Text of the Speech made by Lord Caradon (United Kingdom) in the Security Council Meeting No. 1241 held on 18 September 1965

Text of the Speech made by Lord Caradon (United Kingdom) in the Security Council Meeting No. 1241 held on 18 September 1965

I do not propose now to endeavour to comment on the two very able speeches to which we have listened this afternoon. We shall wish to study what they have said very carefully, and it may well be that at a subsequent stage in our debate I would comment on them. I would make no excuse at all this afternoon for speaking at this stage only in order to emphasise the need to concentrate our attention on the statements of the Secretary-General. I shall do so very shortly because I am concerned not to go back over the that but to look to the future. It is the action to be taken on those statements of the Secretary-General is which our whole attention must surely now be directed.

I am sure that all of us at once recognized the gravity of the report [S/6686] made to us by the Secretary-General at the 1239th meeting yesterday. It was a clear, and forthright report suitable to the gravity of the situation.

Now as we meet to take action on that report I am confident that we do so with an overriding sense of urgency. In this Council we acted with urgency and unity when we unanimously passed resolutions 209 (1965) and 210 (1965) of 4 and 6 September. The Secretary-General followed up those resolutions without delay and without any hesitation. The United Nations did not fail to move quickly to meet the danger. Now the need for further urgent action is greater than ever.

From the first, the Secretary-General has had the full support of my Government. The Prime Minister of the United. Kingdom at once appealed in the most urgent terms to President Ayub Khan and to Prime Minister Shastri to respond to Council resolution 209 (1965) and to bring the fighting to an immediate end. And the British Foreign Secretary confirmed personally to the Secretary-General, when he passed through London on his way to Pakistan and India, the wholehearted support of Her Majesty's Government.

We wished the Secretary-General good fortune when he set out on his brave endeavour. Throughout, he has carried with him the fullest confidence of my Government, and we pay our tribute to his energy and his patience and his persistence and his courage. We are more than ever grateful to him for his readiness to continue to carry such a heavy burden of responsibility.

We most sincerely endorse the Secretary-General's statement on leaving Delhi that even though an end of the fighting had not yet been achieved, there was no reason for slackening our efforts to achieve it. On the contrary, as the Secretary-General emphasised in the report he made to us yesterday, the need for a sustained and accelerated effort is now greater than ever. There is and can be no question of failure. It is a continuing and reinforced initiative on which he and we are engaged, an initiative which must succeed. As the Secretary-General said to us yesterday-and we closely marked his words:

"If success has not yet been achieved in securing compliance with the Council's resolutions, that is all the more reason for making further strenuous efforts for a cease-fire as well as for long-term solutions." [S/6686, para. 8.]

We are encouraged and inspired by the Secretary General's example and his call "to show that peace can be restored and international harmony promoted by the concerted efforts of the international community" [Ibid.]. We, with him, are "thinking not only of the well-being and future of the Governments and peoples of India and Pakistan, but also of the hopes of mankind for a more peaceful world which are centred on the United Nations." [Ibid.]. This is the text of the statement issued by my Government in London earlier today:

"The British Government have made it clear that they gave the fullest support to the recent mission undertaken by the United Nations Secretary-General at the request of the Security Council in an attempt to reach a peaceful settlement of the tragic conflict between India and Pakistan. They believe that the courses of action set out in the Secretary-General's report, which in his judgement might be helpful in considering how to achieve an effective cease-fire, provide a useful basis for further urgent discussions in the Security Council. The British Government wishes to express their profound gratitude and great admiration of the Secretary-General's untiring efforts for peace."

Now, looking to the future, we trust that both of the great countries involved in this conflict will respond to the appeal which we so earnestly and urgently shall now make to them. They will do so, I confidently believe, not only in the interests of their own peoples so that they may be saved from the scourge of much wider conflicts, but in the interests of establishing and maintaining international order and international seace and achieving the honourable and equitable settlement which has long been the declared objective.