UN General Assembly
1978

141. That has been the visible pattern of the past. Why else would it have taken our Organization so long merely to acknowledge that the question of Palestine was one of the core issues in the Middle East problem, and why, as the Prime Minister of Jamaica reminded us so eloquently yesterday [30th meeting], should the shameful racialist policies in the southern part of Africa have existed for so long before the need for moral pressure and concerted political action was contemplated? Why should it have needed years of marathon discussion before the relatively simple question of a sufficiently representative platform to discuss disarmament issues was finally settled? And why has the accent of the past remained so much on division, when the trend towards unity has never been so manifest? These are only a few of the many questions that can be raised, questions to which our Organization, unfortunately, has not provided an adequate answer. On the contrary, the clouds of division and strife continue to hover menacingly over every single crisis area in which the interests of the major Powers are diametrically opposed-Cyprus, Lebanon, the Middle East, Korea and southern Africa in particular.