UN General Assembly
1948

Mr. Malik stated that he would therefore review in his present speech the achievements and challenges of the United Nations in the economic and social realm. The delegation of Lebanon would have ample opportunity to express its views on the other important items on the agenda in the appropriate Committees to which they would be referred. In some of those other items the Lebanese delegation was deeply and critically interested. That was especially the case with regard to the problem of Palestine, to which there could be no abiding solution without justice, equity and agreement. An imposed solution would never work, it would sooner or later prove illusory in the extreme. But the Prime Minister of Lebanon, the head of the delegation, would adequately express the attitude of his Government on that question in the appropriate Committee. For the present, Mr. Malik said he would concentrate his attention exclusively on the economic, social and cultural activity of the United Nations, partly on account of his association with the Economic and Social Council, partly on account of his country’s dominant interest in that field, but partly also on account of his conviction that the economic, social, cultural and spiritual concerns of man were supreme.