UN General Assembly
1957

167. It is with this thought that we made our contribution to the efforts to secure the peace of Asia and to save the newly-won freedom of that part of the world. Even if this was more a product of the natural instincts of new nationhood rather than the result of experience in international affairs or of rational considerations and calculations, we, together with our friends of Asia and Africa, did take the first step towards accentuating the common grounds for harmony among the countries of that region, and of conciliating differences between neighbours, which differences, after all, have their roots in the colonial past. We convened the Bandung Conference not as a counter-weight against the two existing power blocs, nor as an instrument to be used against either one of them. The Conference born of the deep conviction that cohesion among the militarily weak and under-industrialized countries of Asia and Africa is the only way of saving the area from the traditional interplay of power politics, which in the course of human history has always culminated in distress and suffering for all of us.