Secretary-General calls for realization of United Nations full potential at 40th anniversary celebration.

Secretary-General calls for realization of United Nations full potential at 40th anniversary celebration

"The vision of peace shared by the signers of the Charter was based on an understanding of reality--the reality that the risk of widespread war was no longer tolerable."

During special observances in San Francisco on 26 june 1985--the 40th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter--Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar called on all Governments and peoples to affirm their determination to "build on the achievements of the United Nations and to overcome such weaknesses as has been evident", so that the Organization's full potential for the maintenance of peace would be realized.

Mr. Perez de Cuellar outlined the Organization's contributions to and successes in such fields as human rights, peace-keeping, disarmament and social justice, as well as his concern with multilateralism and an interdependent world.

His major address was at a civic luncheon at the Fairmont Hotel sponsored by the United Nations Association of San Francisco, the San Francisco Chambers of Commerce and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.

"On this 40th anniversary day", he told assembled dignitaries, "when negative perceptions of the capacity of the United Nations are too often voiced, I have given a relatively optimistic evaluation of the benefit which the United Nations has brought and can bring in the future". Much would depend, he said, on the "steadfastness" with which the vision is maintained that was defined 40 years ago in San Francisco in the United Nations Charter.

In sketching a scenario for a world without the United Nations system (see box), the Secretary-General said that today's major issues--such as terrorism, pollution, hunger and drug traffic--required co-operative global action for their resolution. "Multilateralism, as represented by the United Nations, is the necessary response to this interdependence of countries and peoples", he affirmed.

There was no doubt, according to the Secretary-General, that over the past 40 years the United Nations had validated the multilateral enterprise. But those years also bore deep scars of armed conflict and violence, economic inequity and social injustice--questions which must be resolved.

How could there be collective security, the Secretary-General wondered, with no multilateral means of enforcement? The answer, he said, lay in the establishment of a "constructive working relationship between the major Powers, who have a unique responsibility for the security of the world as a whole."

Security Council members--particularly the Soviet Union and the United States--must be motivated less by bilateral differences and more by the objective of resolving disputes for which their common support is needed. The United Nations could serve to reduce the possibility of conflict between the two by providing a channel of communication and helping generate the time and atmosphere in which the "consequences of actions can be considered with a full sense of responsibility to all humanity."

Balanced, verifiable arms reduction--both conventional and nuclear--could also help to achieve collective security, the Secretary-General affirmed. The building of international security must be seen as a progressive process, he stressed, entailing concrete and constructive steps. The United Nations, as "the machinery for peace", is less than perfect in its operations, the Secretary-General acknowledged. But the Organization is in place, he pointed out, and in practical terms, universal.

He called on all Governments and peoples to affirm their determination to build on the achievements of the Organization and overcome its weaknesses, so that its full potential for maintaining peace could be realized. "The interests of tomorrow", declared the Secretary-General, "leave us no other choice".

Earlier in the day, at a commemorative ceremony at San Francisco's Herbst Theater presided over by San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, the Secretary-General recalled that it was the "terrible reality" of a war still in progress that had led to the Organization's founding. "Now, the catalyst must be the even more terrible reality of what a future war would be", he emphasized.

Mr. Perex de Cuellar also issued a message on 26 June, in which he stated "By laying down the norms of international behaviour and by defining what needs to be done in concrete situations, (the United Nations) has delineated the road to peace. By spelling out the standards for the observance of human rights, it has given content to the notion of human dignity.

"It has enlarged the network of international law and bound nations together as they were never bound before. It has raised global consciousness of the need for a more responsive system of economic relations, thus pointing the way to balanced progress around the globe."

In a number of speeches during visits to both San Francisco and Japan (22-27 June), Mr. Perez de Cuellar stressed the grave consequences of ignoring the principles on which the United Nations was founded and the critical need for a recommitment to multilateralism. The signers of the Charter had been "entirely conscious" of the difficulties entailed in developing an effective system of international security while honouring States' sovereignty, he said. The founders' vision of peace, he said, was the reality that without common security for all, "there could well be a future for none".