A/38/PV.19 General Assembly

9.  General debate 1. The PRESJ.DENT (interpretation/rom Spanish): The General A5~i~'11\&lYwill hear a statement by the Presid(~nt of the Rep...i!Y\~ of Colombia, Mr. Belisario Betancur Cuartas. On behalf of the General Assembly, I have the honour of welcoming him to the United Nations and inviting him to address the Assembly. 2. Mr. BETANCUR CUARTAS (Colombia) (interpre- tation/rom Spanish): On behalf of Colombia, I would like first of all, Sir, to congratulate you most sincerely on your election to the presidency of the General Assem- bly. It is a source of satisfaction to us that this honour has been conferred upon the Vice-President ofa country with which Colombia has such brotherly relations. Your diplomatic skills and experience are a guarantee of the objectivity and effectiveness ofthe work of the Assembly. 3. I would also like to avail myself of this opportunity to welcome most cordially the delegation of Saint Chris- tcpher and Nevis, a country which, in accordance with the goal of universality, has just been admitted to mem- bership in the United Nations. 4. It is easy to amuse oneself by putting together, like the pieces ofa familiar jigsaw puzzle, the transformations which in recent times, through the magical power of commitments which changed collective behaviour, have swept away values once held to be immutable, among them the concept of sovereignty, on the basis of which each nation once withdrew into the isolation of its na- tional borders as into a shell. 5. The conflict for power, even while it sacrifices con- sciences to opposing ideologies, characterizes every stage of the march of history. There is more profit in exploring its motives than in seeking to control it, in an age when those practising traditional diplomacy are displaced by incompatible factions determined to participate, ·whose precipitate pace is that set by the warning on the ancient Egyptian sundial: "It is later than you think". 6. Amidst the maelstrom of the Second World War and rising from its charred remains, the United Nations carved a place for itself in the preservation of the most urgently desired of all things-peace. 7. Since then 38 years have passed and, despite our constituent Charter, the world is moving farther away from that ideal. An objective review ofits acts ofinsanity reminds us that since that time there have been in suc- cession 150 armed conflicts, waged in the name of the most senseless causes, each one reflecting an apparent yet absurd polarization. 8. But the victims have come from the low-lying lands of the weak, not from the centres of arrogant power, and the blood has flowed in remote provinces, and not in the