22011948 Speech of the Representative of India in the Security Council Mr. Gopalaswami Ayyangar, against the change in Agenda of the Meeting held on 22nd January 1948
22011948 Speech of the Representative of India in the Security Council Mr. Gopalaswami Ayyangar, against the change in Agenda of the Meeting held on 22nd January 1948
The item on the agenda on which the debates have so far proceeded has been described throughout as "The Jammu & Kashmir question." For the first time, this heading has been changed in the provisional agenda to "The India-Pakistan question." The justification for this change has been said to be the receipt of a letter from the representative of Pakistan dated 20 January 1948 [Document S!655}. The first sentence of this letter is as follows: "I beg to request that a meeting of the Security Council may be called at as early a date as possible to consider the situations (other than the Jammu & Kashmir situation) set out in my letter dated 15 January 1948 addressed to the Secretary-General."
This letter, therefore, refers to situations other than the Jammu & Kashmir situation, which we have been debating all these days.
If I may draw the attention of the Security Council to incidents that have happened in the course of this debate, I would hark back immediately to what the President said when he adjourned the last meeting of the Security Council. He said: "I propose that we meet again to resume our consideration of this question..." The words "this question" can have had no meaning other than the Jammu & Kashmir question, which we were debating on that day.
If the Security Council looks at what the representative of Pakistan said in this connexion, it will find that in the letter dated 15 January 1948, with which he submitted a set of three documents [Document SJ646), he contemplated that the document relating to the counter-complaint of Pakistan against india was to be taken up separately.
In the speech of the representative of Pakistan on 16 January 1948 [228th meeting], he said very categorically:
"The question of Kashmir has been taken up by the Security Council, as it was bound to be, having been referred to the Council earlier than the other questions which Pakistan has raised. I shall therefore, at this stage, confine my submission to the question of Kashmir. However, as I have already said, in order to appreciate the Kashmir situation it is essential to view it against its proper background. It is not an isolated incident. At this stage, therefore, I shall touch upon other matters only so far as they are relevant to a proper appreciation of the Kashmir question. I shall develop the rest of my case when its consideration is taken up by the Security Council."
I may also refer to what I had to say the day before yesterday on the question of the heading given to the draft resolution that was placed before the Security Council. I insisted that the resolution had to be confined to the Jammu & Kashmir question, and the Security Council agreed that for the time being we were concerned only with the Jammu & Kashmir question.
The letter of Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan of 20 January 1948 refers to situations other than the Jammu & Kashmir question. India does not contend that those situations should not be placed on the agenda of the Security Council. it is quite willing that those situations should be placed before the Security Council, but that step has not been taken yet. It would be wrong, in my opinion, merely on the strength of a request from Sir Zafrullah Khan that those questions should be put down for a meeting of the Security Council at an early date, to change the heading, and, therefore, the content of the matter on which the debate has proceeded so far.
I am quite willing, on behalf of India, for that particular question to be included on the agenda of the Security Council as soon as possible. I have already informed the President of the Security Council that, due to the fact that this complaint was first put into our hands only after we arrived here, and as we had to communicate with our Government both for authority and for the material necessary to answer the wide ground Covered by this counter-complaint, we have to take a little time to file our answer. We hope, however, to be able to do so in the course of the next few days.
When our answer is filed and Sir Zafrullah Khan makes his statement on that counter-complaint and we reply to his statement, then the Security Council can proceed to debate that part of the affair in as elaborate a fashion as it may desire.
But at the present moment, I asked the President for this meeting of the Security Council for the purpose of resuming the debate which was suspended the day before yesterday, and he was good enough to call a meeting for today in order to resume that debate. The representation of that debate and the receipt of the kind of letter that has been sent by Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan cannot be a justification for altering the description of the item on the agenda, and, therefore changing the content of this debate.
We are very keen, as is known, to get on with the discussion of the Jammu & Kashmir question as soon as possible, and perhaps if we are able to arrive at decisions which might be acceptable to both parties, all that is said in the counter-complaint might disappear from controversy altogether. But I do not want to anticipate what we might say, in regard to that counter-complaint.
It is very important that the provisional agenda should not be approved as it has been placed before the Security Council, but that the original heading should be restored. If the President of the Security Council desires to place Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan's letter on the agenda, I have no objection, but that cannot be part of the item which is already on the agenda. The difference between making it a part of that item and making it a separate item is that if it is made a separate item, as I contend it should be, it could be discussed only after the first item had been disposed of, and it could not be discussed as part of the first item.
I wish to make it clear that India is not trying to avoid any issue that Pakistan may have raised in its counter-complaint. We are quite willing to answer the whole of their case, and we shall do so in due course. But I would ask the Security Council to get on with the work it has already started in the investigation of the Jammu & Kashmir question, and to see that this debate is brought to a conclusion as early as possible. I hope that conclusion will be one which will eventually be acceptable to both parties.
If, however, the title of this item on the agenda is to be changed and the range of debate is to be widened, then we shall have to consider what we should do if such a decision is taken by the Security Council. Obviously, we cannot get on with the debate today unless it is confined to the Jammu & Kashmir question.
I hope the Security Council will understand the spirit in which I have pleaded for the restoration of the item on the agenda as it has been before us all these days. I hope the Security Council will agree with me.
(SCOR, 3rd Year, Mtg. no. 231, pp. 245-47)
I wish to understand the position clearly before I can find it possible to decide what the attitude of my delegation may be.
- good deal has been said concerning the technicality of the considerations that have been urged by the various representatives; a great deal more has been said concerning the substance of the dispute of which the Security Council is seized at the present time.
On main issues there is hardly any difficulty amongst the members of the Security Council or the representatives of India and Pakistan. There is no doubt that the Security Council now has before it both the Jammu & Kashmir question and situations other than this question which have been brought to the attention of the Security Council by Pakistan. There is no doubt about that. The only question concerned is what we are debating at the present time.
In this connexion I wish to assure the Security Council that if there are any situations other than that relating to the Jammu & Kashmir question which have a bearing on the decision of this question, we are not minded to exclude such considerations. We certainly are prepared to discuss other aspects of the present situation in India which may have a relevant bearing on the decision of the Jarnrnu & Kashmir question, and we are quite prepared to discuss the Jammu & Kashmir question with referenceMo those other relevant considerations.
What I have been trying to persuade the Security Council to accept is the point that we are now engaged in debating only the Jammu & Kashmir question, with all the background that anyone may bring into it. We are not discussing those other situations referred to in the letter of Sir Zafrullah Khan dated 20 January--situations other than the Jammu & Kashmir situation. Sir Zafrullah Khan, himself, concedes—and no one can deny it—that there is a Jammu & Kashmir question and that there are other situations in India in respect of both which the parties have alleged there might be danger to the maintenance of international peace and security. We are quite willing that those other situations should be brought up before the Security Council and discussed on their merits. I am now concerned with being satisfied that the debate in which we are now engaged will confine itself to the Jammu & Kashmir question.
It has been pointed out by the representative of the United States that the determination of this question should be governed by rule 10 of the rules of procedure, which states: "Any item of the agenda of a meeting of the 'Security Council, consideration of which has not been completed at that meeting, shall, unless the Security Council otherwise decides, automatically be included in the agenda of the next meeting". The rule being what it is, I was certainly not surprised at the very appropriate remark of the representative of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that he found it difficult to understand why an item which bore a certain description on the agenda of the previous meeting, and which was not disposed of at that meeting, disappeared and a new description was substituted on the agenda for this meeting.
I think that the logical conclusion of the argument of the representative of the United States is that the description used in the agenda of our last meeting must automatically be repeated in the description of the item of the agenda of today's meeting. The representative of the United States went on, however, to remark that it did not matter very much how the item was described on the agenda provided it was understood that the substance of what we were discussing today was only the Jammu & Kashmir question; that it had to be discussed along with the background which Sir Zafrullah Khan has brought to the attention of the Security Council; and that other situations should be taken up as soon as they were ready and as soon as the Security Council was in a position to deal with them. I quite agree.
The representative of the United Kingdom who, I believe, moved a very proper amendment to the provisional agenda, has now withdrawn that amendment largely on account of the apprehensions he apparently entertained as to whether it would secure the necessary support in this body. The representative of the United Kingdom went on to insist, however, that what we now have to discuss is the Jammu & Kashmir question.
I think that Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan took a very proper view, in his remarks, when he said that while the Security Council is seized of both sets of complaints, it did not matter to him how those complaints were dealt with or in what order they were considered on the agenda, and that he, for one, would not have objected to the amendment that was moved by the representative of the United Kingdom, which was unfortunately withdrawn.
Before I have to decide what our own attitude should be, may I have a clear ruling from the President, or an«assurance from the Security Council, that we shall now proceed only with the debate on the Jammu & Kashmir question, and that, as soon as the other matter is ready, it can be put on the agenda and we proceed to deal with it also?
There is one other matter I wish to present to the Security Council in this connexion. It really does not matter how the particular item is described, whether it be the "India-Pakistan question," for the Jammu & Kashmir question is really an India-Pakistan question. I quite recognize that. But as I pointed out to the members, what we are now trying to decide is what, in particular, in connexion with the India-Pakistan question, we are discussing now. If paragraphs (a) and (b) under item 2 of the provisional agenda stood by themselves and the heading was "The India-Pakistan question," it might have been some indication to me that the intention was to confine the matter only to the Jammu & Kashmir question, because both paragraphs "(a) and (b) of item 2 refer to the Jammu & Kashmir situation. However, paragraph (c) is also included under this heading, and it refers to situations other than the Jammu & Kashmir situation, as I have already read to the members from the letter of Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan. If we allow paragraph (c) to stand without even an assurance to me from the Security Council that those other matters are not to be considered immediately but will be taken up later, and that only such facts or arguments relating to those other matters as may have a bearing on the Jammu & Kashmir question can be referred to in this debate, it will be difficult for us to continue to participate in this debate, because we are not prepared now to deal with the larger issues.
I do not wish to sound a note of dissent from what may be general opinion among the members of the Security Council, but as I said in the speech which I made earlier this afternoon, unless we are satisfied that the debate which we are now continuing is a debate which, for the time being in any case, is restricted to the Jammu & Kashmir question, we shall be performing no useful service in continuing to participate in this debate.
As suggested by the representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States of America, I ask that we recognize that it is only the Jammu & Kashmir question which is under consideration. I believe even Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan said that we should now proceed with the Jammu & Kashmir question. We shall try our best to bring up other questions for debate as early as possible. Unless that assurance is forthcoming, we shall be placed in a very difficult position.
(SCOR, 3rd Year, Mtg. no. 231, pp. 161-153)