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7. The Conference agenda is attached (see Annex B). As will be seen, the three major topics were those of the first three Plenary Sessions: "Current threats to international peace and security"; "A new strategy for the developing world: the Brandt Report"; and "Africa South of the Sahara: the beginning of a new era".
First Plenary:
8.
Current threats to international peace and security
The opening speech was made by the Speaker of the Indian Lok Sabha, Shri Bal Ram Jakhar. He spoke of the massive accumulation of destructive weapons which confronted mankind with an unpreced- ented threat of self-extinction; at the same time ideological and racial conflicts, and poverty in the midst of plenty, added to global unrest. India, while seeing nuclear disarmament as the fist priority, saw the ultimate goal as complete disarmament under effective international control. Speaking of threats nearer to home, he said, rather surprisingly, that India felt that the use of force in international relations, or interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, was inadmissable. Since the commencement of the Afghanistan crisis, India had tried to defuse tension and to prevent great power confrontation in the area. India's recognition of the Heng Samrin regime was aimed at strengthening the independence, stability and security of Cambodia. He criticised the build up of US forces at Diego Garcia, and hoped that an early conference would be held to give effect to the UN Declaration of 1971 - in regard to making the Indian Ocean a zone of peace.
9. In the course of the discussion which followed much was heard from the developing Commonwealth countries, who laid the blame for current world tension, variously, at the door of the super powers, the arms manufacturing cartels and multinationals; they saw also the widening gap between rich and poor countries, and the population explosion in the latter, as potential threats to world peace. There was much criticism, voiced particularly vehemently by Singapore, of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Focusing firmly on the Indians, the Singaporean asked how countries that recognised the Heng Samrin regime in Cambodia could have been party to the communique issued at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting in New Delhi, which had condemned the situation in Cambodia and agreed that foreign troops should be withdrawn from that country, so giving its people the right to determine their own future.
10. Some African delegates, pre-empting the Plenary discussion on Africa South of the Sahara, made predictable attacks on South African policies as a threat to peace in the continent. Malta took the opportunity to air its grievances over its newly arisen quarrel with Libya an intervention which not only seemed to many to be out of place in this discussion, but appeared to leave the majority of delegates singularly unmoved. Gibraltar also took the opportunity to complain about the physical and economic blockade Spain had been subjecting it to for the past eleven years, and
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