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 am confident that there will be no doubt in anyone's mind regarding the purpose of my previous remarks. Indeed, I feel very sorry if, for any reason, my previous remarks led the President to believe that I meant to be critical in any way of the very useful work he has performed as President of the Security Council, not only in his conversations with the delegations of India and Pakistan, but also in all other matters.

I want to make it clear that I am simply discussing a question of procedure. It seemed pertinent to me that the President himself said just now that all the different proposals could be dealt with according to our rules of procedure; but, I respectfully submit, we are not dealing with them according to our rules of procedure, much less so when the President requests the delegations of Indian and Pakistan, as well as other delegations, to submit to him in writing whatever amendments they may see fit to make. As far as my understanding of the rules goes, that does not quite conform to the rules; and that was my purpose: not, as I say, that I do not think it would be useful.

It is useful to present proposals and amendments in order to reach an agreement. But that applies to every other proposal not only to the President's proposal, but to every one of the proposals that have been submitted here. That is why the rules of procedure provide for the orderly discussion of the different proposals that are submitted. Then every delegation has the opportunity to say what amendments it thinks are necessary for the purpose of reaching an agreement and a satisfactory solution.

I stated before that, so far as we are concerned, it would be perfectly agreeable to us to leave our proposal indefinitely in abeyance. I do not think it is necessary, but I would be as willing to withdraw my proposal altogether, if that is the way to expedite the work of the Security Council, as the President has proposed. But otherwise, I do believe it is necessary to have the procedure more clearly established, because the proper way then would be to agree to leave all other proposals out of account, and then we know that we have agreed to dispose of them in that way.

We would take the President's proposal as a basis of discussion in the Security Council; then, instead of submitting amendments in writing, we would discuss them here, which is the usual way, and I believe it is the most satisfactory way. Every time we depart from our rules, we come to the same result. That has been my experience here, and, I may say, in other bodies also. When the rules of procedure are disregarded, time is lost. That is why I very respectfully made the remark that, by departing from our rules, we have had twenty or twenty-five meetings and spent three months in the discussion of this matter, and we are substantially at the same point where we were, because the primary object of the conversations of the President of the Security Council with the parties was to see if he could reach an agreement with them and come back with that news to the Security Council. What has actually happened is that, after every conversation, we get a new proposal, and thereby we have been accumulating proposals which we are not handling in the usual way. I repeat, I regret very much if anything I have said can be construed in a sense critical of the work that the President has been performing, of which I have the highest appreciation. I simply asked how we are going to proceed and very respectfully insisted that it would be advisable to adhere to our rules. of procedure nothing more.