Guyana, 1969

89. It is a special honour for

me today to express to the President of this Assembly on

behalf of the Government and people of Guyana our very

deep pleasure and satisfaction at her election to the office

of President. Representing as we do a people whose origins

lie predominantly in Africa and in Asia, my delegation

takes particular pride in welcoming her to her high office.

We can never forget the interest and concern which she

showed for us in the days when, so ably representing her

country on the committees and councils of this Organization,

she advanced the cause of Guyana’s independence

with a courage and determination which contributed

materially to our achievement of nationhood. We believe,

indeed we know from our own experience, that she brings

to the Presidency those qualities of wisdom, judgement and

compassion which will serve to enhance the office to which

her election is so richly deserved.

90. Her distinguished predecessor in the Chair of this

Assembly, the late Mr. Emilio Arenales, served this Organization

for the most difficult months of the twenty-third

session and served it with great distinction and at much

personal cost. The tragedy of his death at an age when he

still had so much to offer to his country, to the Latin

American region and to the wider stage of international

politics, has saddened us all. My delegation wishes to join in

the tributes that have been paid to him — for he spent his life

in the service of the international community and gave it

while serving the cause of international understanding. The

most tangible tribute we can pay him is to answer the call

he made in his inaugural address to this Assembly a year

ago [1674th meeting] when he reminded us that what is

needed is not a new organization but simply a return to the

spirit of the Charter — a return to those principles of human

coexistence, international as well as national, that must

serve as the basis of political and human philosophy. Unless

international society makes an effective response to that

call, the cause of international understanding which so

many men and women serve with steadfastness and

dedication will remain merely a cause, and international

peace, which should be the reward of their efforts, an

elusive aspiration.

91. It is regrettable that the goal of international peace has

been only partially attained, and that the cause of

international understanding continues to be jeopardized by

a lack of commitment to the spirit of the Charter by those

who behave as if the rule of law in international affairs is a

soothing palliative — prescribed only for men too naive to

recognize the realities of power. In the face of the

continually widening gap between the language of statesmen

and the policies of their Governments, the people of

the world have grown immune to the rhetoric of peace and

have become cynical of much that is done in the name of

peace, including much of our work here in the United

Nations. There is an urgent need to reclaim the interest and

the belief of men and women everywhere in this Organization,

in the pursuits enjoined upon it by its Charter and in

the principles which Member States stand pledged to

uphold and to advance. On the eve of the twenty-fifth

anniversary of this Organization it is time that this work of

reclamation began, and Guyana raises its voice with those

who already from this podium have called for it to

commence.

92. The responsibility for this effort must rest on all

countries — the large and the small, the developed and the

undeveloped, the rich and the poor. Since the malaise has

its origins in the abuse of power, the main responsibility for

the cure must rest with those who wield power. If we are

going to achieve the ordered international society that was

the vision at San Francisco 24 years ago, that achievement

must rest upon an acceptance by the major Powers of the

rule of law in international affairs as a higher good than the

passing rewards of power at any moment in history — an

acceptance that was acknowledged as the fundamental

compact when this Organization was created. Certainly the

world has changed, and history with it; but the nuclear

Powers of today, the wealthy nations, the advanced

societies for whom science and technology have created

new reservoirs of wealth and power, are none the less those

same nations and societies whose statesmen helped frame

the Charter. The gravest responsibility of all rests upon

those who, by virtue of their permanent membership in the

Security Council, possess the principal responsibility for

maintaining the peace of the world — and for doing so not

through bilateral arrangements for spheres of influence but

under the broad provisions of the Charter.

93. The genuine acceptance and the resolute discharge of

these responsibilities by the major Powers will do much to

guarantee faithful adherence by all countries to the

precepts of the Charter, but a refusal by the major Powers

to discharge their responsibilities, or their willingness to do

so only selectively, does not absolve the rest of the world

from its obligations to international peace; nor does it of

necessity imply the abandonment of all hope for international

security. To the contrary, such a situation — and it

is such a situation that confronts us today — calls for a

special effort by the rest of the international community,

by the countries that are neither major Powers nor

irrevocably committed to their policies, to ensure that the

peace of the world is not held in pawn to power. Guyana

considers that there is a pressing need for the middle-sized

and smaller States to assert a positive role, especially in the

area of international security. While resisting the pressures

towards bi-polarization, they must bring their influence to

bear on the problems of international security and this

influence can be produced from their solidarity in support

of the Charter. As one of the non-aligned countries of the

world, we stand ready to play our part, however small and

modest it may be, in all such collective efforts designed to

ensure peace in the world and, more especially, the security

of those who least have the capacity to breach that

peace—the small developing nations.

94. In no other area of international endeavour is there a

greater need for this Organization and its Members — all of

its Members — to do more to fulfil the purposes of the

Charter than in the area of peace-keeping. A year ago, as I

spoke from this podium [1680th meeting], I said that the

world’s aggressors had learnt all too effectively how to

exploit the gap in the system of international security

which results from the absence of established arrangements

for peace-keeping operations of a preventive character.

said that Guyana lent its voice to the plea for this gap to be

closed, especially in relation to the developing countries,

and I pledged that we would support every reasonable

proposal to this end. My Government is glad to acknowledge

that the year between then and now has, indeed, seen

an intensification of efforts for the acceptance by this

Organization of its fundamental responsibility in this field,

and that as a result of these efforts we now see the first

indication of a movement towards the assumption of this

responsibility.

95. For the past seven months, a working group of the

Special Committee on Peace-keeping Operations has met

continuously, to analyse, and if possible to formulate,

proposals for the authorization, establishment, direction

and control of United Nations military observer missions

and to reach agreement on legal, financial, administrative

and other organizational issues. It is a matter for regret that

despite this major effort there is as yet no final consensus.

There are indications, however, that the will to reach

agreement does exist, and my delegation urges that the

Special Committee should continue its work with a sense of

urgency renewed by this Assembly’s reaffirmation of the

necessity of an effective peace-keeping system to international

order and security.

96. The proposals submitted to this Assembly by the

USSR which are now included in the agenda as an item

entitled “The strengthening of international security” may

provide an opportunity for such a reaffirmation. My

delegation was particularly glad to hear from the Foreign

Minister of the USSR, in his statement revealing these

proposals, that it was the view of his Government that it

was not sufficient alone to stamp out fires but that it was

“more important to take effective measures to safeguard

the world in general from fires, and to remove in good time

the centres of potential conflicts and complications”

[1756th meeting, para. 135]. Peace-keeping operations of

such a preventive character — operations that come early

enough to forestall conflict — are precisely those which are

of the greatest significance to the smaller countries, and my

delegation will follow with close interest the work of the

Special Committee in the months ahead as it continues its

attempts to devise workable arrangements by which this

Organization may discharge these responsibilities. We will

watch, indeed, for a new resolve to promote a regime of

international security, bearing in mind that the frustrations

of past attempts have arisen in the main from disagreements

between the major Powers.

97. Let me say, however, that it is imperative — if we are to

be faithful to the Charter and to the interests of the many

small, and not so small, States which are now so much a

part of this Organization — that all such arrangements

proceed from a clear acknowledgment of the distinction

between peace-keeping operations of a preventive character

and operations for peace enforcement contemplated under

chapter 7 of the Charter. It is imperative that the distinction

should be acknowledged, for the distinction is fundamental

and not merely terminological. Indeed, the distinction

has become more obvious and the need to acknowledge

it has become more pressing for two quite separate

reasons: first, because of the changed character of international

society consequent on the process of de-colonization

and, secondly, because of the experience of the United

Nations in the exercise of peace-keeping and peace enforcement

functions over the last 24 years.

98. Change in the character of international society

actually began, if only formally, with the coming into force

of the Charter; for in formulating and in signing the Charter

the major powers, at the very least, signified their will to

move beyond the doctrine of raison d’état in the conduct

of their affairs. The admission to membership of the new

States, most of them small, many of them weak, at once

dramatized and bore witness to this change; for the world

community — as represented by this Organization — is

founded upon acceptance of the sovereign equality of all

Member States, not upon their capacity to prove by force

of arms that they are so equal. It is both reasonable and

logical, therefore, that there should be an explicit expectation

on the part of the new States, and indeed, of all small

States, that from this evolving concept of nationhood it

should follow that admission to this Organization carries

with it the assurance of a security concomitant with the

right to self-determination.

99. Let us remember that resolution 1514 (XV) — itself the

chapter of decolonization — expressly affirmed that the

tight to self-determination and nationhood was not dependent

on the trappings of wealth and power associated with

the nation state of long ago. Having thus affirmed the right

of men to govern themselves, the right of new nations to

exist, this Organization must provide just and effective

means of protecting those rights and to secure those States,

for it would be to argue a curious logic — having given life to

the small States under conditions in no way related to the

material power they might later exercise in affairs of the

world, but which had everything to do with the rights of

their peoples as men—that Member States of this Organization

should remain unmoved as these new nations fall prey

to the expansionist ambitions of older or far more powerful

neighbours and the aspirations of their peoples are crushed.

100. It is of more than passing interest to recall resolution

1954 (XVIII) on the question of Basutoland, Bechuanaland

and Swaziland which was adopted by the General Assembly

on 11 December 1963. Paragraph 4 of that resolution reads

as follows:

“Solemnly warns the Government of the Republic of

South Africa that any attempt to annex or encroach upon

the territorial integrity of these three Territories shall be

considered an act of aggression”.

Such a warning might be salutary for others besides South

Africa, and might find new expression in a vigorous concept

of peace-keeping operations which would be explicitly

related to the changed character of United Nations membership

and to the vital need of so many States for

international guarantees of their territorial security.

101. The second reason which makes it imperative to

acknowledge the distinction between peace-keeping and

peace enforcement functions is the actual experience of this

Organization. That experience over the years has clearly

shown an inverse relationship between the degree of success

attending peace-keeping efforts and the extent of their

involvement in the struggle for supremacy between the

super-Powers. If the new initiative for the structuring of a

peace-keeping régime is to be successful, the arrangements

devised must avoid procedures which permit the objectives

of power to stultify the objective of international peace.

Given the susceptibility of the Security Council to the

paralysing stresses of the power conflict, the veto of the

permanent members of the Security Council must not be

allowed to frustrate the discharge by this Organization of

its most fundamental duty—the preservation of international peace.

102. Experience points to still another reason, quite apart

from the veto, why it would be unwise to acknowledge an

exclusive authority in the Security Council in relation to

preventive peace-keeping measures. I refer, of course, to the

tendency — so graphically described in the opening statement

of this debate delivered by the Foreign Minister of

Brazil — “to deal with certain questions in narrow and

ever-dwindling circles” by a process of transference from

the General Assembly to the Security Council to the

permanent members to the “super-Powers” — the trend, as

he described it, to “a new world directorate” [1755th

meeting, para, 15].

103. Certainly in the area of peace-keeping, all our

experience should lead this Assembly to assert that jurisdiction

which it possesses under the Charter stricto sensu and

under its equally valid interpretation through application.

We are advocating an approach to the question of peace-keeping

operations which will permit States under threat of

aggression to ask for international machinery in advance of

conflict since we believe that such a system in itself would

be a deterrent to aggression and so a major factor in

securing international peace. It would also of necessity help

to avoid the current diversion of energies and resources

within small States from the urgent tasks of development to

the essential requirements of defence — a diversion which

small States have no option but to make when faced with

hostility from across their borders and the absence of

effective international machinery that will deter or restrain

the intruder.

104. I should like to repeat what I said to the Assembly a

year ago [1680th meeting] in this context: if the world

Organization is serious in its commitment to the economic

growth of developing countries, it must acknowledge that

international guarantees of territorial security must be the

prerequisite for an international effort for development.

The dilemma of development or defence which faces many

a small State is a dilemma which can be resolved in favour

of development only at the international level. The threatened

State has no option. My own country’s experience has

led us to advocate this; but it could and would be the

experience of many another State, and not only the small

ones, if there continues to be no effective machinery for

international security and if the practice were once established

that treaties, however solemnly concluded and

however consistently acknowledged and respected, could be

repudiated unilaterally at the whim of the more powerful

signatory.

1O5. It is, therefore, with considerable satisfaction that

my Government recognizes the positive contribution to

international peace and security made at the United

Nations Conference on the Law of Treaties convened under

the auspices of this Organization at Vienna. With the

conclusion of the Treaty the world community has taken

one step further towards the ordered society that is our

common goal. We must now trust that the solemn

commitment to the rule of law in international relations

which this Treaty endorses will make less likely that resort

to naked force which has hitherto characterized relations

between the weak and the strong in the international

community.

106. In this context, too, my Government has a modest

satisfaction in the progress so far made in the work of the

Special Committee on Principles of International Law

concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among

States and in the work of the Special Committee on the

Question of Defining Aggression. Given the satisfactory

conclusion of the Vienna Convention on the Law of

Treaties and assuming satisfactory results from the current

work of the Special Committee on Peace-keeping Operations,

and of the above-mentioned committees on the

definition of aggression and on friendly relations among

States, it is possible that as we celebrate the twenty-fifth

anniversary of this Organization next year we can record, at

last, some real progress in fulfilling the purposes of the

Charter in the area of international peace and understanding.

107. Meanwhile, as we struggle to achieve a satisfactory

framework of international legality, the problems of the

Middle East are all too vivid reminders of the inadequacies

of the present. My Government believes, however, that

Security Council resolution 242 (1967) does provide a

practical basis for securing a settlement that will endure,

and we join our voices with all those who call upon the

parties to put into operation, as it is their duty to do under

the Charter, the balanced arrangements for which the

resolution provides. We are convinced that the acquisition

of territory by force, contrary to the relevant provisions of

the Charter, should never be sanctioned by the international

community.

108. Last year, I spoke [1680th meeting] at length and in

great detail on the issue of Venezuelan hostility and

aggression against Guyana. Excluded as we are from

participation in the hemisphere’s regional organization and

in its collective security arrangements, it is inevitable that

Guyana should raise these matters before the world body.

Even so, it is no part of the purpose of my Government to

escalate tensions that already exist by protracted verbal

exchanges. It remains the case, however, that that hostility

directed to the acquisition of over two thirds of the

territory of Guyana has continued.

109. I explained last October to the Assembly that this

programme of hostility was one which suffered no lack of

financial resources and which functioned through agents

working under direction from the Venezuelan side of our

border. To some, who are unfamiliar with our problems,

these statements may have seemed unduly alarmist. Within

three months of that date, however, and in the first days of

this year, the then Venezuelan Government gave positive

confirmation of them when they launched into unsuccessful

rebellion, in the south-west region of my country, a

body of men who had been trained, armed and supplied in

Venezuela, and whose leaders were drawn mainly from a

group of ranchers, many of them not even citizens of

Guyana, and all of whom, from the date of Guyana’s

independence, have resented the authority of our Government.

110. These events took place at a time of change in the

Government of Venezuela and I do not enlarge upon them

here; for it has been my Government’s hope that the

statesmen who now lead the Venezuelan people will bring

to bear on the problems which confront them a vision of

the future in which respect for international legality, and

for the rights and aspirations of the new State on its

borders — a State which has so recently won its freedom

from a colonial overlordship — would be the dominant

feature. The leaders of that Government have made public

asseverations of their peaceful intentions. We place these

before the international community, who are the best

judges of the honour of all States.

111. I would be less than candid if I did not convey the

concern of my Government over other aspects of our

relations with Venezuela. Within the last month for

example, in the early days of this session of the Assembly,

the Venezuelan Government issued a statement adopting

and reiterating intimidatory warnings that were first issued

by the previous administration, to the effect that Venezuela

would not recognize mining concessions granted by the

Government of Guyana in respect of the area of my

country which they claim. The present Venezuelan Government

has now gone even further and has said that it will not

recognize the right of private firms to carry out mineral

exploitation in that region. I explained last year that it was

part of the pressure being brought to bear upon us that

Venezuela sought to intimidate all who were willing to

invest in the development of the region. When it is

remembered that this region represents two thirds of

Guyana and includes some of the richest areas of our

country in terms of mineral and forest resources, it will be

appreciated that what is being attempted is direct pressure

to stifle development. It is no accident that this pressure

has been re-exerted at a moment when the possibility of

producing uranium in sizable quantities and of harnessing

of hydro-electric power promise an economic break-

through for Guyana of the kind that oil has already

provided for Venezuela.

112. This is aggression of another sort. It is aggression of

the type that the Special Committee on Principles of

International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation

among States has in fact been discussing. Indeed,

it is aggression of the type that the Latin American region,

of which we are a part, itself recently proscribed when, in

the Consensus of Viña del Mar, it stipulated respect for

the principle that “no State may apply or encourage

economic and political coercion to compel another State to

grant it advantages of any kind; on the contrary, every

effort must be made to avoid policies, actions and measures

which may endanger the economic and social development

of another State“. It could never be the case that this

principle, so central to relations between Latin American

countries and the United States, would lose validity when

applied to relations between countries of Latin America

itself. On the contrary, its validity lies precisely in the

inhibition it places upon destructive forces anywhere within

the hemisphere which, if left unchecked, would make a

mockery of that effort for development which the drafters

of the Consensus were concerned to promote. Economic

pressures levelled against us by Venezuela may succeed, not

in depriving us of our land — for we have not so recently

won our freedom only to yield it to another imperialism — but

in preventing development, in retarding the economic

progress of Guyana, in making it more difficult for us to

make the changes necessary in our society if all our people

are to share in a better life. We cannot remain silent in the

face of statements made within four days of the beginning

of this twenty-fourth session of the Assembly and which

were calculated to stifle our economic growth and frustrate

all our efforts for development. It is necessary for these

things to be known, for silence about them here helps only

those who exert the pressures by word and deed outside

these walls. It is necessary for these things to be said; and

they must be said here, for there is no other place for us to

say them.

113. I do not know what future course our relations with

Venezuela will take. What I do know is that the major

decisions of war and peace are seldom taken in deliberate

ways or on the basis of programmed escalation. The resort

to force will invariably have behind it a history which can,

in retrospect, be seen to be leading inexorably step by step

to calamity — each step conditioned by the one that went

before and unmindful of the next which it is making

inevitable. In relations between States and peoples it is not

a new phenomenon that what starts as a political diversion

soon becomes transformed: first into a semantic exercise,

then into dogma, then into an issue of national honour, and

so to enmity and hate. Almost at any stage, save perhaps

the last, the process might be stopped by men of wisdom

and courage.

114. If the cause of international understanding and

international peace is to be saved, it is not enough for

Governments to assert their peaceful intentions. Those

intentions alone can never be a guarantee of peace if

attitudes of hostility are being engendered and policies of

enmity are being pursued. It is not only the resort to force

that threatens the peace of the world; it is the whole range

of devices which States have created to pursue their goals of

power or of national ambition. Propaganda, pressure,

intimidation, clandestine activity, subversion, exclusionary

arrangements, economic strangulation—all these form part

of the weaponry of aggression. States that employ them in

their service can never justly assert peaceful intentions; and

until they are outlawed by international society and

brought under the sanction of a code of international

behaviour, we can never be sure that we have brought peace

to the world because men have ceased to wage war.

115. I now turn to the subject of the world’s continuing

racial confrontation. It is the view of my Government that,

despite the untiring efforts of so many agencies of this

Organization and, let it not be forgotten, of the

non-governmental organizations, the world’s racial crisis shows

no sign of abating. What is more, that crisis is being made

more intractable as the white and non-white peoples of the

world divide across the development barrier. The facts are

not pleasant, but they are real. The vast majority of the

non-white people of the world to whom the dismantling of

the colonial apparatus since 1945 has brought freedom

today represent the world’s economically under-privileged,

whose natural resources have been systematically exploited

for the enrichment of others. Their States are sometimes

euphemistically described as the developing countries.

Many are not developing at all; some which have a chance

of developing find it necessary, as I have just illustrated, to

divert their scarce human and financial resources away from

development, merely to ensure their survival as States

against avarice and expansionism across their borders;

others find their development forever illusory as the deeds

of the developed countries fail to match their words and as

the gap between them widens during every year of the

United Nations Development Decade.

116. It is my Government’s view that the world racial

crisis will not recede while the distinctions of wealth and

poverty, of advance and stagnation, of smugness and

despair, that now mark the boundaries between the

developed and the developing nations, mark also in large

measure the boundaries between the white and non-white

worlds. The whole international effort in the area of race

relations may yet fail, unless international guarantees of

social justice for all people are matched by effective action

towards economic justice for all States. The responsibilities

of the international community, and of the developed

countries in particular, in ensuring the success of the

Second United Nations Development Decade have a significance

which goes well beyond matters of trade and development.

117. Meanwhile, areas of the world in which racial

bigotry, repression and discrimination have become the

creed of minority regimes continue to defile a planet which

must still sustain us all. From Mozambique to Angola,

Southern Rhodesia to South Africa, outrages against human

dignity continue to furnish both cause and effect in respect

of the black man’s anguish. In South Africa, apartheid has

long since been converted into an article of faith and,

encouraged by the refusal of the representatives of the

major Powers to go beyond protestations of moral outrage

at this inhuman system, the South African regime has now

exported its product to Southern Rhodesia. Here, the illegal

regime — permitted to become entrenched, and now establishing

itself through a process of gradual, if tacit, recognition — has

installed a constitutional system that regards as

axiomatic the inability of the peoples of Zimbabwe to rule

themselves and provides a flexible framework for the

intensification of repressive measures against them.

118. In Namibia, the South African regime persists in

destroying the national unity of the indigenous people and

instituting a reign of terror against them in brazen defiance

of the resolutions of the Security Council and the General

Assembly. In the absence of any positive indication on the

part of the permanent members of the Security Council

fully to discharge their responsibilities under the Charter in

respect of that Territory — responsibilities which would

appear to follow logically from the Security Council’s

explicit recognition of the General Assembly’s decision

terminating the mandate of South Africa [resolution

2145 (XXI)] — an even greater burden now devolves on the

United Nations Council for Namibia and on the remaining

membership of this Organization. To assist the Council in

its unenviable task, it is necessary for the General Assembly

to take a second look at the Council’s present structure

with a view to adopting measures calculated to enhance its

effectiveness. In particular, it may be useful to consider a

reconstitution of the Council to provide for representation

from those countries which are not at present represented

on it but whose commitments to the cause of African

freedom has never been in doubt.

119. We welcome, also, the consideration now being given

to the question of appointing a permanent President to

assist in defining the direction in which the Council must

proceed in view of South Africa’s intransigence and

Security Council inaction; for there can be little doubt that

our failure to define an effective approach to the problems

posed by apartheid in South Africa, by the illegal regime in

Southern Rhodesia and by South Africa’s continuing

unlawful presence in a territory that is now a ward of the

international community, proceeds mainly from the refusal

of the permanent members of the Security Council to

accept the responsibilities which their power and authority

confer. My Government will continue to work in all ways

open to it - indeed it is already working on the United

Nations Council for Namibia — to put an end to the

injustices, indignities and oppressions now meted out to the

indigenous people of southern Africa.

120. I spoke a moment ago about the Second United

Nations Development Decade. The failure of the first

Development Decade to fulfil the aspirations of the

developing countries cannot but cause us to be sceptical of

the projections for the second. The growth rates anticipated

have not been achieved. The aid hoped for, and indeed

promised, has not been provided. Contrary to decision

29 (II) of the United Nations Conference on Trade and

Development and to General Assembly resolution

2415 (XXHI) endorsing that decision, the terms and conditions

of aid have not improved and the problems of

external indebtedness have not been alleviated despite these

several exhortations to the developed countries. The lowering

of trade barriers has in the main benefited the already

favoured few. In addition, skilled people vital to development

and trained by the developing countries at great

expense continue to be attracted from them without any

serious effort by the developed countries to neutralize the

effect of this drain upon already slender resources. There

has been development in the first decade; but it has been

almost entirely to the advantage of the already developed.

Can we realistically expect any improvement in the second?

121. In addition, we have been concerned in recent

months with certain trends in regard to United Nations

activities in the developmental area. My Government has

noted with regret what appears to be a hardening of

attitudes by the developed world in regard to normal

expectations of expansion in the development activities

carried on the budget of the United Nations and its

associated agencies. My delegation will give its support to

every effort in this Organization to secure a tangible

reaffirmation of faith by the developed world in the

promotion of the development process through the United Nations.

122. Within the last few days the Commission on International

Development under the Chairmanship of the Right

Honourable Lester Pearson of Canada and including in its

membership Sir Arthur Lewis, the eminent West Indian

economist who has been so closely identified with my own

country’s programme of development, has published its

report. In our view, this report deserves the most careful

consideration by this Organization and by all its agencies

concerned with promoting the cause of development

throughout the world. In particular, may I commend to the

developed countries the timely urgings of the Commission

that they take up the great challenge of international

development in the awareness that their response to it:

“will show whether we understand the implications of

interdependence or whether we prefer to delude ourselves

that the poverty and deprivation of the great majority of

mankind can be ignored without tragic consequences for

all“

123. The total experience of the past decade has served to

confirm a basic truth that the developing countries have

acknowledged from the first, namely, that their economic

and social advancement must depend chiefly on their own

efforts. National goals must inevitably take account of

regional and international activity and just as the achievement

of those goals may be materially helped by external

assistance, so must the chance of success continue to be

influenced by forces far beyond the national control. The

basic effort, however, must be a national one; and my

Government fully endorses the observation of the Pearson

Commission that development must come from within and

that no foreign help will suffice where there is no national

will to make the fundamental changes which are needed.

Guyana has accepted this from the beginning and we have

attempted to make that effort in a variety of ways—not

east among them the promotion of the co-operative. The

Economic and Social Council in its resolution 1413 (XLVI)

of 6 June 1969, has already taken note of the important

role that the co-operative movement can play in economic

and social development and the Council has, by this

resolution, requested that the preparatory plans for the

Second United Nations Development Decade should contain

2 recognition of the utility of the co-operative effort.

We have found in Guyana that co-operative activity

founded, as it has been, on the principle of self-help has

tapped the natural vigour of our people and involved them

in a significant way in wide-ranging community action.

Indeed, so convinced are we of the possibilities for

co-operative action that when in February 1970, Guyana,

in fulfilment of the processes of independence, becomes a

Republic, it will be a Republic committed to the concept of

the co-operative as a fundamental instrument of social and

economic change. My Government urges that both the

spirit and terms of Economic and Social Council resolution

1413 (XLVI) be reflected in the final plans for the Second

United Nations Development Decade.

124. The Decade must establish an equilibrium between

man’s giant strides in science and technology and his

relatively ineffectual efforts in the social and economic

fields. It must establish a balance between the wealth and

strength and prosperity of the developed countries and the

poverty, weakness and misery of the undeveloped countries.

It must bring a better and more equitable distribution

of the riches of our planet among all the people destined to

dwell on it; and it must witness a more vigorous, more

experimental, and more courageous role played by this

Organization in the achievement of those results. In a few

weeks this Assembly will be discussing the report of the

Preparatory Committee for the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of

the United Nations [A/7690]. The decisions of the

Assembly on this report can be of far-reaching importance

to the future of this Organization, for it must be our

purpose to ensure that these decisions encompass matters

of substance relating to the effective working of the

Organization and its agencies. Our activities next year must

go beyond ceremonial and self-appreciation. We can best do

honour to those who conceived and developed this Organization

by re-equipping it to fulfil in the seventies and

beyond the lofty purposes it was designed to serve in the

post-war world.

125. We can best honour the end of the first 25 years of

the United Nations by ensuring that there is cause for

celebration at the end of the next 25. My delegation

exhorts this Assembly to approach the consideration of the

report of the Committee in this spirit of commitment

- commitment not merely to the principles of the Charter,

but to their effective application through the machinery of

this Organization. If in the decisions we make this year we

demonstrate such a commitment, and display both courage

and inventiveness in pursuit of the practical fulfilment of

the principles of the Charter, we will have begun the work

of reclaiming the faith of the peoples of the world in this

Organization — a faith without which there is little cause for

celebration of years past, and little hope for the years

ahead. To that work of reclamation, my delegation pledges itself.