04051962 Text of the Speech made by Sir Patrick Dean (United Kingdom) in the Security Council Meeting No. 1011 held on 4 May 1962

 Text of the Speech made by Sir Patrick Dean (United Kingdom) in the Security Council Meeting No. 1011 held on 4 May 1962

I propose to be very brief. This Council has listened for some five meetings to full statements by the representative of Pakistan and the Minister of Defence of India. These statements have covered in considerable detail the historical and political aspects of this highly complex question Both speakers also made comparatively full explanations, from their respective points of view, of the extremely important legal considerations involved. My delegation is grateful to both the representative of Pakistan and the Minister of Defence of India for their full presentations which have certainly been of help in expounding the issues involved, in particular to persons like myself who were not present at earlier meetings of the Security Council on this subject.

My delegation would certainly require more time to study all that has been said here and all the documents, both legal and political, to which reference has been made, before venturing to state any definitive position on the issues involved. Enough, however, has been said in the course of the present debate alone to make it clear that the respective views and attitudes of the two delegations, of India and Pakistan, are in very many respects still far apart. The reasons for this are manifold, and, in the light of the past, for unintelligible. Each side blames the other, and as the years go by the area of common ground between them certainly appears to my delegation to grow no larger. I say this without attempting in the least to assess responsibility or even to assign the causes in detail. I state it as a fact, and, to the mind of my delegation, with its very close and long-enduring ties with both parties, a most regrettable fact.

My delegation does not wish at his time to make any attempt to weigh the actual or potential risks to the maintenance of peace in the area itself or in the greater region. surrounding it, which a continuation of the present deep and long-lasting disputes poses or may pose in the future. Both sides have categorically assured this Council that however dis satisfied they may be with the present situation and at the prospect that it may remain unresolved for some time to come, they do not contemplate the use of force or of measures outside the scope of the Charter of the United Nations in order to alter it or terminate it. My delegation has taken careful note of these assurances and welcomed them without reserve. Other and the Council as well may feel the same, but that in itself cannot discharge the Council from the continuing responsibility placed on it by the Charter to avert any threat to the peace that may be still inherent in the continuation of the present situation and to see to it that the situation does not deteriorate still further, thus endangering to some greater degree the maintenance of peace.

Is there anything more that this Council can or should do in the present state of affairs and at the present moment to discharge its inevitable duty or to begin to help towards a solution ? On this my delegation would wish to reserve judgement while taking time to study the legal and political issues involved. My delegation do, however, feel that the solution in the end must be found by the road of negotiation. There are many forms indeed which such could take. The

modalities, the conditions, the timing, and so on, are all capable of discussion. I do not want to go into this now. As I say, time may be needed to work these out. But at the bottom, this problem is one which for almost every reason-historical, legal and political is the concern of Pakistan and India and it is to these two countries and to their two Governments that in the end all who are, like ourselves, friends of both and this Council must look-and must appeal-to negotiate with each other, using, if so, in whatever form they may deem it helpful, such aid from outside as may lead in the direction which all Members of the United Nations so earnestly desire.