Mauritius, 1982

I bring to the General Assembly and to the United

Nations the greetings of the people of Mauritius

and of their newly elected Government. I wish to

convey to the President my warmest

congratulations on his election to preside over

our deliberations. I am confident that under his

wise and able leadership the Assembly will, in

the superior interests of mankind, give concrete

shape to the aspirations of the peoples of the

world. I seize this opportunity to express to his

predecessor, Mr. Kittani, our warmest

appreciation for the highly impressive manner in

which he presided over the deliberations of the

previous session of the Assembly.

53. It is indeed a moment of intense emotion

for me to address the Assembly for the first time

in my capacity as the head of a new Government

overwhelmingly mandated by the people of

Mauritius to take the destiny of the country

firmly in hand, to make it play the role it

should play in mankind's search for enduring

peace in the world and to make it contribute its

share, however modest, to the eradication of all

forms of injustice at home and abroad.

54. I wish here to record our appreciation of

the work done by the Secretary-General. It takes

great courage, Mr. Secretary-General, to

undertake on behalf of humanity the difficult

tasks that your office carries with it. The

international community has seen you at work in

the past year in some of the most trying

situations, where your tact, your moderation and

your perseverance have inspired universal

admiration. The year ahead, unfortunately, does

not promise to be any easier for you than the

year that has elapsed. In your first report on

the work of the Organization you have focused on

the need for an urgent review of the United

Nations and, in particular, of mechanisms set up

for collective action for international peace and

security. You have argued for a more forthright

role for your office of Secretary-General and you

envisage for the Security Council a kind of

diplomatic system. Finally, you say you would

like to see more concrete follow-up action to

debate in the Assembly. Many of the proposals you

have made could be put into effect immediately if

the political will of Member States was

galvanized for the purpose. You can therefore

rest assured that my delegation will co-operate

fully with your office and with the other Member

States for an early implementation of any

resolution arrived at in respect of the

reorganization envisaged.

55. It is a matter of deep regret that the

principle of the universality of United Nations

membership does not yet actually prevail.

Unilateral action and exclusive alliances have in

fact not been disowned. Spheres of influence and

considerations of balance of power, regrettably,

continue to actuate the policies of many nations,

despite the fact that they fail to produce the

desired results. Added to this is a considerable

and formidable interference in the internal

affairs of many countries, the powerful making

their presence felt in many ways, relentless in

their endeavour to enlarge their spheres of

influence. Countries like Mauritius, which have

only recently acquired freedom, have a strong

attachment to the United Nations and inevitably a

special stake in its functioning. I have come

here to reiterate my country's deep commitment to

the principles and purposes of the Charter.

56. I believe that we come here not to save

face but to save and protect life. We come here

not to deliver speeches only and then make our

exit but to make action follow our words. We come

here not as a matter of mere formality and to pay

lip service to the ideals of peace and justice

but to show how serious we are in our intentions

to work for the superior interests of the whole

of mankind. We come here not out of selfish

motives but to show how willing and prepared we

are to forgo a little bit of our own ego for

international good in a spirit of compromise, so

that the world may live and the human race

survive. We come here not to add to problems but

to find solutions satisfactory to all parties. We

come here because we believe in man and in all

the inherent good there is in him which, if it

prevails, will be the safety valve of the human

race.

57. What is urgently needed is a unified view

of the world's resources and the world's

experience and of man's power of invention. The

change we desire, the change which must come, is

one not of pace, quantity or manner but of the

basic quality of what man is and can be. We all

need to make earnest and well-considered efforts

to subdue and check national ambitions and

rivalries in the superior and wider interest of

the preservation of civilization and the survival

of humanity.

58. It is in the context of what I have just

said that I invite representatives present here

to bear in mind the human dimensions of the

issues we shall be deliberating upon. The average

man does not ask for much; he is not interested

in leading a life of frivolous affluence and

frenetic consumption. We are gathered here to

give substance to the yearnings of the average

man, to give voice to the wishes of the

voiceless, for that is the primary responsibility

of those who govern. The great tragedy of the

present situation is that the world order as it

now exists has been unable to satisfy the basic

universal aspirations of man —dignity, peace and

security.

59. In June the people of Mauritius gave an

overwhelming mandate to those whom they perceived

to be the champions of the dignity of man. We

have given a solemn undertaking to our people to

defend the oppressed and the weak and we will be

true to that undertaking. It is equally in this

spirit that we want to add our voice to that of

this concert of nations in our denunciation of

all forms of injustice and to work to better the

lot of suffering mankind.

60. The major and continuing threat to the

dignity of man comes from the prevailing economic

order, characterized by built-in

self-perpetuating inequality which results in an

unjust distribution of the world's limited

resources. Year by year the inequality grows, the

injustice of the system becomes ethically more

revolting and at the receiving end deprivation

and misery become more unbearable. It is patent

that this system cannot be allowed to continue.

Change may be too gradual in the developing

countries for our liking but we realize that it

can come only out of patient dialogue. We are

today faced with the Herculean task of

restructuring an economic order which has been

shaped by four centuries of colonialism. This

cannot be done quickly, it cannot be done

painlessly, but it has to be done and it will be

done. The real question before us is whether we

want to continue frittering away our energies in

useless disagreements and quarrels or whether we

want to look seriously into the future of mankind

and act to make people really prosperous.

61. Both the rich and the poor nations have

pressing and paralleled problems which cannot be

solved independently. The present crisis is a

crisis of international structures. The present

system needs fundamental institutional reforms,

based upon the recognition of a common interest

and upon mutual concern in an increasingly

interdependent world. New vitality and urgency

have to be imparted to the North-South dialogue.

The very survival of both developing and

developed countries depends on the success of

this dialogue. We have to moderate the shrillness

of the demands made, as well as the obdurate

arrogance with which those demands have so far

been rejected. I believe that we have in the Lome

Convention given the world a small but

significant example of what cooperative

North-South could be like.

62. My Government also calls upon the members

of the international community to direct its

efforts to the equally important transformation

of the international order relating to the

oceans. The traditional legal order in that Held

has been eroded by technological and political

developments and must be replaced by a new legal

order which would permit the exploitation of the

ocean space—the largest and most valuable region

of our planet—in the interests of all mankind.

After many years of intense and very complex

negotiations, in which over 150 States have

regularly participated, the Third United Nations

Conference on the Law of the Sea has produced a

Convention which ought to be hailed as a triumph

for mankind in laying the foundation for

international co-operation in the use of the

oceans.

63. All the major industrialized Powers

played a very active role in the shaping of the

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

which largely reflects their interests, concerns

and preoccupations. It is on account of this that

we fail to appreciate the attempt being made by

certain major Powers to scuttle the Convention by

their decision to opt for a mini-treaty among

like-minded States, a mini-treaty which

inevitably will create new areas of tension in

international relations likely to lead to a

situation which endangers international peace and

security.

64. We call upon all States to sign the

Convention in order to make the concept of the

common heritage of mankind a reality. The

Convention on the Law of the Sea should be

treated as a special convention and we urge the

major industrialized States to forgo their fears

about the precedent setting nature of this

Convention. All States should embark on this

enterprise in a spirit of trust and good will.

65. Quite apart from its determination to

work with other countries of the third world for

the elimination of the poverty curtain that

divides our planet into a world of the affluent

and a world of the poor, Mauritius militates

against the equally pernicious division of the

world into two hostile camps dominated by the

so-called super-Powers, which, in their pursuit

of world domination, threaten the security of

States the only concern of which is the social

and economic development of their people, free

from external interference. Mauritius is

committed to a policy of active and determined

non-alignment. We intend jealously to protect and

guard our hard-won independence; we intend to

condemn unequivocally all aggression, all forms

of imperialism and all hegemonistic ambitions. We

aspire to a world of true interdependence of

genuinely free and equal States, whose relations

are based on co-operation rather than on

confrontation.

66. The Government of Mauritius, in pursuit

of its policy of strict non-alignment and in

conformity with General Assembly resolution 2832

(XXVI), the Declaration of the Indian Ocean as a

Zone of Peace, will work with other peace-loving

members of the international community for the

demilitarization of the Indian Ocean. During the

years which have elapsed since the adoption of

the resolution, we have witnessed the expansion

of the Ocean's geopolitical dimensions and the

conversion of this intended zone of peace into a

zone of war and mobilization for war, with all

the attendant dangers for the countries of the

regime. The Ocean has gradually expanded beyond

its own waters; it is now linked to the States of

South-East Asia and to developments in West Asia

and the Middle East. The so-called modest

communications facility in Diego Garcia has been

converted into the formidable and horrendous

nuclear base which threatens the security of all

Indian Ocean States, and there has been a

scramble to secure port facilities along the

so-called arc of crisis, that is, the Horn of

Africa, the Arabian peninsula and the vital

Persian Gulf area.

67. With the alarming increase in a foreign

military presence in the Indian Ocean, the

fervent hope of the States of the region for the

holding of the Conference on the Indian Ocean has

receded. Mauritius and the other States of the

region are not hoodwinked by the tactics and

ploys adopted by some States, which are designed

primarily to cause confusion, postpone

indefinitely the holding of that Conference and

create a smoke-screen to hide their warlike

designs. We solemnly appeal to all the members of

the international community to give their full

support to the United Nations so that the

Conference on the Indian Ocean can take place in

the very near future. We also call upon the

foreign military Powers present in the Indian

Ocean to exercise mutual restraint and to

initiate a gradual and balanced withdrawal of

their forces from the region, which would then be

open exclusively to commercial navigation. It is

our conviction that the security of the sea lanes

in the Ocean can best be protected by the States

of the region.

68. At this juncture I should like to dwell

on an issue which affects the vital interests of

Mauritius; I mean the Mauritian claim of

sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago, which

was excised by the then colonial Power from the

territory of Mauritius in contravention of

General Assembly resolutions 1514 (XV) and 2066

(XX). This dismemberment of Mauritian territory,

the violation of our territorial integrity, has

been made all the more unacceptable by the fact

that one of the islands of that very Archipelago,

Diego Garcia, is now a full-fledged nuclear base,

which poses a constant threat to the security of

Mauritius and to that of all the littoral and

hinterland States of the Indian Ocean, the very

Ocean declared to be a zone of peace by this

Assembly in 1971.

69. I solemnly appeal to the peace-loving

Members of the Organization to extend all their

support to the legitimate Mauritian claim of

sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago. In

helping Mauritius to regain its national

heritage, the United Nations will be living up to

its own principles and proclaiming loud and clear

that it expects its resolutions to be implemented

by its Members. As the Diego Garcia issue

involves two fundamental principles of the United

Nations, namely respect by the administering

Power for the territorial integrity of its

colony, and the right of peoples to live in peace

and security, I venture to say that the return of

the archipelago to Mauritius will bring the

Organization the respect that is so indispensable

to its continued existence.

70. Times are bad, very bad. The world

economy in fact teeters on the brink of a

depression that could be wider and deeper than

that of the 1930s. For the weakest national

economies, and therefore for hundreds of millions

of people, little short of catastrophe looms.

Such a situation, wherein the world is perilously

poised on the brink of an economic precipice, is

not conducive to peace. An extended recession,

excessive interest rates, highly unstable

exchange rates, widespread protectionism—all

these constitute threats to peace in a world of

inescapable interdependence. Our political and

economic systems should provide conceptual space

for the reality of an interdependent world

economy. Regrettably, the search for the world

economy recovery that is so desperately needed

remains derailed and we drill towards the abyss

of economic disaster.

71. As far as Mauritius if concerned, we

shall participate fully in the North-South

dialogue and, indeed, have great expectations of

progress resulting from that dialogue, but we

believe that much can be achieved through

South-South co-operation. The Island States of

the south-west Indian Ocean are actively engaged

in promoting co-operation at the regional level.

We hope in the near future to set up an Indian

Ocean commission which will provide the

institutional framework for co-operation among

the States of the region. It Is no mean measure

of our firm belief in the concept of an

interdependent world economy that we are already

looking beyond the immediate present to the day

when the grouping of the south-west Indian Ocean

States can be associated with other regional

groupings.

72. Violations of human rights constitute

another serious threat to the dignity of man. In

too many countries do people live under constant

threat of arbitrary arrest, torture, appearance

and execution after trials that are away from

civilized norms of justice. We unequivocally

condemn all violations of human rights wherever

they occur, under whatever social or political

system that occur.

73. We have a special abhorrence for a system

so inhuman, so immoral, would be unimaginable but

for the shameful fact that it exists. This odious

system of institutionalized racism will eternally

tarnish the claim of our epoch to a place of

honour in the history of civilization. We have a

duty to our brothers in South Africa. We also owe

it to ourselves to eliminate all vestiges of this

iniquitous system; otherwise the judgement which

posterity will pass on our times will be indeed

very harsh, and deservedly so.

74. We believe that freedom is indivisible,

that peace is indivisible. One of the first

foreign policy decisions of my Government was

formally to recognize ANC. Mauritius will stand

by ANC in its hard struggle to secure the

emancipation of the people of South Africa; ANC

can depend on the unflinching support of the

people and Government of Mauritius.

75. We shall give the same unconditional

support to SWAPO in its struggle for the

decolonization of Namibia. It is unacceptable

that the Republic of South Africa should continue

in its illegal occupation of Namibia in defiance

of the basic tenets of international law and of

international opinion. This defiance has to be

opposed by united and determined action. We

should not permit economic considerations to

hinder our action when the basic norms of

universal morality are being trampled upon, and

we should vigorously condemn the tactics adopted

by the South African regime, tactics designed to

modify the terms of Security Council resolution

435 (1978). Mauritius, moreover, sees no linkage

between the presence of Cuban troops in Angola

and the withdrawal of South African troops from

Namibia and demands that the South African regime

should no longer be allowed to invoke such a

linkage to delay the accession of the Namibian

people to independence.

76. We in Africa will, we hope, soon be rid

of the last vestiges of colonialism, and the

emancipation of the South African people will

inevitably be accomplished in the near future.

Racist domination in southern Africa is the

major, immediate problem we face, but it is by no

means our only problem.

77. I should like to impress upon the

Assembly that the African peoples want to dispel

the image that the African continent is only a

rich source of raw materials and nothing more;

nor is it fertile ground for the manoeuvres of

outside Powers and it is now determined not to

tolerate such manoeuvres. Africa calls open all

outside Powers to keep out and to let Africans

get on with solving their problems and be of help

for countries in the solution of these problems

is not to be ignored, provided there no sinister

ulterior motives, We in Africa are in urgent need

of technology, of capital, of know-how. Our

problems, both economic and social, call for the

joined, sustained effort of all of Africa. 0ur

greatest challenge is the maintenance of African

unity and the consolidation of our independence.

78. I come now to an area distant from

Mauritius. The issue at stake, however, is close

to the heart of every Mauritian. Tre PLO as the

sole representative of the Palestinian people has

our unreserved support; our identification with

the Palestinian cause is total. We believe that

the people of the Middle East will remain

supportive towards Palestine until Palestinian

aspirations are fulfilled. Mauritius has studied

the various peace proposals with great attention

and we are ready to give our backing to any peace

plan put forward that is acceptable to the PLO.

79. We call upon all those who can do so to

bring pressure to bear on Israel to stop

forthwith its aggression against the Lebanese and

Palestinian peoples. Prospects of peace in the

area suffered a severe setback with the Israeli

invasion of Lebanon and the unspeakable,

cold-blooded carnage of innocent civilians in

Beirut.

80. The fratricidal war between Iraq and the

Islamic Republic of Iran drags on, to the

satisfaction of those who would wish to see the

third world in a perpetual state of turmoil and

underdevelopment. We call upon both parties to

the conflict to cease hostilities and to stop the

death and destruction this war is inflicting on

the peoples of Iran and Iraq.

81. This war has led to the postponement of

the Seventh Conference of Heads of State or

Government of Non-Aligned Countries. This

postponement comes at a time when our movement is

faced with problems requiring immediate

solutions. Afghanistan, a member of the movement

finds itself under foreign occupation for the

third year. It is imperative that foreign forces

withdraw from Afghanistan, that all foreign

interference in its internal affairs cease and

that its non-aligned status be restored.

82. The conflicts, the inequalities and the

injustices of the world scene could easily lead

us to be disheartened at the precarious state of

the world. But we cannot allow ourselves to be

disheartened, for that would be an abdication of

our responsibilities towards our children and

towards posterity. An important aspect of my

Government's socialist creed is faith in the

innate goodness of man. Man fights the forces of

evil and darkness, conscious that, however long

and arduous the way may be, the victory of good

over evil is assured.

83. I believe that the Charter is the

concrete embodiment of one of the instances where

good has triumphed against tremendous divisive

odds. The Charter is our yardstick by which are

judged the acts of nations. I can assure the

Assembly that my Government's actions find their

inspiration in the Charter.

84. The world has always faced one crisis or

another, but today's crisis is deeper and more

far-reaching. No thinking, sensitive and

right-minded nation can remain silent. But it is

not enough merely to speak out: we should peak

out when the occasion for action comes, but,

above all, we should act, because the occasion

for action is here and now.

85. On behalf of the people of Mauritius and

on behalf of their newly elected Government, I

pledge our continuing and unflinching support for

the United Nations and our respect for its

Charter.