REPLIES TO PRES. TUBMAN'S TOAST
We thank Your Excellency for the warm and
cordial sentiments which you have expressed on Our behalf and on that of Our
people. Ethiopia and Liberia are old and respected friends, and it is fitting
and proper that the leaders of these two nations should entertain for one
another feelings of warm and deep friendship and that their peoples, united by
these ties of mutual respect and admiration, should equally partake of these
feelings.
We
need not set forth in detail the long history of acquaintance between our two
states which has brought their relations to the high level which they today
enjoy. Long before much of this great continent of Africa was known to the
outside world, Ethiopia and Liberia stood as twin symbols of independence, one
in West Africa, the second on the other side of the continent, and the flame of
freedom which these two states held high, flickering faintly at the outset,
then growing in intensity, has swept from East to West, from North to South,
and today it illuminates every corner of this vast land. History will attach
high importance to the example of Liberia and Ethiopia, who demonstrated that
Africans can and must be free, in accounting for the tide which is today
sweeping colonialism and oppression from this continent.
In particular are We mindful of the
sympathetic and fruitful co-operation which has marked relations between
Ethiopia and Liberia at the United Nations. Ethiopia’s cause has been that of
Liberia; Liberia’s cause that of Ethiopia, and We could ask for no greater
blessing than that relations between our two countries will be maintained on
this same high plane. This We are confident will be the case.
Combined Action
This same spirit of collaboration on
problems of mutual concern is continuing at an accelerated pace today in the
policies which these two African states are pursuing to the end of eradicating
racial discrimination, that ignoble and most infamous of prejudices, from the
face of the earth. Ethiopia and Liberia are today pressing a legal action
before the International Court of Justice at the Hague, for the lifting of the
mandate held by the Republic of South Africa over the territory of South-West
Africa. We re-affirm here now our determination to pursue this course to its
successful conclusion.
And, in the crisis in the Congo, in the
efforts which We have made to find an amicable and just solution to the vexing
problems which exist in that newly independent country, We have counted Ourself
fortunate in the wholehearted co-operation of Your Excellency and in the
sagacity and judgment which you have brought to this problem. The Congo
represents, first and foremost, a problem for Africans, and it is Africans who
must, putting aside superficial differences, collaborate in unity to restore
order in the Congo, to ensure its territorial integrity, and to prevent the
insinuation into the Congo, in whatever guise, of the colonialist influences of
which the Congolese people have sought to rid themselves.
We look forward with calm confidence to
yet further improvements in relations between us, and We hope that one of the
results of the visit which We are paying to this great nation will be the
taking of further measures to expand and broaden contacts between us. The
initiation of direct air travel between Ethiopia and Liberia will, We hope, do
much to facilitate the interchange of ideas, people and goods, and it is in
this spirit that We desire that relations with Liberia grow and develop.
For, it is this development that leads to
the strength of economy and mutual assistance.
Dec.
7, 1960.
Selected Speeches of His
Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie - page 210 –
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen