UN General Assembly
1963

114. On 12 August 1963 Prime Minister Oliveira Salazar made a statement in which he said, inter alia: "... the Portuguese overseas provinces are legislatively true States, administratively autonomous and politically integrated, for whose peoples cultural assimilation and serious political reforms are already contemplated ... If the links which unite them to Portugal and make them a part of the mother country are cut, these regions will disappear from history and from geography ...". The Salazar Government is not lacking in imagination. My delegation has more than once had occasion to refute such gratuitous statements according to which the African territories under Portuguese administration are an extension of Portugal's national soil. The Security Council recently rejected such legal quibbles by its resolution of 31 July 1963. President Salazar claims, moreover, that the attainment of international sovereignty by the Portuguese territories in Africa will entail their disappearance "from history and from geography".