or in intention--to the problems capable of affecting the security of the great States, but rather to be extended to other questions, where, from an objective point of view, it is quite unjustified.
More than this, the small States would have reason to think that the international inequality established by the San Francisco Charter--there is no point in using euphemisms--is not limited to the inevitable manifestations of superiority of power and greater importance of interests, but that ail the expressions of equality, in so far as they are not purely the declaratory formulae of international protocol, are foundering completely as a result of the absorption by the major Nations of all international direction and of their desire to play a preponderant role in international life.
This undermining of international equality finds expression in an attitude which is all the more dangerous because it is assumed without immediate reasons of contiguity or common interests, but rather for political and social reasons of an ideological or doctrinaire type.
Today, ail the major international issues under consideration or review which have arisen as a result of the recent great war, are not submitted or discussed or settled on grounds of strict justice, nor in the form best calculated to ensure future peace, nor even by taking primarily into consideration human rights whose assertion was the fundamental cause of the struggle against the defeated nations and the decisive impulse towards victory.
Solutions of these important international questions are governed by IWO basic but morally weak considerations. In the first place, the interests of the great States are judged exclusively by themselves in pursuance of a policy of domination, In the second place, questions are settled in the light of ideologies, which, with different form and content, again oppose each other in history, in the same way that the spirit of the French Revolution opposed the spirit of the Holy Alliance in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the spirit of domination of peoples and subjugation of individuals is opposed by the spirit of international democracy and the affirmation of human rights in this first half of the twentieth Century.
We must not forget that there are many small States which, either under the Versailles Treaty or the San Francisco Charter, provisionally surrendered their strong and invincible desire for international equality, because they believed that this equality was not possible without an organized juridical order which would constitute an effective partnership, for the establishment of which it was necessary to accept, owing to existing circumstances, the supremacy of power; but they accepted it believiug that it was only temporary, until such time as international justice was able, increasingly, to assume the functions which meanwhile were entrusted to a power under the guarantee that they would be used solely in upholding the law.
We must understand the opposition to the veto, which is now becoming general, as an act of urgent rebellion and also as a reaction which grows in proportion as the veto is being more widely abused.
If the veto continues, or is liable, to be exercised in an extensive way and in a manner contrary to its only acceptable basis, which is a genuine and prudent conception of security, a new generation of statesmen, politicians and jurists, and what is even more serious, a new generation of human beings Will have failed not only to realize the Splendid Wilsonian ideal of making the world safe for democracy, but also in the ideal of Franklin Roosevelt that men should be able to live without fear.
We should then only be replacing the extinct Versailles Covenant, which juridically allowed action against the disturber of international peace, by a Charter that would permit the veto and a sort of medieval jurisdiction under which the great nations would be beyond the reach of justice. And this same justice, represented principally by the International Court, would not have made, as indeed it has not made, any positive step towards asserting its authority with respect to the category or type of disputes with which it should deal, and towards the exercise of this authority over ail the members of the family of nations.
Two essential conditions, among many others, must be fulfilled if the United Nations Organization is to grow in scope and strength until it becomes the comprehensive and all-embracing framework of the international community. One of them is the effort--which may be slow, but must be effective--towards the universality of the Organization. This requires that it should become more and more an association of all peoples, through their representative elements which are their Governments; and less and less an instrument for perpetuating the political and material advantages derived from victory.
Peru believes that ail States must gradually come to form part of the United Nations, provided that their political System is not opposed to the new fundamental principles of the international community. In the first place, of course, there are ail those that were not belligerents but whose neutrality was, in many cases, a contribution to victory and a valuable asset in circumstances which might have turned out differently if, at the critical moment, these States had yielded to the mirage of an anti-democratic victory or to the threatening pressure of force.
Another condition necessary for the development and strengthening of the United Nations is that no international agreements creating a new legal status should be concluded outside the Organization.
There is no longer security for the future of peace and civilization--regarded from the point of view of the intellectual and material progress of mankind--in agreements or treaties which, under the exclusive influence of great Power interests, create for the defeated nations-- which no longer exist as governments but which are continuing and will continue to live as peoples, under the political forms determined by the victor--conditions of life which, under the guise of being vague, are as arbitrary and absurd as those which furnished the ostensible and yet undeniable excuse for the re-appearance of the frenzied nationalism which upet the uneasy balance of world peace established in 1918, because the treaties then concluded failed to safeguard the peace.
We see with alarm that questions which should be principally considered from the point of view of human values, such as those of devastated areas and displaced persons, refugees and reparations, are apparently being considered from the political standpoint of conflicting interests and ideologies.
We believe that there are two questions on the agenda of this Assembly that transcend incidental considerations and affect the very existence of the United Nations itself : the specific question of the veto and the general question of the revision or correction of the San Francisco Charter.
With regard to the first, that is the question of the veto, we have already stated our views on the" principle or substance of the matter. We believe that the purpose of the United Nations is to achieve a gradual substitution of the supremacy implicit in the veto, which means putting international politics first, by an extension of international justice applied equally to ail States by all States. But we think that the disturbance in the world and the danger to peace are so great at this moment that it would be inopportune and imprudent to try to deprive the great Powers at present of a legitimate instrument of security which has been recently given to them after consideration of the immediate facts.
We must test the sincerity and the loyalty of the great Powers by the supreme standard of international justice, inviting them not to use' the veto except in cases where they consider their security directly at stake. We believe the concept of security should be objective rather than subjective, and that it should be governed by actual threats or real danger and not by arbitrary inferences which are an insincere way of affirming or extending another kind of interest. If the great Powers use the veto only to protect their own security ' they will have the moral approval of the world, which carries such weight whenever their security is offered as an argument.
With respect to the revision of the Charter of San Francisco, we think that it has defects capable of being corrected without endangering good international relations, and that there will always be room for suggestions and possibilities of improvement; but we believe that its juridical architecture is still too fragile and that the re-establishment of peace within an equilibrium of interests is still too recent to run the risk of reopening the debate on the San Francisco Charter, at a time when full stability has not yet been reached and interests are still expanding.
With eloquence and sincerity, the President of the Assembly, in the speech that he made on the opening day of this session, recognized frankly that the United Nations lacked an atmosphere of confidence and support from world public opinion. This is a fact from which we may draw a further conclusion. It is not the fault of the small States that public opinion has as yet no faith in the United Nations. It is the fault of the great Powers.
Having set forth some general ideas on what we consider to be the essential factors influencing the life of the United Nations, the Peruvian delegation, in accordance with the suggestion that each State should confine itself to what it considers strictly necessary to express its views in the general debate, has placed its own on record, in the hope that they may be accepted as an honest contribution to the common good. We have used language hich, we are sure, corresponds to the feelings of the majority and which we should sincerely like to see employed more frequently, shunning not the light or publicity but darkness and silence.
The President (translated from French) : I have no further speakers on my list for this afternoon's meeting. In spite of my entreaties and "threats" I have only two speakers down for tomorrow morning and two others for the afternoon.
As I do not suppose that you will allow me to regard the general discussion as closing tomorrow morning, I think it will be better to omit tomorrow morning's meeting and ask ail the speakers to speak tomorrow afternoon.
This leads me to request the heads of delegations to try to make it possible for tomorrow afternoon's and Saturday morning's agenda to be completed. Unless this is done we should be losing two days.
The next meeting of the General Assembly will take place tomorrow at 4 p.m.
The meeting rose at 6.30 p.m.
Impunity in Spain and Francoist crimes
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