I repeat, the implementation of these measures must not be made dependent on an agreement on disarmament questions, and the achievement of a disarmament agreement must not be made conditional on a decision to take the steps that I have indicated.

A year ago the General Assembly, on the initiative of the Soviet Union, adopted a resolution containing the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples."

56

Can the General Assembly ignore the existing situation and avoid taking measures to implement the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples? No, it cannot do so, unless it wants to lose the confidence of those peoples.

The Soviet Government supports the decision of the Conference of NonAligned Countries, recently held at Belgrade, which formally declared the need for the immediate, unconditional, complete and final abolition of colonialism. The Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples was colonialism's death sentence, and this sentence must be carried out. We sup port the demand made at the Conference of Non-Aligned Countries that 1962 should see the final liquidation of colonial régimes everywhere. We consider that this appeal must be supported here and that the United Nations should give it the status of an international decision.

The Government of the Soviet Union has proposed that the item "The situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples" should be discussed at the present session. We hope that appropriate measures will be taken as a result of such discussion.

57

The United Nations cannot fulfil its task of consolidating peace and promoting international collaboration so long as the lawful rights of the People's Republic of China in the Organization have not been restored. All who are concerned to strengthen peace and wish to make the United Nations into a genuine instrument for peace and collaboration among States should take steps for the immediate restoration of the lawful rights of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations, and for the expulsion of the representatives of the Chiang Kaishek clique from all United Nations organs.

The Soviet Government appeals to the General Assembly, and to all the Governments represented in it, to put an end to the present intolerable situation in which the representatives of the Chiang Kai-shek clique are unlawfully usurping China's seat in the United Nations. We are convinced that any Government which really stands for peace and for general and complete disarmament cannot fail to support this equitable view. Any Government represented in the United Nations which casts its vote with the opponents of the restoration of the People's Republic of China's lawful rights in the United Nations and against those who favour respecting the inalienable rights of the Chinese people, strengthening the United Nations and consolidating peace and collaboration among all States, regardless of their social systems, will bear a heavy responsibility.

At the last session of the General Assembly, Cuba was warmly applauded. The people of this country has accomplished a great revolutionary feat by overthrowing the tyrant Batista and the foreign monopolies, and has boldly taken the new road of a free and independent life.

What do the Cubans want? They want to govern their country themselves, to use its wealth themselves, and to adopt the system and way of life that they

56 U.N. General Assembly Res. 1514 (XV) of Dec. 14, 1960; text in American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1960, pp. 110-111.

157

See U.N. doc. A/4889 and post, docs. 52 and 53.

prefer. Is not this in line with the principles and high purposes to which the States Members of the United Nations subscribed in signing the Organization's Charter? And is it not a crime to organize against Cuba-whose people wishes to build its own State in independence subversive activities, an economic blockade, and armed intervention?

The General Assembly cannot overlook the fact that those who organized the recent intervention are hatching fresh criminal plots against the Cuban people. The Soviet Union's attitude towards that imperialistic policy is well known. Its warnings remain in force.

It would be desirable for the situation in Laos to be restored to normal, at the earliest possible moment, and for an agreement to be reached enabling Laos to develop as an independent and neutral State. We hope that the three-Power negotiations in Laos for the formation of a Government of national unity headed by Prince Souvanna Phouma, and the Geneva conversations concerning noninterference in the domestic affairs of Laos and respect for its independence and neutrality, will end in success." The Soviet Union, like the other socialist countries, is in favour of settling this problem promptly and of signing, even tomorrow, the necessary agreement. It is now for others to play their part.

We aim at the broadest possible extension and development of all economic and other useful ties with every single State, including of course the independent countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, but also the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France and other developed capitalist countries. We are not pessimists, and do not see the horizon as hopelessly darkened by the leaden clouds of approaching war. The world situation is serious and does not inspire complacency. The sixteenth session of the United Nations is meeting in troubled times. But this makes it all the more incumbent upon us to act resolutely and do everything in our power to make the international horizon brighter, so that the warm sun of lasting peace may finally shine upon mankind.

43. UNITED STATES CONTINUED OPPOSITION TO THE REPRESENTATION OF COMMUNIST CHINA IN THE UNITED NATIONS: Statement Made by the U.S. Representative (Stevenson) Before the U.N. General Assembly, December 1, 1961 (Excerpts)59

The question confronting the Assembly of the representation of China in the United Nations is of worldwide importance.

We live in an age when the ever-expanding family of nations is striving anew to realize the vision of the United Nations Charter: a world community, freed from the overhanging menace of war, acting together in equal dignity and mutual tolerance to create a better life for humanity. This very Assembly, in its majestic diversity, is both the physical symbol and the practical embodiment-however imperfect of that transcendent vision.

In striving toward that vision, what we decide about the representation of China will have momentous consequences. For more is at stake than the status of certain delegations. More is at stake than the registering or reflecting of existing facts of power. Indeed, the under

58

See post, docs. 510-528.

U.S.-U.N. press release 3872 (text as printed in the Department of State Bulletin, Jan. 15, 1962, pp. 108–113).

lying question is how the great people of China, who by a tragedy of history have been forcibly cut off from their own traditions and even led into war against the community of nations, can be enabled to achieve their own desires to live with themselves and with the rest of the world in peace and tolerance.

This question has a long history. For 12 years past, ever since the Communist armies conquered the Chinese mainland and the Republic of China relocated its Government in Taipei, the community of nations has been confronted with a whole set of profoundly vexing problems. Most of them have arisen from aggressive military actions by the Chinese Communists-against Korea, against the Government of the Republic of China on its island refuge, against Tibet, and against south and southeast Asia.

The problem before us today, in its simplest terms, is this: The authorities who have carried out those aggressive actions, who have for 12 years been in continuous and violent defiance of the principles of the United Nations and of the resolutions of the General Assembly, and deaf to the restraining pleas of law-abiding members, these same warlike authorities claim the right to occupy the seat of China here and demand that we eject from the United Nations the representatives of the Republic of China.

Now, what is to be done about this problem? And what in particular can the United Nations do?

The problem is, in reality, age-old. How can those who prize tolerance and humility, those whose faith commands them to "love those that hate you"-how can they make a just reply to the arrogant and the rapacious and the bitterly intolerant? To answer with equal intolerance would be to betray our own humane values. But to answer with meek submission or with a convenient pretense that wrong is not really wrong this would betray the institutions on which the future of a peaceful world depend.

There are some who acknowledge the illegal and aggressive conduct of the Chinese Communists but who believe that the United Nations can somehow accommodate this unbridled power and bring it in some measure under the control, or at least the influence, of the community of nations. They maintain that this can be accomplished by bringing Communist China into participation in the United Nations. By this step, so we are told, the interplay of ideas and interests in the United Nations would sooner or later cause these latter-day empire-builders to abandon their warlike ways and accommodate themselves to the rule of law and the comity of nations.

This is a serious view, and I intend to discuss it seriously. Certainly we must never abandon hope of winning over even the most stubborn antagonist. But reasons born of sober experience oblige us to restrain our wishful thoughts. There are four principal reasons which I think are of overriding importance, and I most earnestly urge the Assembly to consider them with great care, for the whole future of the United Nations may be at stake.

My first point is that the step advocated, once taken, is irreversible. We cannot try it and then give it up if it fails to work. Given the extraordinary and forbidding difficulty of expulsion under the charter, we must assume that, once in our midst, the Peiping representatives would stay-for better or for worse.

Secondly, there are ample grounds to suspect that a power given to such bitter words and ruthless actions as those of the Peiping regime, far from being reformed by its experience in the United Nations, would be encouraged by its success in gaining admission to exert, all the more forcefully, by threats and maneuvers, a most disruptive and demoralizing influence on the Organization at this critical moment in its history.

Thirdly, its admission, in circumstances in which it continues to violate and defy the principles of the charter, could seriously shake public confidence in the United Nations-I can assure you it would do so among the people of the United States-and this alone would significantly weaken the Organization.

Elementary prudence requires the General Assembly to reflect that there is no sign or record of any intention by the rulers of Communist China to pursue a course of action consistent with the charter. Indeed the signs all point the other way. The Peiping authorities have shown nothing but contempt for the United Nations. They go out of their way to depreciate it and to insult its members. They refuse to abandon the use of force in the Taiwan Straits. They continue to encroach on the territorial integrity of other states. They apparently don't even get along very well with the U.S.S.R.!

Fourth, Mr. President, and with particular emphasis, let me recall to the attention of my fellow delegates the explicit conditions which the Chinese Communists themselves demand to be fulfilled before they will deign to accept a seat in the United States. I quote their Prime Minister, Chou En-lai:

The United Nations must expel the Chiang Kai-shek clique and restore China's legitimate rights, otherwise it would be impossible for China to have anything to do with the United Nations.

In this short sentence are two impossible demands. The first is that we should expel from the United Nations the Republic of China. The second, "to restore China's legitimate rights," in this context and in the light of Peiping's persistent demands, can have only one meaning: that the United Nations should acquiesce in Communist China's design to conquer Taiwan and the 11 million people who live there and thereby to overthrow and abolish the independent Government of the Republic of China.

The effrontery of these demands is shocking. The Republic of China, which we are asked to expel and whose conquest and overthrow we are asked to approve, is one of the founding members of the United Nations. Its rights in this Organization extend in an unbroken line from 1945, when the charter was framed and went into effect, to the present.

Mr. President, the Republic of China is a charter member of this Organization. The seat of the Republic of China is not empty; it is

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occupied and should continue to be occupied by the able delegates of the Government of the Republic of China.

The fact that control over the Chinese mainland was wrested from the Government of the Republic of China by force of arms, and its area of actual control was thus greatly reduced, does not in the least justify expulsion nor alter the legitimate rights of the Government. The de jure authority of the Government of the Republic of China extends throughout the territory of China. Its effective jurisdiction extends over an area of over 14,000 square miles, an area greater than the territory of Albania, Belgium, Cyprus, El Salvador, Haiti, Israel, Lebanon, or Luxembourg-all of them members states of the United Nations. It extends over 11 million people, that is, over more people than exist in the territory of 65 United Nations members. Its effective control, in other words, extends over more people than the legal jurisdiction of two-thirds of the governments represented here. ...

The root of the problem lies, as it has lain from the beginning, in the hostile, callous, and seemingly intractable minds of the Chinese Communist rulers. Let those members who advocate Peiping's admission seek to exert upon its rulers whatever benign influence they can, in the hope of persuading them to accept the standards of the community of nations. Let those rulers respond to these appeals; let them give up trying to impose their demands on this Organization; let them cease their aggression, direct and indirect, and their threats of aggression; let them show respect for the rights of others; let them recognize and accept the independence and diversity of culture and institutions among their neighbors.

The United States will vote against the Soviet draft resolution 60 and give its full support to the continued participation of the representatives of the Government of the Republic of China in the United Nations.

Introduced Oct. 27, 1961, as U.N. doc. A/L.360, reading: The General Assembly,

Considering it necessary to restore the lawful rights of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations,

Bearing in mind that only representatives of the Government of the People's Republic of China are competent to occupy China's place in the United Nations and all its organs,

Resolves to remove immediately from all United Nations organs the representatives of the Chiang Kai-shek clique who are unlawfully occupying the place of China in the United Nations,

Invites the Government of the People's Republic of China to send its representatives to participate in the work of the United Nations and of all its organs. The Soviet draft resolution failed of adoption by a vote of 37 to 48 (including the U.S.), with 19 abstentions, taken Dec. 15.

An attempt to amend the Soviet draft by deleting the operative paragraphs and substituting "Decides in accordance with the above declaration that the representatives of the Government of the People's Republic of China be seated in the United Nations and all its organs" (introduced Dec. 12 by the Representatives of Cambodia, Ceylon, and Indonesia as U.N. doc. A/L.375) failed of adop tion by a two-part vote of 23 to 41 (including the U.S.), with 39 abstentions, and 30 to 45 (including the U.S.), with 29 abstentions, taken Dec. 15.