UN General Assembly
1995

At the outset, I should like to express warm congratulations to the President of the General Assembly, His Excellency Mr. Diogo Freitas do Amaral, a distinguished statesman and eminent jurist from friendly Portugal. We also follow with particular appreciation the actions of the Secretary-General, Mr. Boutros Boutros- Ghali, whose dedication to the cause of peace and economic and social development meets with universal approval. Three months ago, the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of our Organization were inaugurated at a meeting of Nobel Prize winners in San Francisco. Fifty years have passed since the end of the Second World War, which began with the aggression of the forces of the Third Reich against Poland in the early hours of 1 September 1939. As a historian and also an eyewitness to those days, I have a moral right to recall from this rostrum that it was Poland that put a stop to appeasement, a policy that was futile then and is futile today, a policy which, in the long run at any rate, never pays, anywhere.