UN General Assembly
1967

136. The ugliest international crisis since the twenty-first regular session has been, of course, the Middle East war. Nigeria has for some time been closely involved in endeavours to tackle the Arab-Israeli dispute. As a member of the Security Council it has raised its voice continuously against the tendency to regard first the 1949 and later the 1957 armistice as permanent features of Middle East life, instead of transitional arrangements pending a final settlement. Nigeria has deplored the tendency to deal with the Middle East question on the basis of incidents occurring in alleged violation of the General Armistice Agreements; it has deplored the tendency to deal with the Arab refugees on the basis of grants which do little more than enable them and their children to eke out a living in camps all their lives; it has deplored the tendency to think that time will, as it were, help remove the Arab-Israeli dispute from the agenda of the Organization. These illusions have now been shattered, and shattered at a heavy price; a short but bitter war resulting in tens of thousands more refugees and a more complex political conundrum than we faced in the Middle East, say, a year ago.