Text of the Speech made by Mr. Goldberg (United States of America) in the Security Council Meeting No. 1247 held on 25 October 1965

Text of the Speech made by Mr. Goldberg (United States of America) in the Security Council Meeting No. 1247 held on 25 October 1965

My delegation and my Government strongly support all the resolutions which have been adopted by the Security Council, beginning with resolutions 209 (1965) of 4 September, 210 (1965) of 6 September, 211 (1965) of 20 September and 214 (1965) of 27 September, in dealing with this matter. We have done so in the spirit of great friendship with the great nations of India and Pakistan, and we have done so in the interests of world peace and security.

It has been a source of great strength to all peace-loving people throughout the world that the Security Council in all these instances, has acted with virtual unanimity. It was a source of great satisfaction to my Government and to all the members of the Council that the Governments of India and Pakistan responded to the Council's demand that there be a cease-fire in this dispute.

We also share the conviction of, I am sure, all the members of the Council that the resolutions which were adopted are solemn commitments by the members of the Security Council that all parts of the resolutions that we adopted must have full implementation.

We have met today because of reports that have been filed with us by the Secretary-General referring to what we know from reading the newspapers, as well as from his reports, that the cease-fire is in jeopardy and that it will continue to be precarious unless there is a disengagement of forces between the two countries. The has made concrete proposals to both Governments, in order to give effect to the Security Council's resolutions, that there be a prompt withdrawal following the cease-fire to which both Governments are pledged. This Council has a right to expect, as all peace loving people have the right to expect, that, in the words of our resolution, there will now be a withdrawal of all armed personnel of either party which may be located in the territory of the other party or on the other party's side of the cease-fire line in Kashmir.

That is what we all agreed upon, in the Council, and we believe that it is the obligation of both India and Pakistan faithful to their commitments under the Charter-to respect, to honour and to comply with the of the Security Council. I should like to emphasise that my Government continues to fully support these resolutions of the Council, which were adopted in September, and we urge most strongly that these resolutions, particularly the key resolution of 20 September [211 (1965)], be fully implemented. We do so in the necessary spirit of seeing to it that peace, to which we are all pledged, is restored in full measure on the subcontinent. As far as we are concerned, my Government is pledged to that resolution, to its full terms, to the sequence of steps which the resolution contemplates, and we shall continue through this Council and through the United Nations to play our part in co operating and seeing to it that the resolutions are implemented.

My Government has no question in its mind concerning the actions of the Secretary-General taken to carry out the resolutions we have adopted. Nor indeed do we think that any question can be raised appropriately under those resolutions in the light of their clear language and in the light of the very careful steps which the Secretary-General has taken in order to give effect to them.

On 6 September 1965, this Council, in resolution 210 (1965), after calling upon the parties to cease hostilities and promptly withdraw all armed personnel to the positions held by them before 5 August 1965, unanimously went on to say that it :

"Requests the Secretary-General to exert every possible effort to give effect to the present resolution and to resolution 209 (1965), to take all measures possible to strong then the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan, and to keep the Council promptly and currently informed on the implementation of the resolutions and on the situation in the area".

Our Secretary-General did exactly that. He filed a steady stream of reports indicating the steps that he was taking pursuant to this resolution in order to give effect to what the Council had decided. And he frankly shared his thoughts, his views, his recommendations and his actions with the members of the Council. In his report of 16 September-I shall not read all his reports as they are too voluminous and the hour is late the Secretary-General said this:

"I have taken immediate steps to obtain extra transport and communications equipment to facilitate. UNMOGIP in its task. I have also made provisional arrangements to increase the number of military observers in UNMOGIP at short notice, should developments make this increase necessary." [S/6686, para. 10.]

We were on notice of this when we met on 20 September to consider the deteriorating situation which had developed in connection with this dispute. Being on notice of this, the Council again adopted a resolution which, in this respect, was agreed to by all parties. The Council in this resolution [211 (196)] requested " the Secretary-General to provide the necessary assistance to ensure supervision of the cease-fire and the withdrawal of all armed personnel". In another paragraph we requested "the Secretary-General to exert every possible effort to give effect to the present resolution".

The next day the Secretary-General supplied us with another of his many reports. In this report he pointed out what had transpired during this period. The original cease-fire line was a cease-fire line of a little less than 500 miles. The Secretary General reported that there were crossings of the border, the international boundary between the two countries, and then he went on to say:

"The border between India and West Pakistan, where fighting has been taking place between Indian and Pakistani armed forces, extends for a distance of over 1,000 miles from the Arabian Sea to the foothills of the Himalayas on the southern edge of the State of Jammu and Kashmir." [S/6699, para. 10.]

Then he went on to point out specifically in detail that because of this situation :

"In the supervision of the cease-fire and of the withdrawals, it is the intention to deploy, at least initially, a team of approximately 100 military observers the necessary logistical and staff support." [Ibid., para. 11.]

He was not talking at that point about the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan; he was talking about recruiting a team of military observers for the international boundary, as we all necessarily understood. The Secretary-General continued:

"It is the purpose to have those observers in the area. at the earliest possible date after the cease-fire becomes effective. According to tentative plans, the locations outside of Kashmir where observers might be most usefully stationed would be the following..." [Ibid.]

Then there are specified in detail the headquarters on the Indian side and on the Pakistan side for this group of observers. Then the Secretary-General went on in a separate paragraph to talk about what he intended with respect to the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan. He stated:

"The Security Council, in its resolution 210 (1965) of 6 September 1965, calls upon the Secretary-General 'to take all measures possible to strengthen the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan'. To this end, I have already made specific approaches to the Governments providing military observers to make available additional observers so that the overall strength of the Group can be very substantially increased. As stated in my second report to the Council on my mission to India and Pakistan [S/6686], I have also taken urgent steps to provide extra transport and communications equipment for the Observer Group." [Ibid., para. 16.]

The Council met on 27 September and noted reports of the Secretary-General. There was not a voice raised in the Council at the time, although we were full apprised of every step that the Secretary-General had taken, that the Secretary General in any sense was deviating from the mandate that this Council had given him in carrying out the task and avy responsibility we had entrusted to him.

And the Secretary-General did not leave us in the dark as to what he was doing; quite the contrary. On 1 October 1965 he told us in specific detail what observers he was recruiting for both these forces: "As of 30 September, a total of ninety observers has been provided for the United Nations India Pakistan Observation Mission." [S/6699/Add. 6, para. 3.] Then he goes into it in detail. Then: "As of 30 September, a total of fifty-nine additional observers had been provided for the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan." [Ibid., para. 8.]

Now, it seems to my Government and to my delegation that the Secretary-General has proceeded exactly in accord with the resolutions that the Security Council has unanimously adopted and that he has advised the members of the Council, step by step, of every step he has taken in order to execute the Council's resolutions. There would have been time at any point during these proceedings to raise the question of whether the Secretary-General was proceeding improperly, and that was not done. That was not done although the facts were known and were laid before us.

My Government wishes to commend the Secretary General for the steps taken by him to carry out what we agreed upon here. And in regard to the status of the cease-fire, it is a plain and simple fact of life that we owe much to the patient efforts of the United Nations observers, who have promptly gone to work thanks to the Secretary-General's expeditious action in response to the Council's mandate to him, in paragraph 2 of resolution 211 (1965), "to provide the necessary assistance to ensure supervision of the cease-fire and the withdrawal of all armed personnel", as well as the mandate in resolution 210 (1965) "to strengthen the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan". Had the Secretary General not acted rapidly and firmly, with our authorization, and had not received the prompt cooperation of the Governments to which he turned for observer personnel and equipment, it is highly likely, in my view, that we would be meeting today not to call for the implementation of withdrawal, but to call anew for the cessation of hostilities. There have been violations, regretfully, of the cease-fire, and complaints from both sides have been confirmed by the observers on the spot; but it is nevertheless true, and it is apparent from the reports of the Secretary-General, that the observers are there, and the fact that they are and that they arrived very promptly had much to do with the fact that the situation is not worse.

I wish to make it clear that my Government emphatically rejects the suggestion that the Secretary General acted beyond his mandate or that he should have consulted the Council in advance on the details of the actions he took under that mandate. In our view, his actions were entirely reasonable, and well within the limits that could be envisaged in view of the problem. If forty three observers were appropriate, as has been long recognized by this Council, to observe a cease-fire under peaceful conditions and in a cease-fire line of less than 500 miles, then 200 observers are obviously reasonable for supervising a cease-fire line that now extends 1,500 miles under the grave and troubled conditions that now exist between India and Pakistan.

I think that I for one understood what the Council was asking for in our discussion. We made it very clear that we asked and requested and directed the Secretary-General to take steps to strengthen the observer force, and also to take steps to see to it that there was appropriate supervision of what we had demanded that India and Pakistan should do. Therefore it seemed to me that there can be no question about this. It is interesting to see that there is not always consistency in this area. Today we are told by the representative of the Soviet Union that the Secretary-General acted improperly in the face of a resolution we adopted which called upon the Secretary-General to strengthen the observer force. I would like to remind the representative of the Soviet Union of his actions and his comments when the Dominican problem was before the Security Council. The Security Council adopted a resolution on 14 May 1965 [resolution 203 (1965)] inviting the Secretary-General "to send, as an urgent measure, a representative to the Dominican Republic". On 9 June, the representative of the Soviet Union had this to say about that resolution:

"We also take a favourable view of the suggestion that the representative of the Secretary-General in the Dominican Republic should continue to keep the cease fire under observation. The USSR delegation likewise agrees that the membership of the group headed by Mr. Mayobre should be enlarged in order to enable it to carry out effectively the tasks entrusted to it by the Security Council." [1222nd meeting, para. 90].erudi

And on 20 July 1965 the same thoughts were expressed by the representative of the Soviet Union. Now, it seems to me quite clear that if a resolution is

adopted that says a representative is to be sent and it is the view of the Soviet representative that this means the representative may recruit additional observers, it is quite inconsistent with the position taken today, that when the Security Council adopts a resolution requesting the Secretary-General to strengthen an existing observer force of forty-five, the actions taken by the Secretary-General are not appropriate under the circumstances.

I think that we ought to stick to the problem at hand, the real problem at hand. And our real problem at hand is a grave one: it is the problem of implementing the resolutions which we unanimously adopted; it is the problem of seeing to it that there is a prompt withdrawal of engaged forces; it is the problem of seeing to it that there is an honourable settlement between India and Pakistan; it is the problem of seeing to it that, when the withdrawal is effected, we then do what this Council determined to do, and that is, in the terms of paragraph 4 of resolution 211 (1965), to decide "what steps could be taken to assist towards a settlement of the political problem underlying the present conflict". That is the task of the Council, that is the task that the world is waiting for us to perform. It is not our task, in my opinion, and with all due respect. o raise questions which cannot properly be raised under the terms of the resolution which directed what has been done and which authorised the Secretary-General to do precisely what he did.

Mr. Hope (United Kingdom): It had not been my intention to speak this evening, but the representative of the Soviet Union has spoken about the actions of the Secretary General following the passage of Security Council resolutions 209 (1965), 210 (1965), 211 (1965) and 214 (1965), and I have listened very carefully to his words. My delegation is, however, unable to agree to what has been said on this subject by the Soviet representative. We shall wish later to put more fully reserve the Council our views on this question, and I therefore reserve our right to speak on this again.

I would only say now that we are satisfied that the Secretary-General has throughout acted in complete accord with the clear mandates given to him by the Security Council by its resolutions 209 (1965), 210 (1965), 211 (1965) and 214 (1965). We believe that what he has done under those resolutions has been a proper exercise of his responsibility.