New Role for the UN:

...But the more the facts become known, the more obvious that there is no chance for such a reasonable, quick and stable solution...

...and his present action is explicitly based on the request of the sovereign Congo Government...

...But to do that the UN would have to have the title as well as the responsibility...

...There is no precedent for recognizing the harsh fact that a newly– admitted member state has been stillborn...

...They have by now gone too far on the road to effective international government to stop half way without risking all that has been gained so far...

...The slow, cautious extension of the UN's administrative tasks has reached the point where the political implications must be faced...

...But it is now clear that this Government is a legal fiction, with no executive force of its own, no administrative control over its own national territory, and no funds...

...The unique fact is that the Congo is not just passing through a crisis, but is stillborn as a state: It lacks the essential elements of a viable, self–governing nation and may have to be put into a kind of international incubator for years if it is to live at all...

...As things stand, only a UN administration can do the two long– term jobs needed to save the Congo from chaos and starvation: to restore economic life by assuring a stability that will attract the necessary competent foreigners in all fields...

...its administrators would have to be independent of a fictitious Congolese Government and mandated to keep full control until a really sovereign Congolese Government became possible...

...None of this would matter much if it were due to a short–term crisis —as the UN seems originally to have assumed...

...and if that job is not tackled, all the achievements of emergency intervention may collapse again as a result of economic chaos and mass unemployment...

...Finally, the entrenched defenders of sovereign power politics might raise objections of principle to a step that would clearly establish the UN as an international government...

...Yet this is the logic of the situation...

...By mobilizing the UN's moral authority and the confidence enjoyed by its uncommitted African members, and by concentrating on the immediate practical tasks of restoring order and making Belgian troops superfluous, the UN has created a new situation which may well approach a turning point in its own history...

...NEW ROLE FOR THE UN By Richard Lowenthal IF THE COLLAPSE of legal authority in the Congo has not so far led to a major international crisis, despite the helplessness of the local leaders, the headlong intervention of the Belgians and the demagogic threats from Moscow, the merit must be largely ascribed to the brilliant improvization of the United Nations' executive machinery—Dag Hammar–skjold, Ralph Bunche, General Carl von Horn and their staff...

...At this point maintaining the fiction of a sovereign Congo becomes deadly for the Congo's economy...

...The Soviet Union, in its present mood, might well denounce the idea as a cover for sinister imperialist machinations, while some of the old colonial powers would hardly be happy to see the UN set its own standards of what a trustee administration should be like...

...The UN executive machinery has, in fact, begun to administer the Congo—only its lack of title is bound to prove a decisive handicap in tackling the necessary long–term job...

...Through the past years Hammar–skjold's remarkable success in gradually extending the responsibilities of his office has been due precisely to the tact, skill and caution which he has exercised in never moving into any crisis area without the consent of the sovereign government concerned...

...In effect, it now finds itself responsible for the direct government of an entire country for an indefinite period...

...First, effective government requires a considerable number of administrative, technical and economic personnel which simply are not available among the Congolese...

...There is also no precedent for what might become a real UN trusteeship—not a so–called trusteeship administered by some colonial power under benevolent UN supervision, but one administered directly by the UN executive machinery...

...RICHARD LOWENTHAL is a roving correspondent for the London Observer...

...If the UN could manage in the near future to bring about a Congo with the Force Publique mutiny ended, Belgian troops cleared out and the Katanga issue resolved by diplomatic compromise, matters would be simplified...

...For this responsibility there is no precedent in practice and no provision in the Charter, and UN officials, let alone members of the Security Council, clearly did not foresee such a situation when they first decided to move into the Congo...

...and over a period of years to train the competent and unified Congolese elite which the Belgians failed to train...

...The political difficulties of such a break with all the conventional fictions would obviously be immense...

...Second, foreign cadres—African, Asian or European—in the quality and numbers required cannot be attracted to the country or held in it without some assurance of political stability, and that assurance the present nominal leaders of the Congo cannot convincingly give...