UN General Assembly
1969

de-escalation as a sign of weakness and that it should in its turn agree to meet its opponents half-way. 113. Millions of old people, women and children have been waiting too long for their nightmare to be over. It is time to put an end to the futile subtleties and to the jousting which are paralysing the work of the delegations meeting in the Majestic Hotel in Paris. The people now have the floor, those who are primarily concerned and who alone have the right to determine their destiny. It is therefore urgent that the blind destruction should cease and that those responsible for this fearful slaughter should agree to organize elections, the authenticity of which would be guaranteed by the presence of neutral observers and through which the inhabitants could at last make their choice known. 114. This recourse to self-determination should also make it possible to put an end to abnormal situations born of the last world war or of subsequent conflicts. I am thinking in particular of Germany and Korea, whose absence from this