Mr. President, distinguished delegates, and fellow observers: It is a great honor and pleasure to be permitted to be an observer at this tenth session of the Asian-African Legal Consultative Committee. Mr. Oscar Schachter, the President of the American Society of International Law, has asked me to express his deep appreciation of your courtesy in allowing us to be present here, and I should like to add my own warm thanks. For more than two years the American Society of International Law has had a special committee, of which I have been a member, studying this draft convention upon the law of treaties and making recommendations to the United States Delegation to the Vienna Conference. It was my privilege also to be a member of the United States Delegation to the first Vienna Conference. Insofar as possible, however, on this occasion I should like to follow the advice given yesterday by Dr. Nagendra Singh and to try to divest myself of all special identities. I hope, with appropriate humility and with awareness of my position as an observer, simply to speak to you as one human being to another and as a citizen of the larger community of mankind
