On 24 September 1969, three years after Botswana achieved independence, the President of the Republic, Sir Seretse Khama, addressed the 24th session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. The following extracts from his speech may be of interest to readers:

… My country is … a comparative newcomer to the United Nations, and this my first opportunity to address this General Assembly. Botswana is a small country in terms of population if not in area. As a small and poor country we set a particularly high value on our membership of the United Nations and those of its specialised agencies which our budgetary restrictions have permitted us to join. I should like to emphasise the particular importance of the United Nations for states like Botswana which, because of development priorities, are obliged to restrict their conventional bilateral contacts and keep their overseas missions to a bare minimum. Here in New York we can make contacts which would otherwise be difficult to achieve… The United Nations enables us to keep in touch with international opinion, and to put our views before the world.