UN General Assembly
1962

42. A year ago we met at a time of doubt and of danger la the twelve months since, much has taken place to justify a measure of fresh hope for the future. A long, bitter war in Algeria has come to a close. A threatened conflict between two of our Members in the South-west Pacific has yielded to peaceful settlement, through statesmanship on their part and skilful conciliation by the United Nations. In Laos, civil war, abetted by foreign intervention, has been replaced by a cease-fire and an independent government under international guarantees. In the Congo, where the United Nations has played such a decisive part, war and the threat of war seem to be yielding to new hopes for the peaceful reintegration of Katanga into the Congo State and to the Secretary-General's vigorous efforts, with our support and. that, of the great majority of the Members, to get early implementation of the United Nations reconciliation plan. Disarmament negotiations, with the encouragement of the General Assembly, have resumed in a new forum with non-nuclear Powers playing a useful and constructive role. We have begun, under United Nations auspices, a search for co-operation in the development of outer space, in the interests not of any one nation but of humanity. We have begun, too, an intensification of the drive against poverty under the United Nations Development Decade.