Vol. 197 No. 9
andMr. McQuillan asked the Minister for External Affairs whether Ireland supported the efforts of the Afro-Asian States at UNO to introduce a boycott of South African goods in order to force the South African Government to alter their apartheid policies.
41.
andMr. McQuillan asked the Minister for External Affairs whether Ireland supported the Afro-Asian States at UNO in their efforts to have South Africa expelled from UNO in order to help to force the South African Government to change the apartheid laws.
With your permission, a Cheann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 40 and 41 together.
In reply to somewhat similar questions from the Deputies on 12th April, 1961, I explained our attitude in regard to clauses in apartheid resolutions calling for the breaking off of diplomatic relations with South Africa and the imposition of trade sanctions. I pointed out then that we supported resolutions and clauses of resolutions condemning apartheid but that in our belief resolutions calling for sanctions would hinder rather than help the ending of apartheid.
At the present session of the General Assembly the Irish delegation voted against the Afro-Asian resolution on apartheid on the grounds that it contained sanction clauses and called on the Security Council, if necessary, to consider the expulsion of South Africa from the organisation. We had supported a motion calling for a separate vote on the contentious clauses. As these objectionable clauses were retained in the resolution, we were obliged to vote against it. Had the motion been carried we would have, as in previous years, voted for the clauses condemning apartheid and calling for its abolition and voted against the clauses calling for the imposition of sanctions and the expulsion of South Africa from the United Nations.
Would the Minister not agree that this practice recently adopted by him in the United Nations of pious exhortations without being prepared to go to the extent of giving physical help to people in positions such as this is a serious departure from our more courageous stand of other years on matters generally, and secondly, would he not agree——
That question is simply argument.
——that the AfroAsians would be the authorities on what is the best way to approach this question of apartheid and not the Colonial countries with whom he sided?
Nonsense.
