UN General Assembly
1982

achieve its essential objective of the attainment of shared benefits. 169. A regrettable, anachronistic colonial case arose this year in the South Atlantic—that of the Malvinas Islands, where an extra-continental Power mounted a disproportionate punitive expedition, with the support of other great Powers, to deny the Argen¬tine Republic's right of sovereignty. Ecuador, which maintained its anti-colonialist position before, during and after that warlike episode, has rejected the use of force and has recalled that the principle of uti possidetis juris of 1810 is the basis, of the territorial reality of the American countries which gained independence from the Spanish Crown. Ecuador has reaffirmed its adherence to the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, adopted as General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV), paragraph 6 of which clearly states: Any attempt aimed at the partial or total dis¬ruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the pur¬poses and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. It should not be forgotten that the islands are