Text of the Speech made by Mr. Lopez (Colombia) in the Security Council Meeting No. 269 held on 18 March, 1948

Text of the Speech made by Mr. Lopez (Colombia) in the Security Council Meeting No. 269 held on 18 March, 1948

I should like to request some clarification on the way in which the Security Council intends to proceed. Apparently the President's idea is that we should go on to discuss his draft resolution. Does that mean that the other draft resolutions that have been presented are considered as indefinitely postponed or discarded? That is one point.

Another point is this: I believe it would be worthwhile for us to discuss, if only for a few minutes, the course we have been pursuing. This course seems to be substantially as follows: The President of the Security Council discusses the question with the delegations of India and Pakistan. He returns to the Security Council with a new proposal which, as in the present case, does not represent agreement between the two delegations but is, in fact, a new draft resolution submitted to the Security Council to be considered in the ordinary way.

I could understand the procedure if the President of the Security Council, acting on its behalf, had conversations with the two delegations and they reached agreement as to the terms of settlement. A draft resolution containing those agreed points would naturally take precedence over the other ones. But as it happens, all we have been doing is accumulating draft resolutions presented by the President of the Security Council which, as I said, do not represent agreement between the two parties concerned. I do not know if that is the best way to proceed. Although the Colombian delegation has presented a draft resolution [document S/671 which in the opinion of the Indian delegation provided a basis for discussion before they left for India, we are satisfied to leave our proposal in abeyance provided we know clearly how we are going to proceed. However, I think it might be worthwhile to discuss the method we have been pursuing and decide whether it is the best method. Following this method, we have so far held twenty to twenty-five meetings of the Security Council on this subject without achieving any definite result.

My third point is that the Security Council has several items on its agenda. One of them is the Palestine question. It is true that the India-Pakistan question came to the Security Council before the Palestine question. On the other hand, it is true that the Palestine question is very pressing because the Government of the United Kingdom has set a definite date for the termination of its Mandate over Palestine and we are acting under the pressure of that date. I believe. that must be taken into consideration in planning the distribution of the time of the Security Council.