Page:United Nations Security Council Meeting Record 2933.pdf/35

BHS/edd 46 (Mr. Alarcon de Quesada, Cuba) I can recall another occasion which may be the one that the representative of the United States was referring to: the decision taken by the Security Council concerning the illegal régime of Rhodesia when it unilaterally declared the independence of that Territory, for the purpose, as we all remember, of preventing the people of Zimbabwe — which, fortunately, lives in an independent, sovereign land today — from achieving genuine independence.

But the authorities of that racist minority regime in Rhodesia took that unilateral decision in 1965. The General Assembly immediately adopted a resolution, with extensive support from the overwhelming majority of its members, calling for effective steps against that regime to restore legality and to make possible a real decolonization process that would lead, as it eventually did, to independence. When did the Security Council act? In October 1965, in November, in December? Did it act in less than 48 hours? Or did it wait days, or weeks, or months? Notwithstanding the fact that all the States in the region — the African countries — all the non-aligned countries and the overwhelming majority of the General Assembly were urging the Council to carry out its task and adopt effective measures against Rhodesia, the Security Council acted in 1967, two years after that attempt to deprive the people of Zimbabwe of its inalienable national rights.

My delegation has no doubt that the adoption of this draft resolution, far from helping to bring a speedy solution to this conflict — which we believe must be achieved through the withdrawal of Iraqi forces and the full restoration of Kuwait's sovereignty — will, we are convinced, serve or be used, as part of the designs of the United States to intensify its intervention in a part of the world which it appears to regard as its own property.

I am grateful to Ambassador Pickering for something which, it seems to me, is quite illuminating. I listened very carefully to his statement, as I always do,