Speech delivered at the UN Security Council on Kashmir Issue by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
September 22, 1965
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
TEXT
Mr. President,
I am thankful to you and to the members of the Security Council for having met at this late hour to discuss a matter of vital importance to my people, to the sub-continent, to Asia, and perhaps to the world at large. It was very kind of you, Sir, to have convened this meeting at this late hour to discuss the grave issues that face us expressing my gratitude I would like to address not only the permanent members but also the other members of the Security Council for having taken the trouble to be with us this morning. I have come to you from Pakistan, and I have requested this meeting because the issues that face us are indeed so fundamental and important that it is necessary for us to meet to dilate upon them.
I am thankful also to the Secretary-General for his endeavors to bring about a meaningful settlement between India and Pakistan. We are aware of all his efforts—we are grateful to him and to the Security Council—we are grateful to all peace-loving countries for having taken such a direct interest in a war which we do not want, which has been imposed on us by a predatory aggressor.
Pakistan is a small country. You have only to look at a map of the world and see our size to be aware of our resources and our ability.
A Great Aggressor
We are facing a great monster, a great aggressor always given to aggression. During the last 16 or 17 years of our independence we have seen India commit aggression time and again. Ever since 1947, India has followed the road of aggression. It has committed aggression against Junagadh, against Manavadar, against Mongrol, against Hyderabad and against Goa. It has brought about a situation which has caused the Sino-Indian conflict. It has committed aggression against Pakistan. And Pakistan, according to Indian leaders, is its enemy number one. Pakistan is supposed to be the country which is the fulcrum of India’s fundamental policies.
From 1947 we have been faced with this situation. We have always known that India is determined to annihilate Pakistan.
Pakistan’s basic principle was the bringing about of a permanent settlement between the two major communities. For seven hundred years we sought to achieve equilibrium between the people of the two major communities, and we believed eventually that the only way to live in lasting peace with India was to establish our homeland, to establish a country smaller in area, but nevertheless capable of having a relationship, a modus vivendi, with, a great and powerful neighbor. That was one of the prime factors responsible for the creation of Pakistan. We know that in Europe certain countries have had to separate in order to get closer together—Sweden and Norway, for instance, had to separate in order to get close to one another. We believed that with the creation of Pakistan we would be able to establish a permanent peace, a permanent understanding, between the people of India and the people of Pakistan.
We are a small country and as I said, our resources are limited—one has only to look at a map of the world and a map of the sub-continent to see that we are not interested in war. We do not want aggression—we do not want conflict. We want peace in order that our people can develop. This is the age of rising expectation. We should like to see all our energies and all our efforts directed towards economic well-being. It is not the law of God that people in Asia and Africa should be poor. It is not a predestined rule or an immutable law that we should always remain in poverty. We want to break the barriers of poverty—we want to give our people a better life—we want our children to have a better future.
Productive Ends
The leaders of Asia and Africa are determined to break the barriers of the past, the legacies of the past, and in order to do so we must channel all our resources for productive ends, for a peaceful and purposeful future. This is a dire need for a small country such as Pakistan.
We do not want conflict. We are not for war. We do not want to see the extermination of peoples. We respect and have regard for the people of India. A few years ago, we were part of the same country, but for the reason which I have stated, we were obliged to separate. But by means of separation we had thought that our people would be brought closer together, that we should bring about harmony, understanding and tranquility. The basic idea in the creation of Pakistan was that the areas occupied by the Muslim majority should form a part of Pakistan. This basic principle was accepted by the Indian leaders. All we ask is to live in peace, friendship and goodwill with India on the basis of the understanding and agreements which the Indian Government and the Indian leaders themselves solemnly pledged to my people and my country.
India’s Naked Aggression
Today we are fighting a war, a war imposed on us by India, a naked predatory unwarranted aggression by 450 million people against 100 million people, a war of chauvinism and aggrandizement by a mighty neighbor against a small country. It is as if, in Europe, France or Germany committed aggression against Denmark. It is as if a small country in South America were subjected to aggression by Argentina or Brazil. It is as if the United States waged a war against a small country.
We do not want to be exterminated. We cherish life. We want to live—we want our people to live —we want our people to progress. But today our cities are being bombed indiscriminately by the might of India, by the formidable machine of the Indian armed forces.
Fight For A Righteous Cause
But we are resolved to fight for our honor, to fight for Pakistan, because we are the victims of aggression. Aggression has been committed against the soil of Pakistan. But, irrespective of our size, irrespective of our resources, we have the resolve; we have the will to fight because ours is a just cause. Ours is a righteous cause. We are wedded to principles. We are wedded to our own pledges, believe in the right of self-determination—a Wilsonian right, as I told you this evening, Sir, a concept which has inspired the whole of Asia and Africa. It is a phenomenon that cannot be stopped —and that is why we are fighting. We are fighting with our backs to the wall, but we shall tight with all our determination, irruptive of the odds and of all the forces that are pitted against us.
The Secretary-General, as I have already said, s made some very constructive suggestions, and we are grateful to him. He is not only the Secretary-General of the United Nations, he is also a great Asian from a great Asian neighbor of Pakistan and of India. And we should like to cooperate with him both in his capacity as the Secretary General and as a leader of a great Asian country. We have had useful discussions with him in Pakistan, and we told him that we are for peace.
We do not want war, we do not want destruction and we do not want disaster. But it should be a meaningful peace, a purposeful peace, a peace for all time, a peace in which India and Pakistan can live as good neighbors. We are neighbors and want to live as good neighbors. We do not want to have conflict and trouble with India for all time. No people would want that.
Good Neighborly Relations
We are a smaller country. The cardinal principle of Pakistan’s foreign policy has been to establish good neighborly relations with all countries, with all its neighbours and India is our principal neighbor. All our efforts to establish good neighborly relations with all other countries would be in vain it we are not able to establish good neighborly relations with India, which, as I have said, for historical, political and geographical reasons is our principal neighbor. We will make every endeavor to establish such relations. The Indian representative, whom I know so well and for whom I have great regard, is aware of the efforts we have made to establish good neighborly relations with India. He knows that from the very beginning our President, from the time he came into office, has made positive gestures to India to establish good neighborly relations with his country. We have taken many initiatives to bring peace, tranquility and friendship between Pakistan and India, these are matters of record, not a question of propaganda, of trying to get kudos. These are tangible and well-known facts of history that ever since he has become President of. Pakistan he has gone out of his way to establish good relations with India by cooperation in every field, cooperation in trade, in economics and in politics. Has the world forgotten that in 1959 it was the President of Pakistan who made an offer to India to disengage, to bring about a meaningful settlement so that our armies do not face each other in an eyeball-to-eyeball distance, that we all take care of our own difficulties?
Peace with Honor
These are matters of record, matters of history. Thus we want good neighborly relations with India, we want peace with India and we want friendship with India. But that peace and friendship must be peace with honor and it must be peace of a self-respecting sovereign State. India must accept that, India must know that peace can be established only on the basis of self-respect and honor, on the basis of its own commitments, on the basis of its own pledges, on the basis of its own promise to the people of Pakistan, to the people of India, to the world at large, and above all, to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
Kashmir, A Disputed Territory
Jammu and Kashmir is not an integral part of India and has never been an integral part of India. Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory between India and Pakistan. It is more a part of Pakistan than it can ever be of India, with all its eloquence and with all its extravagance with words. The people of Jammu and Kashmir are part of the people of Pakistan in blood, in flesh, in life—kith and kin of ours, in culture, in geography, in history and in every way and in every form. They are a part of the people of Pakistan.
We will wage a war for 1,000 years, a war of defence. I told that to the Security Council a year ago when that, body in all its wisdom and in all its power, was not prepared to give us a resolution. Even last year the Security Council felt that we had brought a dead horse to this Council, that we were trying to make internal propaganda. But the world must know that the 100 million people of Pakistan will never abandon their pledges and promises. The Indians may abandon their pledges and promises—we shall never abandon ours. Irrespective of our size and of our resources, we shall fight to the end. But we shall fight in self-defence, we shall fight for honor. We are not aggressors, we are the victims of aggression. It was the duty of the Security Council to pronounce itself on who is the aggressor and who is the aggressor. It was Pakistan that was the victim of aggression.
Cause of Justice
I am not referring here to some of the remarks made by countries which have no right to be here—they are not even countries. I am referring to the Great Powers, I am referring to all peace-loving countries, I am referring to those who believe in the cause of justice, in the cause of righteousness and in the cause of honour. After all, history is not in vain. Wars have been fought in the past and people have upheld great causes. I am referring to the Great Powers and also to those other countries in the Security Council which have espoused the cause of righteousness. We are grateful to all of you for whatever you have done to uphold the cause of justice, because, finally and ultimately, justice must prevail. We believe more than ever before that justice is bound to prevail for the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Five million people must have the right to decide their own future. Why should they be made an exception?
Should the whole phenomenon of self-determination, stretching from Asia and Africa, apply to the whole world except to the people of Jammu and Kashmir? Are they some outcastes of an Indian society? Are they some untouchable pariahs that they should not be given the right of self-determination, that they should not be allowed to have the right to their own future? The great country of France permitted the Algerians to have the right of self-determination. The right of self-determination is a Wilsonian concept. The Soviet Union believes in the right of self-determination of all peoples. The whole world believes in the right of self-determination. Must it be denied to the people of Jammu and Kashmir merely because power must prevail over principle? Power shall never prevail over principle. Finally and ultimately, principle must prevail over power. This is a Christian concept, it is an Islamic concept, and it is a civilized concept. Those nations which do not believe in such a concept must face the ultimate consequences.
India Isolated
India today is isolated. India, in spite of its size and its resources, has no one to support it openly. The whole of Asia and Africa supports the right of self-determination of the people of Kashmir. The Arab countries in Casablanca have supported the right of self-determination for the people of Kashmir. The European countries have supported the right of self-determination for the people of Kashmir. The Secretary of State of the United States of America, Mr. Dean Rusk, said that the historical position is a plebiscite in Kashmir. On the one hand, you have the whole world arrayed on the side of the cause of right and justice and morality, and, on the other hand, you have a war machine, an arrogant and chauvinistic State breaking its pledges, breaking its promises and wanting to destroy the will and the spirit of a people. The will and spirit of our people can never be destroyed. Let me tell you: you can have one cease-fire, you can have another cease-fire, but the 100 million people of Pakistan shall face extermination lather than forsake their principles or allow their principles to be negated and destroyed by sheer force and power.
President’s Message
Having made those remarks, I have the honor to transmit the following message from the President of Pakistan, which I received from Rawalpindi at 2 o’clock (which, is 11 o’clock W.P.S.T.) today (September 22, 1965):
“Pakistan considers Security Council Resolution 211 of 20 September as unsatisfactory. However, in the interest of international peace and in order to enable the Security Council to evolve a self-executing procedure, which will lead to an honorable settlement of the root cause of the present conflict”— namely, the Jammu and Kashmir dispute—” I have issued the following order to the Pakistan armed forces. They will stop fighting as from 12.05 hours West Pakistan Time today. As from that time they will not fire on enemy forces unless fired upon, provided the Indian Government issues similar orders to its armed forces.
“Please accept, Excellencies, the assurances of my highest consideration”.
That message was sent to Pakistan’s Permanent representative, Syed Amjad Ali. Thus, in response to the call of international peace and international goodwill we have ordered our troops to cease hostilities, provided India agrees to such a cessation of hostilities.
But a cessation of hostilities is not enough. The Security Council—the most important organ of the United Nations — must now address itself to the heart of the problem. For 18 years it has played and toyed with the future of Kashmir. It can no longer make a plaything or a toy out of 5 million people. It is the moral responsibility of the Security Council to address itself to a meaningful, a lasting solution of the problem of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Security Council has been seized of this problem for 18 years. There are more documents, more resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir—the most fundamental problem facing the world today—than on any other problem. Is it not ironical that, with regard to a conflict that may lead to world conflagration—and the present situation has shown that it is possible for this conflict to lead to world conflagration—the Security Council has shown its lethargy, its indolence?
I was here a year ago, and the Security Council was not prepared to give Pakistan a piece of paper called a resolution. It did not even want to consider the problem. It thought that this was a dead issue, that it was dormant. This can never be a dead issue, it can never be dormant.
Last Chance for Security Council
This is the last chance for the Security Council to put all its force, all its energy, all its moral responsibility behind a fair and equitable and honorable solution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. History does not wait for Councils, organizations or institutions, just as it does not wait for individuals. Ultimately we shall have to be the final determiners of our own course. Let me tell the Security Council, on behalf of my Government, that if now, after this last chance that we are giving the Security Council, it does not put its full force, full moral responsibility and full weight behind an equitable and honorable settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, Pakistan will have to leave the United Nations.
We have decided to give the United Nations a last opportunity to determine what it can do towards a purposeful, peaceful and lasting settlement of the problem of Jammu and. Kashmir. We shall give the United Nations a time-limit. Within a certain period of time, if the Security Council is not able to act in accordance with the responsibility placed on it, in. accordance with its honour under the Charter—which believes in self-determination—Pakistan will have to withdraw from the United Nations.
I am not saying this in the form of an ultimatum, I am saying it as I am honor bound to respect the very purposes of the Charter. In leaving the United Nations, Pakistan will be fulfilling the Charter of the United Nations, and then, one-third or more of the world will be outside this Organization and some countries, which call themselves States, will be members of the Security Council.
Thank you
