Guest Column
BEICHMAN, ARNOLD
GUEST COLUMN By Arnold Beichman United Nations: Illusion and Reality ONE OF THE mysteries of the United Nations is the noncommunication which seems to exist between UN delegates and their home...
...In the delegates' lounge you will find representatives of governments who have been here for vears because they have no standing back home...
...On the Tibet resolution, mild as it was, Burma abstained...
...The life of the lounge has a life all its own...
...All this raises the question of just what is the United Nations in political terms...
...His answer was a classic: "The life of the lounge has a life all its own...
...The Security Council becomes automatically paralyzed any time an East-West issue, let alone a colonial question like Algeria, comes up...
...GUEST COLUMN By Arnold Beichman United Nations: Illusion and Reality ONE OF THE mysteries of the United Nations is the noncommunication which seems to exist between UN delegates and their home governments...
...Bathed as we are by the "peace-in-our-time" atmosphere, one of the few places where one can see the grim realities is here in the UN...
...More than a dozen UN resolutions on the 1956 aggression against Hungary have been ignored and will continue to be ignored...
...The Hungarian delegation sits in the UN...
...For example, there was Burma, where it couldn't be more obvious that Communist China was regarded as the enemy, where the Soviet Union's popularity was at a low for various reasons...
...If you want confirmation that little of any importance will take place on the big disarmament issue, bore yourself to death by listening to debates on disarmament or by reading the documents—but you will also see that the only way there can be any agreement is by American surrender...
...And on this 14th anniversary of the UN...
...There is always an audience in the galleries and on the floor...
...The Soviet Union has ignored official Assembly votes demanding the right of entry into Budapest for UN emissaries, such as Prince Wan of Thailand and now Sir Leslie Munro of New Zealand...
...In the most negative sense, the UN does have some significance in Big Power terms...
...My interviews with Government officials in Burma were frank and on-the-record...
...The case of V. K. Krishna Menon...
...He still calls the shots for Asian delegations here, when it comes to votes and negotiations...
...From what I saw and heard in India this summer, it is no exaggeration to say that Menon is probably the most unpopular man there...
...Tibetans...
...Coming big events cast their shadows ahead...
...Even more significant is the question of Hungary, which will not disappear—except in the UN...
...Certainly its present setup, particularly the voting in the General Assembly—where every country's vote is equal to every other's—has made the UN a silly place...
...My friend was referring to the physical nature of the delegates' lounge on the UN's second floor, where delegates, newspapermen and kibitzers wander around exchanging the latest gossip...
...Nobody here really wants to do anything on the Hungarian issue which involves the honor of the UN...
...Yet there is a UN Credentials Committee, on which sits an American representative—but the Credentials Committee isn't going to meet until the end of the session...
...So for all practical purposes, the Security Council has little meaning...
...Yet it was the Tibet issue which had an enormous impact on opinion in Burma...
...Nobody thinks it laughable and obscene that Soviet or Iron Curtain delegates can insist on questioning Cameroonians as to whether they will really have a free vote in their upcoming plebiscite on colonial association...
...If one thinks only in terms of a spurious realism, then issues like Hungary are not issues but minor irritants...
...and the political opinions expressed were as far from neutralism as they are on Formosa...
...Yet his influence among Asian delegations here is as great as it ever was...
...This observation follows from a trip I took last summer through Asia, where I heard the most anti-neutralist...
...But a sense of honor seems to be fast disappearing in the UN, where it once existed...
...and the debates drone on...
...Nepal...
...as if there never was a Tibet or Chinese attacks in Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh...
...Yet here at the UN the Burmese Foreign Minister operates as if he never heard from Rangoon...
...I asked a veteran UN diplomat to explain this seeming inconsistency, which is not limited to Burma alone, although that's the best example...
...Indians to death — realistically, there's nothing anybody can do...
...It is, of course, perfectly true that when a Big Power refuses to heed UN votes, there's nothing one can do except militarily...
...For the first time since he has been at the UN, he is having trouble in his own delegation because there are more than just "yes-men" around...
...In fact, it was the Hungarian delegate who cast the first vote at this session of the General Assembly, by some alphabetical freak, for the new president...
...the only function of the debates is to supply clues to observant newspapermen as to the real state of East-West tensions...
...India's Defense Minister, is a good case in point...
...anti-Communist statements from government officials...
...And now Hungary isn't on the agenda of this session because, realistically—that's the word which can sentence Hungarians...
Vol. 42 • November 1959 • No. 41
