Guinea-Bissau, 1982

It is a great honour for me to address my warmest

congratulations to Mr. Hollai, on my own behalf

and on behalf of my delegation, and to express my

great satisfaction that he is presiding over the

thirty seventh session of the General Assembly.

In choosing him, the Assembly was inspired by his

great qualities and his particularly outstanding

diplomatic career. The General Assembly is also

paying a tribute thereby to the dynamic work done

by his country, the People's Republic of Hungary,

within the United Nations. My country has close

relations of friendship and cooperation with his

country. It will thus be understood that the

delegation of Guinea Bissau fully associates

itself with this confirmation by the General

Assembly of his great abilities and his excellent

knowledge of international affairs and is happy

at the prospect of cooperating with him in

seeking solutions to the many problems in

international relations. I should like to express

appreciation to Mr. Hollai's predecessor, Mr.

Kittani, for the dedication, wisdom and great

ability he has demonstrated in the past year. His

tireless efforts and constant work in the United

Nations enabled us to achieve satisfactory

results in our struggle for peace during a

particularly turbulent period in international

life. I take this opportunity also, on behalf of

my country, the Republic of Guinea Bissau, to

congratulate Mr. Javier Perez de Cuellar on his

election to the high office of Secretary General.

I am the more happy to do so because this is the

first time that I have spoken from this rostrum,

and I should also like to express to him my great

appreciation of the tremendous contribution he

has made to solving the many conflicts and

problems which threaten international peace and

security.

I should also like to say to him that the

Government of the Republic of Guinea Bissau

greatly appreciates the excellent report he has

submitted to us. In our view, this report

constitutes a real innovation in that it

courageously and lucidly reflects the main

concerns of the international community as a

whole.

The Secretary General proposes in his report a

concrete and objective approach to improving the

structures and operation of the Organization and

he also suggests measures to strengthen the

United Nations and to make it a truly universal

organization in which all peoples and countries

of the world without distinction will be able to

play their role in the struggle of mankind to

preserve peace and development. The Government of

the Republic of Guinea Bissau will make every

effort to help in the attainment of these

objectives. This session of the Assembly is

taking place at a particularly tense time.

Violence, war, disdain for the principles set

forth in the Charter, systematic violation of the

most basic rules governing international

relations, the genocide of thousands of human

beings and considerable material damage, as well

as innumerable other problems, provide a

threatening background to our debate. In this

Hall we have heard the echoes of the world's

outrage at the atrocities committed in Lebanon by

the Israeli army. The international community has

expressed its feelings of absolute revulsion at

the massacre of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra

and Shatila camps. The General Assembly, in

devoting an emergency special session to those

tragic events, which are a grim reminder of the

darkest days of modem history, wished thus to

express its outrage and to condemn this barbarous

action and the authors of it. Israel, in allowing

the massacre of thousands of Palestinian refugees

and creating the conditions whereby that shameful

act of genocide could take place, made itself

answerable to international public opinion for

one of the most odious crimes against humanity.

The invasion of Lebanon and the mass bombings of

west Beirut clearly showed the world that Israel,

in its craze for power, was capable of the worst

aggression to establish a climate of terror in

the region and remove the Arabs once and for all

from their land. But Israel should have learned

the lessons of history, quiterecent history. The

suffering imposed on the heroic Palestinian

people, far from weakening them, has shown their

true strength, courage, determination and

political maturity. It is political maturity

which, without any doubt, confirms the

representativeness of the PLO as a national

liberation movement which embodies the profound

aspirations of the fraternal Palestinian people

as a whole and guides their fight for freedom. I

should like to pay a glowing tribute to the

leadership of the PLO, and particularly to its

Chairman, Yasser Arafat, for the courage,

vitality and irrepressible determination which

they have demonstrated in their struggle in the

face of the institutionalized terrorism of the

State of Israel and despite the disproportion in

the methods used by the two sides. The people and

Government of Guinea Bissau reaffirm their

unwavering solidarity with and total support for

the fraternal Palestinian people in their

legitimate struggle for the exercise of their

national rights, including their inalienable

right to exist and to create their own State.

Recognition of Namibia's right to independence,

which we have been demanding for many years and

for which the Namibian people, under the

leadership of SWAPO, their sole legitimate

representative have made innumerable sacrifices,

has once again been jeopardized by the delaying

tactics of the racist regime of South Africa. It

is high time that the authors of the United

Nations plan for the settlement of the Namibian

problem reacted more forcefully to the

Machiavellian policies of Pretoria, which wishes

to keep Namibia indefinitely dependent on South

Africa. The Namibian people, Africa, will never

accept a constitutional system which would

perpetuate the existence of a puppet

administration acting in the economic and

geopolitical interests of the racist apartheid

regime. This must be understood and remembered.

Pretoria's intransigence and its manifest

determination to wreck the plan for the

settlement of the Namibian question, thus

jeopardizing the principles of Security Council

resolution 435 (1978), should lead its allies to

be realistic and recognize that a moribund

colonialist regime can never guarantee their long

term interests. The insecurity in which the

racist regime of South Africa maintains the

southern pail of the African continent and its

repeated acts of aggression against the People's

Republic of Angola, the People's Republic of

Mozambique and the other frontline States must

lead the international community to shoulder its

responsibilities more effectively and pay greater

attention to the war which persists in the

People's Republic of Angola because of the

occupation of part of its territory by the racist

apartheid regime. It is wrong and even dangerous

to think that this is an innocuous problem,

because it is in fact the People's Republic of

Angola that is bearing the brunt of the

commitment although it was made by all the States

Members of the United Nations to give the

necessary aid to the SWAPO fighters in their just

struggle for the independence and dignity of the

Namibian people. It is also tolerable to see

certain countries trying to link the question of

Namibian independence to the presence of

internationalist Cuban troops in the People's

Republic of Angola. Such an attitude constitutes

in reality interference in the internal affairs

of a sovereign State and is contrary to the right

of every State freely to choose its

sociopolitical system and to determine in full

sovereignty its domestic and foreign policy. The

heads of State of African countries where

Portuguese is spoken rejected this approach to

the problem at their last summit meeting, in

Praia, in September, and declared their

unwavering solidarity with the Namibian people

and the Angolan and Mozambican peoples in their

just struggle to preserve their national

independence and defend the sovereignty and

territorial integrity of their States. That

meeting also provided the Republic of Guinea

Bissau with an opportunity to reiterate, along

with the other fraternal participants, its total

support for the fighters of the ANC in their

heroic struggle to ensure respect for the most

elementary human rights and for the establishment

of a democratic regime in the Republic of South

Africa. The complete liberation of Africa is a

prerequisite for its development. This is why

independent African States as a whole have

undertaken to make their contribution to the

complete decolonization of Africa. The

Organization of African Unity has since its

creation always provided a political framework

for this historic commitment. Most African

States, today Members of the United Nations,

derived the political strength necessary for

ensuring victory in their national liberation

struggles from the cardinal principles of the OAU

charter, which its members are determined to

respect scrupulously. This explains the

political, material and diplomatic support which

they have enjoyed from the States members of that

continental African organization. The present

difficulties facing the OAU derive from the

imperative need for all independent African

States to show by their actions the commitment

that they have entered into to struggle against

all forms of domination and to support the

struggle of all peoples for self determination

and independence. Guinea Bissau is in favour of

the emancipation of peoples and supports their

national liberation struggle because we intend to

remain faithful to the commitments we have freely

entered into, the very basis of the Organization

that we all belong to. The right of peoples to

self determination, recognized by the

international community as a whole, remains the

guiding principle of our foreign policy. In

recognizing the Sahraoui Arab Democratic Republic

and in supporting its legitimate struggle for the

recognition of its sovereignty, we are guided by

United Nations principles and decisions and

acting with the strictest respect for the ideals

of the founders of the OAU. The African peoples,

in their struggle to regain their rightful place

in the concert of nations and recognition of the

role they can play in international affairs, have

acquired the political maturity to settle their

own problems for themselves. In our view, the

current problems of the OAU are serious but not

insurmountable. The African States are aware of

the need to preserve their continental

organization, which, despite many obstacles, has

managed to deep its unitary character and to

mobilize its energies to achieve the noble

objectives of national liberation and of

development. We believe that with the good will

of all its members the OAU will be able to find a

solution to its current difficulties, a solution

that is based on the principles set forth in its

charter and takes into account the higher

interests of African peoples. I am convinced that

those principles will guide the efforts by the

OAU Mediation Committee to find a peaceful

solution to the disputes between some OAU

members. I should like to speak also about the

situation prevailing in the Horn of Africa, where

the OAU and the international community must take

urgent action to create a climate propitious to

negotiations between the parties to the conflict.

My country has always believed in negotiations as

a means to the peaceful settlement of disputes

between States. That is why we urge the

Governments of the Comoros and France to continue

their efforts to find a swift solution to the

problem of Mayotte and thus enable it to rejoin

the Comoros. Similarly, we support the efforts by

the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to

ensure the peaceful reunification of the Korean

homeland and we call on the international

community to create a climate propitious to the

negotiations that are indispensable in that

regard. We have repeatedly expressed our deep

concern over the tragic situation in East Timor,

which was thoroughly analysed at the latest

summit meeting of Portuguese speaking heads of

State. We must note today that, despite the

commitments entered into by the United Nations to

restore the usurped rights of the Maubere people,

no progress has been made since the thirty sixth

session of the General Assembly. The Maubere

people continues to suffer from the horrors of

oppression and the annexation of their national

territory by the Indonesian occupying forces. The

Security Council, immediately following the

Indonesian aggression, unequivocally condemned

that action, which was contrary to the principles

set forth in the Charter and to the rules of

international law, and it remains seized of this

question, which can be solved only with strict

respect for the right of the Maubere people to

self determination and independence, in

accordance with General Assembly resolution 1514

(XV). Thus the Republic of Guinea Bissau welcomes

the statement by the Government of Portugal—the

administering Power of East Timor— that it will

do all it can to ensure that this objective is

achieved; indeed, the whole international

community should join in this. We reiterate our

unwavering solidarity with the Maubere people in

their just struggle, led by their vanguard

movement, FRETILIN, the Frente Revolucionario de

Timor Leste Independente. Despite renewed efforts

by the Secretary General and the international

community to find a negotiated settlement to the

problem of Cyprus, no real result has yet been

obtained. We therefore once again express our

concern over the persistence of this problem and

our hope that urgent action will be taken to

bring the positions closer together and to enable

the Greek and Turkish communities in Cyprus to

live together in peace, understanding and harmony

and to safeguard the independence, the

territorial integrity and the nonaligned

character of Cyprus. Nonalignment, as the

Assembly knows, is the comers tone of the foreign

policy of the Republic of Guinea Bissau. My

Government therefore supports the efforts of the

nonaligned movement to present its unity and

cohesion, the only way to ensure its ability to

take action to promote the maintenance of

national peace and security. We thus feel it

necessary, taking into account the particularly

serious international political situation today,

to reaffirm the fundamental principles of the

policy of nonalignment, especially the principles

of nonintervention and peaceful settlement of

disputes. In this context we therefore repeat our

appeal to our brothers in Iraq and the Islamic

Republic of Iran to find a negotiated settlement

to the dispute between them, in the interest of

their respective peoples, of the Organization of

the Islamic Conference, of the nonaligned

movement and of the international community as a

whole. The many conflicts and tensions that have

been mentioned here could certainly be avoided or

settled if the various members of the

international community implemented the

fundamental principles of noninterference in the

internal affairs of States, nonintervention and

peaceful settlement of disputes. The situation in

South East and South West Asia is of great

concern to Guinea Bissau. In our opinion it is

essential, in order to preserve peace and

stability in those regions, to begin a process of

negotiations where the spirit of understanding

and the interest of the peoples concerned prevail

and thus to create the atmosphere indispensable

to the exercise by each people of those regions

of the right freely to decide its future and to

safeguard its sovereignty and territorial

integrity, free from outside interference. In our

opinion, there should be the same approach to

international relations in regard to the

situation in Central America and the Caribbean.

The current crisis in international relations is

to a large extent the result of the continuing

atmosphere of distrust among States and the

frenzied arms race and its consequences and

logical implications, such as the increase in

militarized areas, in military bases, and in the

production and the acquisition of increasingly

sophisticated and destructive weapons. It is

clear that the final, comprehensive solution to

the problems of disarmament, enabling us to do

away with the serious threats hanging over the

world, cannot depend on only a few members of the

international community, however powerful they

may be economically and militarily on the world

scene. We believe, along with the overwhelming

majority of the international community, that the

desired solution can come only through concerted

action by all the countries of the world. The

worsening of the world economic crisis is the

logical result of structural disparities and of

the continuing inequality and inequity in

international economic relations. The spirit of

multilateral economic cooperation, which in the

first decades after the Second World War was one

of the great hopes of the international

community, and of the developing countries in

particular, is today seriously weakened. It is

clear that this tendency is contrary to the

objectives set forth in the Declaration and the

Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New

International Economic Order and in the

International Development Strategy for the Third

United Nations Development Decade his phenomenon

has serious consequences such as cronic deficits

in the balance of payments of the developing

countries and the continuing deterioration in

terms of trade. The limits and the difficulties

with regard access by third world countries to

international financial markets and to the

required technology, the increasing constraints

placed on financial and technical aid are

additional problems facing the developing

countries. The use of concepts such as

gradualism, selectivity and differentiation by

the developed countries in trade relations with

the developing ones constitutes an obstacle to

the promotion of the economic development of the

latter and further complicates the payment of

external debt servicing and the meeting of import

needs in food, energy and manufactured products.

In this context therefore there is an imperative

need, both for the developing countries and for

the industrialized countries, that the process of

global negotiations be made more dynamic. The

Republic of Guinea Bissau, which belongs to the

group of least developed countries, is not spared

the harmful effects of the present international

economic situation. The new policy of development

advocated by our Government is intended primarily

to reduce such effects by using all international

and external means available to promote the

development of all the economic sectors,

particularly agriculture, and to promote

diversification and an increase in production so

as to ensure food self sufficiency The imbalance

in Guinea Bissau's balance of payments, the

increase in its foreign debt, heavy inflation,

the consequences of the constant increase in the

price of manufactured goods and fuel, the fall in

the prices of its exports as a result of the

deterioration of the terms of trade and its

increased dependence on foreign aid are major

problems facing Guinea Bissau and they justify

the measures taken by the Government within its

national development strategy. In that framework,

a programme for economic and financial

stabilization has been drawn up, arrangements

also having been made for the holding of a

conference of prime lenders during the first half

of 1983 aimed at encouraging implementation of a

four year socioeconomic development plan. The

international community through its agencies and

instruments must shoulder its responsibilities

with regard to the deterioration in the world

economic situation and the constant increase in

inequalities between the developed and the

developing countries, in order to ensure the

enjoyment by all peoples of the right to

development. Interdependence among the nations of

the world makes this an important step, one

calling for the struggle of humanity as a whole

to preserve its common values. It is in that

context that we include the concept of mankind's

common heritage, developed during the Third

United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea,

and appreciate the adoption by a large majority

of the international community of the Convention

on the Law of the Sea which formally establishes

an international legal order and defines, among

others, the regime of the high seas, oceans and

sea beds. We hope that all countries will join in

the signing of the Convention when it is opened

for signature this year in Jamaica, thus

conferring upon that important legal instrument

its universal scope. These are the few points

that it wanted to make at this time. The agenda

shows once again, by the number and relevance of

its items, the gravity of the international

situation. I cannot mention every item. However,

the scope of the debate held since the beginning

of our deliberations clearly states the

determination of States Members of the United

Nations to help solve them all. The measures

advocated are many, as are the means available to

us to preserve international peace and security.

We must just work together to achieve results. In

addressing the Assembly every year, we bring with

us the determination of the Government of the

Republic of Guinea Bissau to work tirelessly to

seek solutions to the problems affecting

international relations. Thus, we should once

again like to express our firm conviction that

the survival and progress of humanity depend on

the efforts that the States Members of the United

Nations will make to implement the decisions

taken by the Organization and on their commitment

to respect the principles set forth in the

Charter to which they voluntarily subscribed.