Yasir Arafat Speech to the United Nations

                                  Nov. 13, 1974

                               (Excerpts, Part I)

Mr. President.

     I thank you for having invited the Palestine Liberation Organization to

participate in this plenary session of the United Nations General Assembly. I

am grateful to all those distinguished representatives of states who

contributed to the decision to introduce the Question of Palestine as a

separate item on your agenda; this decision has made possible your resolution

inviting us to address you on the Question of Palestine. I also wish to thank

the Secretary-General for all his assistance in facilitating our presence here

amongst you.

     For this return by the United Nations Organization to the Question of

Palestine is an important occasion. We consider the step to be a victory for

the world organization, as much also as a victory for our people. It indicates

a new that the United Nations of today is not the United Nations of the past,

just as today's world is not yesterday's world. Today's United Nations

represents 138 nations, a number that more clearly reflects the will of the

international community. Thus today's United Nations is more nearly capable of

implementing the principles embodied in its charter and in the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights, as well as being more truly empowered to support

causes of peace and justice.

     Our peoples are now beginning to feel this change.

                                      *****

     Great numbers of peoples, which include those of Zimbabwe, Namibia, South

Africa, Palestine among many others, are still victims of oppression and

violence. Their areas of the world are gripped by armed struggles provoked by

imperialism and racial discrimination, both of them merely forms of aggression

and terror. These are instances of oppressed peoples compelled by intolerable

circumstances into confrontation with such oppression; but wherever this

confrontation occurs, it is legitimate and just.

     It is imperative, Mr. President, that the international community should

support these people in their struggles, in the furtherance of their rightful

causes, in the attainment of their right to self-determination.

     In Indo-China, the people are still exposed to aggression. They remain

subjected to conspiracies preventing them from peace and realization of their

goals. Although people everywhere have welcomed agreements on peace reached in

Laos and South Vietnam no one can say that genuine peace has been achieved, nor

that those forces responsible for aggression in the first place have now

desisted from their attacks on Vietnam. The same can be said of the present

military aggression against the people of Cambodia. It is therefore incumbent

on the international community to support these oppressed people, and also to

condemn the oppressors for their designs upon peace.

                                      *****

     In their efforts to replace an outmoded but still prevalent world economic

system with a new, more logically rational one, the countries of Asia, Africa,

and Latin America must nevertheless face implacable attacks on these

efforts...Thus the plunder, the exploitation, the siphoning off of wealth of

impoverished peoples must be terminated forthwith. There must be no deterring

of these peoples' efforts to develop and control their wealth...

    In addition, the states of Asia, Africa and Latin America continue to be

hampered in the attainment of those primary objectives of theirs formulated at

the Conference on the Law of the Sea in Caracas, and at the Population

Conference and at the Rome Food Conference. The United Nations should therefore

bend every effort at radically altering the world economic system making it

feasible for developing countries to develop. The United Nations must shoulder

the responsibility for fighting inflation, now borne most heavily by developing

countries (especially the oil producing states.) The United Nations must firmly

condem any threats made against these countries simply because they demand

their just rights.

     Mr. President, the world-wide armament race shows no sign of abating. As a

consequence the entire world is threatened with the dispersion of its wealth

and the utter waste of its energies. Armed violence is more likely everywhere.

We expect that the United Nations should devote itself singlemindedly to

curbing the unlimited acquisition of arms, to preventing the possibility of

nuclear destruction, to reducing the vast sums spent on military technology, to

converting expenditures on war into projects for development, the increase of

production, and the benefits of common humanity. And still, the highest tension

is in our part of the world. There, Zionism clings tenaciously to occupied Arab

territory; Zionism persists in its aggressions upon us and our territory. New

military preparations are being made feverishly. These anticipate another,

fifth war of aggression launched against us...

     The world is in need of tremendous efforts if its aspirations for peace,

freedom, justice, equality and development are to be realized, if its struggle

is to be victorious over colonialism, imperialism, neo-colonialism, and racism

in all of its forms, amongst which is Zionism. Only in making such efforts can

actual form be given to the aspirations of all peoples, including even the

aspirations of peoples whose states oppose these efforts. It is in this road

that leads to fulfillment of those principles emphasized by the United Nations

Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Were the staus quo

simply to be continued, however, the world would instead be exposed to

prolonged armed conflict, in addition to economic, human and natural calamity.

     Mr. President, despite abiding world crises, despite even the gloomy

powers of backwardness and disastrous wrong, we live in a time of glorious

change. An old world order is crumbling before our eyes, as imperialism,

colonialism, neo-colonialism and racism, whose chief form is Zionism

ineluctably perish. We are privileged to be able to witness a great wave of

history bearing people forward into a new world they have created. In that

world just causes shall triumph.

     Of that, we are confident.