A/39/PV.28 General Assembly

9.  General debate (c;;;:tinued) 1. The PRESIDENT~ I wish to remind representa- tives of the decision taken by the General Assembly at its 3rd meeting, on Friday, 21 September 1984, that the practice of expressing congratulations in the General Assembly Hall after a speech has been delivered is prohibited. It is my firm intention to see to it that that decision is applied strictly and consistently, out of fairness to all delegations. I appeal to all members for their co-operation in implementing this explicit decision of the Assembly. 2. Mr. HARDING (Jamaica): Mr. President, it gives me great pleasure to see you presiding over this, the thirty-ninth, session of the General Assembly with the skill, competence and assiduity we have come to associate with you. The deep pleasure it affords my delegation to see you seated there reminds me that the middle pass8,ge did not break the ties that join the peoples of the Caribbean to the peoples of Africa. Time has served to affirm and strengthen the links of ancestry and historical experience between the Caribbean and Africa. The Jamaican delegation is certain that your rich experience will serve us well as you carry out your important task. 3. I take this oppottunity to convey our apprecia- tion to Mr. Jorge Illueca, of Panama, who deserves our praise for the competent manner in which he carried out his duties as President during the past year. 4. It is also a pleasure to welcome Brunei Darus- salam as the 159th Member of the United Nations. 5. The Caribbean, like Africa itself, has been much analysed but not well understood. If. some of the contributing reasons in the case of Africa have been the sheer vastness of the continent, its long and rich history and the complexity of its indigenous social and cultural traditions, with us in the Caribbean the reasons are very different. We are mostly small islands, and in the main a transplanted people. Despite our size, we have often found ourselves at centre stage in the turbulent unfolding of events, not just during the past few years, but indeed over the past few centuries. 6. We were at one time both the pawns and the prize in the struggle amongst the European Powers for economic and political hegemony in the New World. And still, today, we are close to centre stage. For while islands do not change hands any more, the