A/38/PV.5 General Assembly

9.  General debate 1. The PRESIDr.m (interpretation/rom Spanish): On behalf of the General Assembly, I have the honour to welcome to the United Nations Mr. Ronald Reagan, Pres- ident of the United States of America, and to invite him to address the Assembly. 2. Mr. REAGAN (United States ~f America): Thank you for granting me the honour of speaking today, on this first day of the general debate at the thirty-eighth session of the General Assembly. Once again I come before this body preoccupied with peace. Last year I stood in this chamber to address the special session on disarmament. I have come today to renew my nation's commitment to peace. I have come to discuss how we can keep faith with the dreams that created this Organization. 3. The United Nations was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War to protect future generations from the scourge of war, to promote political self- determination and global prosperity, and to strengthen the bonds of civility among nations. The founders sought to replace a world at war with a world of civilized order. They hoped that a world of relentless conflict would give way to a new era, one where freedom from violence prevailed. 4. Whatever challenges the world was bound to face, the founders intended this body to stand for certain values, even if they could not be enforced, and to con- demn violence, even if it could not be stopped. This body was to speak with the voice of moral authority. That was to be its greatest power. 5. But the awful truth is that the use of violence for political gain has become more, not less, widespread in the last decade. Events of recent weeks have presented new, unwelcome evidence of brutal disregard for life and truth. They have offered unwanted testimony on how divided and dangelOus our world is, how quick the recourse to violence. 6. What has happened to the dreams of the founders of the United Nations? 7. What has happened to the spirit which created the United Nations? 8. The answer is clear: Governments got in the way of the dreams of the people. Dreams became issues of East versus West. Hopes became political rhetoric. Progress became a search for power and domination. Somewhere the truth was lost that people do not make war, gO"/ern- ments do. 9. And today, in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Mid- dle East and the North Pacific, the weapons of war shat- ter the security of the peoples who live there, endanger the peace of neighbours, and create ever more arenas of