A/37/PV.3 General Assembly

On behalf of the General Assembly, I have the honour to welcome to the United Nations Mr. Ferdinand Marcos, the President of the Republic of the Philippines, and to invite him to address the Assembly. 2. President MARCOS: I am grateful for the oppor- tunity of again addressing this great assembly of nations, and of reaffirming my Government's un- wavering commitment to the work that brings us here. 3. From the Government and the people of the Philippines, I bring felicitations and high hopes for this thirty-seventh session of the General Assembly. We extend our warmest congratulations to you, Mr. President, on your election as President of the Assembly and to Mr. Javier Perez de Cuellar on his elevation to the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations. 10. In the midst of all the current conflicts and turmoil, it is no surprise that the international arms industry has emerged as the biggest, most profitable recession-proof industry An the world today with global sales reaching hundreds of billions of doUaiS each year. Many developing countries are its best customers, as they avidly acquire, not the implements of peace and development, but the deadly instruments that ensure human destruction. Military expenditures are now running at close to $US 700 billion annually. Global disarmament, particularly nuclear disarm- ament, is perhaps the most crucial question con- fronting mankind today. Yet, even on an issue that would decide the survival or extinction of human civiHzatiol'l as we know it, we cannot seem to reach agreement. 4. Under your leadership, Mr. President, this session of the General Assembly takes its- piace in a iong series of sessions which, since 1945, have borne the mighty cause of the United Nations. S. It is impressive to think that the United Nations is now 37 years of age. For an organization that was proclaimed "dead" by some within two years of its birth and dismissed by others "as a mere debating society which only stirs up trouble", it has proved quite enduring and resilient. Few remember the time when there was strong agitation to bring the whole structur~ down. 6. Notwithstanding the solid achievements, we have merely arrived at a tenuous form of world order and harmony, shaken from time to time by the conflicts and tensions of the day, and at a kind of international co-operation feeling its way, which wavers at the first sign of difficulty and stress. We have learned how difficult is the task of peace-making and peace- keeping and how formidable is the challenge of promoting the development of all nations. 11. The Assembly, which held its twelfth special session, the second such session devoted to the question of disarmament, adjourned without reaching agreement.on a final document. The strategic arms reduction talks between the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as the ongoing talks between them on short-term and medium-term missiles, are proceeding without much hope of early suc,~ess. 12. The quantum leap in the modernization ofnuclear and conventional armaments in the past three and a half decades has reached insane proportions. The global stockpile to date, we are told, has reached approximately 50,000 nuclear bombs, of which more than 9S per cent are in the arsenals of the super- Powers. About half of these are already deployed and targeted, needing b~t the push of a button to hurl them into their mission of mutually assured destruc- tion, aptly abbreviated a.s "M.A.D.... 7. In his report on the work of the" Organization, the Secretary-General urges us to examine with the utmost frankness the realities of the peace-keeping opera- tions of our world body, namely that the United Nations has been weak and ineffective and that the world is perilously close to anarchy. The United Nations peace-keeping efforts, he reminds us, have real limitations, while our hopes in them are great,_ and they "can function properly only with the co- Wednesday, 22 September 1982, at 12.10 p.m. NEW YORK