UN General Assembly
1969

1. Madam President, I wish to begin my statement by expressing to you the warm congratulations of the Cuban delegation on your election as President of this twenty-fourth session of the General Assembly. 2. On this day, as on many earlier days, we have before us items of great interest to all the peoples of the world. They come up monotonously again and again, but the international Organization cannot solve them, because they go beyond the narrow limits of existing possibilities. Problems of peace and war, aggression and under-development, colonialism and racial discrimination, international co-operation and disarmament, trade barriers and the struggle for independence — to mention only some of the problems of greatest concern to mankind — are not being adequately solved through the United Nations, despite our constant repetition of good intentions year after year, despite our references to commitments assumed under the Charter which regulates our activities, and above all despite the clamour of public opinion and our daily contemplation of the drama of peoples suffering military aggression and overwhelmed by poverty and ignorance.