UN General Assembly
1969

United Nations and elsewhere, will set the tone for our discussions and impart a character to this Assembly which will be in accord with the noble principles of the Charter to which we have all subscribed, resulting in satisfactory solutions to the serious problems which we are called upon to consider during this session. 175. We should also like to take advantage of this opportunity to offer our encouragement and acknowledgement to the Secretary-General, U Thant, for the praise-worthy work he does in the service of peace. 176. The delegations which have spoken before me have all raised the important problems of peace, disarmament, security, development and international co-operation. 177. In my delegation’s opinion, the events which trouble our continent and the persistence of foreign domination will cause the twenty-fourth session of the General Assembly, even more than the sixteenth (known as “Africa Year“), to be marked again by the “African problem”, i.e. the problem of the effective exercise of national sovereignty by Africans for the benefit of their peoples and to the exclusion of all foreign interference.