UN General Assembly
1966

203. How should that happy state of affairs be brought about? In the view of the Nigerian delegation it cannot be done by the "trading" of proposals and counterproposals in public. The present spokesman for the Nigerian delegation was asked the other day by a member of an audience that he had just addressed what his proposals for solving the Viet-Nam dispute were. He replied that if he had any that he felt were good enough to try out, the last thing he would do was to blurt them out in a public forum. In the opinion of the Nigerian delegation, the settlement of this most dangerous and most delicate issue can only be accomplished by "quiet and confidential diplomacy". There must be at least one country in this world, there must be at least one world statesman, or a group of such, whom the parties to this dispute can trust for the purpose of helping to secure agreement between them on the modalities preliminary to the peaceful negotiation of a complete settlement. The fact that so many efforts of this kind have failed is no reason for not trying again, for some of them would appear to have been frustrated in their purpose by premature publicity.