Text of the speech made by Krishna Menon (India) in the Security Council meeting no. 774 held on 21 February 1957.
Text of the speech made by Krishna Menon (India) in the Security Council meeting no. 774 held on 21 February 1957.
All I can say about the very worthy sentiments that have come from the representatives of Colombia and the Philippines is that their expression of opinion has come ten or twelve minutes too late. If it is the wish of the Security Council to remove the statement just made by the representative of Pakistan from the records, that is one thing. But at this stage to introduce very acrimonious, challenging and entirely untrue statements in regard to India, cannot go unchallenged even if 1, for various reasons, does not want to make a speech.
Mr. ROMULO (Philippines): On a point of order, Mr. President: I think that this should be a discussion between the members of the Council.
The PRESIDENT: The Council has before it a request for a recess. As there is no objection to this request, the Council will now recess for ten minutes.
The meeting was suspended at 3.35 p.m. and resumed at 3.45 p.m.
The PRESIDENT : I now call upon the representative of India. I hope that he will take into consideration the remarks of the members of the Council with regard to the Council's further procedure.
Mr. Krishna MENON (India): I am deeply beholden to the President and to the Council for their kindness in allowing us a few minutes in which to think this matter over. We think that there is considerable merit and cogency in the statements made by the representative of Colombia and the representative of the Philippines to the effect that at this stage further detailed debate consisting of answering controversial points raised is not only not of value but, perhaps, not appropriate in view of the protracted proceedings. It is the intention of my delegation, therefore, not to take that course,
Thanks to the very kind courtesy of the delegation of Pakistan, we have been able during the recess to look at the script of the statement which the representative of Pakistan made before the Council. It is necessary, for purposes of record, for us to say that we dissociate ourselves totally from a large number of the statements contained in it-the approach that is made to the problem-and to point out the fact that the statement itself really reopens the whole ambit of the discussion and that, therefore, any piecemeal reply to it would be unsatisfactory.
I shall, therefore, confine myself to the draft resolution that is before us [S/3792 and Corr. 1.].
With regard to this draft resolution, the position of my Government is what I have repeated several times before. We are not members of the Security Council; we are only asked to offer observations. We have already referred to the facts. It is my duty to tell the Council that the draft resolution will be communicated to the Government of India, and that the Government of India will take it into consideration, with such advice as we are able to receive from you, Mr. President, because the draft resolution places you in a particular context. The statements made at the 773rd meeting by the delegations of the United States and the United Kingdom-or other statements-do they form part, in any sense, not of the draft resolution but of your mission ? So far as we are concerned, there are several points which we have to make clear, and I shall do that in a very few minutes.
First of all, the only resolutions in which my Govern ment feels engaged-and I use the word "engaged" deliberately -are those which it has accepted. For resolutions passed by the Security Council under Chapter VI of the Charter have no binding effect upon Member States unless they consent. We have rejected them, and indeed the Commission, after our rejection, had proceeded on the basis that we did not accept them. Therefore, while we cannot object to this exercise by the Council of recalling resolutions, what its value is would be for the Security Council to decide in the future.
We deeply regret what is in our opinion the unnecessary and provocative pinpointing of the resolution of 24 January 1957 [S/3779], especially as the generic phrase "its previous resolutions" had been set out. The same applies to the words "having regard to the previous resolutions of the Security Council" My Government freely confesses that the Security Council must have regard to its own resolutions, but so far as Member States which are not members of the Security Council are concerned, when proceedings under Chapter VI are being pursued, its relevance to them is based only upon consent. That is all there is to it.
I wish to state that our approach to this problem is based upon the following and the fundamental considerations which have been advanced before the Security Council from 1 January 1948 until 20 February 1957.
First, the State of Jammu and Kashmir is a constituent unit of the Union of India by law, by equity, by every moral and political consideration, and the only authority that can legally separate the State is the sovereign Parliament of India. This is not only municipal law, but law which must be recognized as international, more particularly by the delegations of the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and France, which have recognized in their legal systems that municipal laws which obtain general currency automatically become part of international law.
Secondly, there is the principle that the territorial integrity of the State of Jammu and Kashmir is inviolable. We cannot accept the situation of so-called de facto occupation mentioned in the statement of the representative of Pakistan. The sovereignty of the Jammu and Kashmir Government over the whole area, the responsibility of the Government of the Union of India for the security of the Union as a whole, are basic factors from which we cannot depart. Neither can we at any time abandon the commitments we have made in the light of deliberate and public assurances given to us, which are part of the consent that the Government of India has given to the propositions placed before it.
Equally, in the conditions of today, India cannot afford to disregard-as no country can, in the conditions in which we live, afford to disregard-the internal and the external security of our land. And under that heading there must be included in the account the enormous amount of war material that has come into Pakistan through United States military aid and which includes, as I said yesterday [773rd meeting, paras. 103 to 10%), either the present or the future possibility of the use of tactical atomic weapons, to which the Commander-in-Chief of Pakistan referred. These and the other factors set out in the statement I made yesterday on behalf of the Government of India are part of the approach of the Government of India to this problem. At the same time, I repeat two propositions; First, the President of the Security Council will always be welcome in India. The hospitality of our land and the courtesies of our Government would be at his disposal. Secondly, India is not in a position and I say this not with any desire to cause delay-to consider any matters of high policy until a new Government is established in the country, which will take place, at the earliest, in the latter half of March.
I shall not take the time of the Council any longer except to reiterate these conditions. But it is appropriate to point out two things. Any new attempt in this direction, if it is even to open the first pages of a new book, has to start with the call of the dogs of the war of hatred. We will not sit under the crusade of a "holy war". Secondly, I want to invite the attention of the representative of the United Kingdom to a dispatch. that has come from Muzaffarabad, in West Kashmir, which is the Pakistan-occupied area. This dispatch appeared a few days ago in the "Daily Telegraph'' of London. It points out that "Azad'' Kashmir forces, which are technically under the Pakistan General Command, are stated to number 35,000, and it goes on to say that the Minister of the "Azad" Kashmir Government "claimed that this figure could be increased overnight to 80,000, of whom 70,000 are trained ex-soldiers."
These are all well-known facts, as are the facts about the vast quantity of munitions, of war material, that has flowed into Pakistan, and they are to be considered against the background of the statement made by the Pakistan Commander-in Chief about tactical atomic weapons in order to deal with the enemy across the "riverine obstacles" [773rd meeting, para.108). (I am sorry that Mr. Lodge was not here during the 773rd meeting, but I am sure this has been conveyed to him.) In those circumstances, the sovereign duty and responsibility of any country is to look after its security.
Finally, I would like to say that I will take steps to communicate the Council's resolution to the Government of India, which will take it into consideration as soon as a new Government is formed after the general election.