Text of the Speech made by Mr. DE Beus (Netherlands) in the Security Council Meeting No. 1241 held on 18 September 1965

Text of the Speech made by Mr. DE Beus (Netherlands) in the Security Council Meeting No. 1241 held on 18 September 1965

First of all, I wish to express the deep concern of my delegation a concern undoubtedly shared by all members of the Security Council-that a cease-fire as called for by the Security Council almost two weeks ago, in its resolutions 209 (1965) and 210 (1965) of 4 and 6 September has still not come into being. At the same time it seems to us that some progress towards a cease-fire has been made, thanks to the invaluable and unrelenting efforts of the Secretary-General. It is on the result of those efforts that I should like to speak first.

My delegation has studied carefully the Secretary General's two reports which are before us [S/6683 and S/6686]. I am sure that we are all deeply grateful for the tactful, yet determined, way in which the Secretary-General carried out his most difficult mission. He has not yet been able to achieve a cease-fire, but from a careful reading of his reports one gains the impression that it has been brought some-what closer. Let us examine for a moment the position of the parties to the conflict with regard to responsibility for the outbreak of fighting, as this position emerges from the Secretary General's reports as well as from the statements of the two parties to which we have listened with great attention.

The contention of India, to begin with, is-and here I quote from the reply of Prime Minister Shastri of 14 September -that:"...Pakistan launched a massive attack on India on 5 August 1965 by sending thousands of armed infiltrators equipped with Pakistani arms and ammunition and officered by men of the regular forces of Pakistan..." for [S/6683, para. 8.]

This allegation, it must be said, is confirmed by the Chief United Nations Military Observer in Kashmir, to the extent that the Secretary-General's report of 3 September states:

"...that the series of violations that began on 5 August were to a considerable extent in subsequent days in the form of armed men, generally not in uniform, crossing the cease-fire line from the Pakistan side for the purpose of armed action on the Indian side." [S/6651, para. 6.]

We must therefore assume that extensive infiltrations. across the cease-fire line did indeed take place from the Pakistan side from 5 August on, even though we must add that my delegation would not necessarily subscribe to the qualification of these infiltrations as "a massive attack on India".

From this contentions India's demand, repeated here yesterday, that Pakistan be identified as the aggressor, and furthermore India's request- and I quote again from Prime Minister Shastri's first reply:

"We must urge that Pakistan should be asked forth with to withdraw these armed infiltrators... we will have to insist that there must be no possibility of a recurrence of armed attacks on India, open or disguised." [See S/6683, para. 8.]

This constitutes, I believe the essence of the Indian position with regard to the outbreak of the present hostilities and of what India expects of the Security Council in connection with a possible cease-fire.

Pakistan's contention, on the other hand, is that it is India which committed aggression. I quote from President Ayub Khan's reply of 13 September :

"... India attacked Pakistan on 6 September. This was an act of naked aggression. It is astonishing that the cease-fire resolution of the Security Council of 6 September, which you are urging us to implement, completely ignores this basic fact." [Ibid., para. 9.]

It is an uncontested fact, I believe, that Indian armed forces crossed the international border between Pakistan and India on 6 September-which was about one day after the Security Council's first appeal for a cease-fire. On the basis of this fact, Pakistan wishes India to be branded the aggressor. The Pakistani President, furthermore, declares himself prepared to accept a cease-fire on the following conditions:

"...the cease-fire must be accompanied by action which would resolve the real cause of this conflict. This would be possible if the cease-fire is followed immediately by complete withdrawal of the Indian and Pakistan forces from the State of Jammu and Kashmir, the induction of a United Nations-sponsored Afro-Asian force to maintain order in the State and the holding of a plebiscite in the State within three months." [Ibid.]

The Secretary-General thereupon made a second appeal to both Heads of Government. Prime Minister Shastri, in his reply to this second appeal, declared his country's preparedness to accept a simple cease-fire without attaching conditions. President Ayub Khan, in his reply, declared himself "agreeable in principle to stop fighting" [Ibid., para. 14]. He went on to say, however, that a meeting with Prime Minister Shastri seemed to offer little hope of success. President Ayub Khan furthermore stated :

"However, a cease-fire can be meaningful only if it is followed by such steps as would lead to a durable and honourable settlement in order to preclude the recurrence of a catastrophe such as now threatens the subcontinent. To bring about such a settlement, it would be necessary to evolve an effective machinery and procedure that would lead to a final settlement of the Kashmir dispute." [Ibid.]

A comparison of the first and the second replies of both Governments shows that, although unfortunately they have not yet come together on a cease-fire, the gap which separates them has been narrowed. India no longer poses any conditions, although it is clearly worried about a possible repetition of armed infiltrations. Pakistan still makes it a condition that a cease-fire should be followed by effective steps leading to a final settlement of the Kashmir dispute.

So much for the position of both parties to the conflict. The question for us now is: what can the Security Council do to achieve a cease-fire and a settlement of the underlying political questions?

I have noted that each of the two parties accuses the other of aggression, that each of the parties adduces established facts to prove that contention, and that each of the parties wishes the Council to brand the other side as the aggressor and draw the conclusions from such a condemnation.

It seems to my delegation that it would become a very complicated and rather fruitless process for the Council to weigh all the actions by one party against those of the other. It is obvious that actions have taken place on both sides by which hostilities escalated, and we believe that it would be almost impossible to single out one specific act or date at which aggression started. The task of the Security Council is to maintain peace and security, not to sit in judgement like a tribunal and award damages after weighing the seriousness of the mutual claims and counterclaims. Our duty today is to stop the fighting and, beyond that, to promote a settlement of the problem from which the fighting originated. We should, therefore, concentrate on steps leading to that double goal. Rather than trying to pronounce judgement on recriminations about the origin of the fighting, we should now try to stop the fighting and open a road to eliminate the underlying causes of conflict from which the fighting sprang.

Returning to the positions of the parties to the conflict with regard to a cease-fire, it seems to my delegation, as I have said, that the two positions are no longer so far apart that the gap cannot be bridged. Upon the Security Council rests the heavy responsibility and the duty now to make a supreme effort to help the parties to bridge this gap. It can do so by making its own contributions to this end, here and now, by trying to alleviate the understandable fears of both parties.

India, I repeat, fears a repetition of armed infiltration. The Security Council cannot, of course, guarantee that no infiltrations or other violations of the cease-fire line will ever take place again. It can, however, greatly contribute to that effect by increasing the present obviously insufficient strength of its military observer corps in Kashmir to the degree necessary. This should go a long way to give India a reasonable guarantee against a repetition of massive infiltrations.

Pakistan, on the other hand, fears that if it agrees unconditionally to a cease fire this will in fact simply mean a return to the status quo, without anything else being done to go to the main root of all the troubles between India and Pakistan during the last eighteen years: namely, the Kashmir question. That fear, too, certainly seems justified on the basis of the history of the last eighteen years, since the many decisions of the Security Council on this subject have never been carried out.

As is well known, the attitude of my country has always been that the Kashmir question should be solved on the basis of the free self-determination of the people of Kashmir and Jammu and that the decisions of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan and the Security Council on that subject offered a just means to achieve that aim. Therefore We can sympathise with Pakistan's apprehension on this aspect, namely that the basic political conflict might be left unsolved. If that were done, the Council would be only dealing with the symptoms of the disease and not with the disease itself, the underlying cause of all the conflicts between India and Pakistan.

Here again, the Security Council can make its contribution to alleviating that fear of Pakistan by making it clear beyond doubt that a cease-fire and a withdrawal of troops will have to be followed by talks between the parties and effective measures to solve on a just and durable basis a problem which has for nearly one score years now envenomed the relations between these two great nations of the subcontinent, which are so dependent on co-operation between them. As the Secretary-General said in his appeal of 12 September to President Ayub Khan and Prime Minister Shastri, a cease-fire is "a necessary prelude to further measures towards the restoration of lasting peace" [see S/6683, para. 6].

If, then, the difference which separates the two parties on a cease-fire has been narrowed, the military situation too seems at the moment to be more propitious for a cessation of hostilities. After several weeks of fierce battles the fighting seems to have diminished somewhat on several fronts, and a military stalemate appears to be developing. This proves once again that neither party can gain its aims by military means and that the tremendous bloodshed now going on between the two brother nations is, therefore, senseless and should be stopped.

I should like to point to another aspect of the matter and express the great regret which is felt in countries such as mine that these two neighbouring countries, which were dedicating themselves with great energy and obvious results to their economic and social development, are now engaged in a fratricidal conflict which threatens to undo all the valuable work that has been performed in the past. My country is among those which are happy to participate actively in the important assistance which both countries receive on a large scale from many industrialised countries, and we are distressed to see that this development effort which we are so actively supporting is thus in danger of being undone by the waste of warfare.

To this political and military situation and to this economic aspect there has in the last few days been added another and more ominous reason for ending the fighting without delay. New and serious developments in Asia during the past few days, which have been referred to by the representative of India, have rendered more acute the danger of an extension of the conflict to other areas and to a large-scale conflagration. This makes it absolutely essential that the fighting should be stopped before such a further extension can take place. My delegation, therefore, believes that the Security Council should do its utmost to achieve a cease-fire before this weekend is over. It sincerely hopes that the circumstances which I have mentioned will lead the parties to the same conclusion. At any rate the Security Council should brook no longer delay and should act now. When I say "now" I mean not later than today or tomorrow. The situation is fraught with danger, and time is of the essence.

My delegation considers that many of the suggestions made by the Secretary-General in his second report [S/6686] point the way and are most likely to lead to the desired result. The Security Council should, we believe, as he proposes, on the basis of Article 40, now decide on a specific moment in the nearest future at which hostilities should cease. It can offer its assistance for ensuring the observance of the cease fire. In taking these steps for a short-range solution, we should, however, not lose sight of our long-range objective, which is to eliminate the underlying political conflict. The Council cannot impose a specific solution to that conflict, which in the end depends on the parties. However, it can set in motion a process to that end. It can set the parties on the road to negotiations and assist them there if desired. My delegation is prepared to support or to co-sponsor any resolution containing those basic elements. My delegation hopes and trusts, however, that the Council does not need to go further. India has already declared itself prepared to accept a cease-fire without conditions. Pakistan has declared itself prepared in principle to do so, though maintaining certain fears. The Governments of both countries have stressed their responsibilities towards their nations to defend their own interests. Surely their main responsibility is, however, to put an end to a useless waste of human life as a first step to a durable settlement. Certainly to bring this about is the duty of the Security Council, in view of its responsibility for international peace and security, but also in view of its responsibility towards the nations of India and Pakistan themselves.