UN General Assembly
1981

152. We are equally proud to welcome to independence and freedom the new State of Belize, which came into being only 16 days ago. The people of Belize are free at last and we all have every reason to rejoice: We wish them a very happy future. 153. Botswana continues to attach great importance to the annual sessions of this great assembly of nations. There is, in our view, some virtue in the ritual of speech making, in the festival of words in which we engage every year, for we know only too well that when nations stop talking they start fighting.