11021948 Text of the Speech made by Mr. Noel Baker (United Kingdom) in the Security Council Meeting No. 245 held on 11 February, 1948

Text of the Speech made by Mr. Noel Baker (United Kingdom) in the Security Council Meeting No. 245 held on 11 February, 1948

I find myself in a certain difficulty. I am going to speak exclusively on the draft resolution, but I must refer -I hope the President will not think I am out of order to some observations made by the representative of Colombia a little earlier. He said then that it was no good my saying, as I did this morning, that we are not making a precedent. He said that if this happens, we make a precedent whether we want to or not. Now, I shall explain exactly what I meant.

I begged the Indian delegation to stay for three or four or five days to see if we could not do this hammering out of concrete details, at least until we understand the points that are issue. But if they decide to go, we understand that they are doing it in full good faith. We know that they are doing it for reasons which we all respect; we know that they are doing it because, in their sincere belief, they think it will advance our work. The thing happens.

What I wanted to ensure was that there should be an entry in our record which made it plain that we were not according any future delegation the right to do the same, so that in another case, no one could come and say: "You are bound to do this because it has happened once." Now, I admit that the representative of Colombia is entitled to say: "You cannot help creating a precedent because if it has happened once, it is more likely to happen again, and the next person who asks for an adjournment will be in a stronger position to say that he must have it."

I am bound to admit, in honesty, that there may be cases when it is desirable for a delegation, or for the head or a member of the delegation, to go home to talk to his Government. I think, and I have tried to make it plain, that this is a very unfortunate case for this to happen in for the first time. There had been fighting in Kashmir for two months -- November and December-before this matter was laid before the Security Council, and before the letter (document S/628] was sent. We have now been two months dealing with it. Our first effective meeting was 15 January. But if we accepted the resolution submitted by the representative of China, and made it a date earlier than some people have mentioned earlier than the Indian delegation has suggested, or the Ukrainian representative suggested just now-even if we made it 1 March, that is another two months' fighting after the submission to the Council had been made.

We cannot deny that it is a serious matter. For my part, I am embarrassed to answer any part of the speech made by the Colombian representative this afternoon. I want to read it in the record tomorrow morning, and to study it with the care which it deserves. But as a constitutional argument, I think no one could doubt that it was very powerful.

What then would I do? I would say to the Indian delegation: "I wish you could have stayed. If, for the reasons which you feel important, you think you must go, we must be free to go on with this work if we think it is necessary." We must be free to work out a detailed scheme, as I said this morning.

I hope the President and the Rapporteur are going to get on with it. But I should be gravely doubtful whether it is really right I say this with great respect to the representative of China, and I understand the very powerful reasons which made him put forward his resolution-to put a resolution on the record on this matter. I am not sure we had not better just let it happen.

Mr. Parodi (France) (translated from French): At this stage, an unknown factor seems to have entered our discussions, which makes it difficult for the various delegations to take a decision on the draft resolutions before US I mean the request made to the Indian delegation this morning to postpone its departure for several days, and I believe that this request has been reiterated by the United Kingdom representative.

The decisions we eventually reach may perhaps be slightly modified by the reply made to this request. I shall therefore confine myself for the time being to some brief remarks and to

one suggestion. On the whole, I share the views expressed by some of our colleagues, to the effect that the interruption of our discussion to which the Indian delegation's decision has given. rise is somewhat regrettable.

On the other hand, as I said yesterday, since the Indian delegation has informed us that it feels obliged to consult its Government, we are bound to take this into account, especially as we are trying, and will try to the end, to achieve agreement between the two parties concerned. Nevertheless, it is certainly regrettable that the Security Council's discussion of the essentially urgent question before it should be thus interrupted.

The suggestion I wish to make to the Council (which might possibly be combined with the draft resolution submitted by the Chinese representative) is, in the first place, that we should not allow the interruption of our discussion of this question to become a waste of time; in the second place, that the decision already taken by the Security Council in its resolution of 20 January, the decision to set up a commission, should not be lost sight of. The Security Council has taken a step and made a decision.

It should not now give the impression of going back in any way on the decision taken on 20 January to set up a commission. Although we might consider interrupting the Council's

work on the Kashmir question for a certain length of time, since we have been asked to do so by the Indian delegation, I think we should ask the representative of Pakistan to get his Government to make its choice of the State which is to serve on the commission, in order that the two States chosen (since the first has already been designated by the Indian delegation) may co-opt the third country, and that the commission thus constituted may be able to function.

The delay of several weeks which we are asked to accept would approximately correspond to the time necessary for setting up the commission, which might perhaps meet here, and for this commission to make arrangements to go to the spot, if this were required.

If fully realised, when the Indian delegation resumes contact with its Government, it may report to us new facts which may (on the most favourable assumption) make it unnecessary to send the commission.

In that case, I think we would congratulate each other on the outcome and would not regret having inconvenienced the members of the commission for a few weeks.

If, however, as is, after all, most probable, a reason for the commission's existence still remains after the Indian delegation has returned, we shall, at least, have put the commission in a condition to function. The requested delay will represent a period of effective work done by the Security Council, which will have carried out a resolution taken previously and will not really have lost time, since the intervening period will have been devoted to implementing the resolution of 20 January. That is the suggestion I wish to make to the Security Council.