UN General Assembly
1946

And we can give the Council some constructive work to do. Under the Charter, it is the Council’s duty to organise the collective system by which alone aggressive war can be restrained. It is its duty to prepare the plans for the regulation of national armaments. This is an immense task, in which the Military Staff Committee must take the early steps. We should like to see that Committee pushing forward with greater energy, and reaching more practical results. We ask our Soviet colleagues, in all friendship and good understanding, to reflect on the speeches they have heard, and to listen to the appeal which we make to them today. Can they not now help us in the Assembly, in consultation with all their colleagues, to examine what has happened in the Council, and to agree on measures by which we can make a new and better start? I come now to the third and most important controversial question which, as my Government believes, the Assembly should debate — I mean atomic energy.