After the UN Interregnum

...Two months ago the Soviets suggested a move to Berlin...

...In blunt phrases the Senator wrote: "Instead of engaging in an arid and irrelevant exercise in legalities we would be far better advised to seek feasible means of building a cohesive community of free nations...

...For many of them, the eruption of new fighting in the Congo, which has destroyed the cease-fire Dag Hammarskjold died trying to achieve, created an "Isn't-thiswhere-we-came-in...

...Recognition of the fact that the U.S...

...It has merely been deferred until April 10, 1963, when U Thant will have completed the unexpired portion of Dag Hammarskjold's term...

...The Afro-Asian bloc has increased by two-thirds in the past two years...

...The Algerian rebellion, South African apartheid and nuclear testing seem to be immune to anything the organization can do...

...Debates are twice as unwieldy as they were in the early years because there are twice as many members to be heard from...

...The President gave a welcome lift to United Nations morale by proposing to help the world organization in a "decade of development" for poor countries...

...Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote that the idea of building a world order through reorganizing the United Nations was "utterly fatuous" and "an exercise in futility...

...reliance on the world body...

...For one thing, the marathon of long policy statements that occupies the first weeks gets longer with each new member...

...The General Assembly hall, the council chambers and the committee rooms were designed for a maximum of 106 delegations...

...But prodigies of negotiation, compromise and hair-splitting were required before the 52-year-old Buddhist could be cleared by the Security Council for election by the Assembly...

...will give $2 for every $3 contributed by other members, up to a maximum contribution of $60 million...

...The delegates have had to run hard just to stay in the same place...

...In Washington, it has prompted a review of the importance hitherto given the world body as a field for the conduct of U.S...

...From the early committee stages, American representatives warned regretfully that a moratorium resolution would result in the first refusal by the United States to abide by a General Assembly recommendation...

...it gave up trying to keep China off the agenda in favor of referring the issue to a committee in the hope of postponing Peking's admission...

...policy...

...shifted tactics on the issue...

...It now numbers 50 out of 103 members, will be 51 out of 104 soon after Tanganyika becomes independent on December 9, and 52 out of 105 if Kuwait is admitted...

...But the ingestion of these weak, hungry, idealistic countries, whose flamboyant representatives are filled with the euphoria of new independence, seems to provide too rich a fare for the great powers, who are the vital parts of the United Nations organism...

...Their delegates have taken to warning against "the tyranny of the majority...

...sensation...

...Consequently, much of the thought and energy expended in the first half of the session was devoted to obtaining a successor...

...Because it has the most to lose, the United States is the chief loser in the shift of voting strength toward the Afro-Asian neutralists...

...The high points in color and drama were President Kennedy's September 25 speech to the General Assembly and the vote of censure against "the Government of South Africa or its delegate" on October 11...

...There is a growing suspicion that the Russians do not really want Peking admitted, fearing it will pursue its schism with Moscow by splitting the monolithic Communist voting bloc...

...In character and atmosphere, the present session hardly compares with last year when Khrushchev pounded the desk with his shoe...

...the Cubans quarrelled spectacularly with a hotel keeper...

...famous and colorful leaders like Eisenhower, Macmillan, Nasser and Castro swept through New York's streets in limousines surrounded by roaring motorcycles...

...And the nuclear tests issue is more acute now than it was at the outset of the session, in spite of intense activity and the passage of several resolutions...

...Except for Hammarskjold's death, this year's major events have been mainly workaday developments...

...A few more can be squeezed in, but eventually the need for expansion will provide the Russians with an opportunity to press their demand that the UN move to some other country...

...France has used the veto four times, Britain and China twice each...

...Kennett Love is covering the current United Nations session as a staff writer for the New York Times...

...These seem more promising avenues of policy than the increasingly unruly world organization...

...After weeks of arguing over whether he should have four, five, six or seven assistants and over how much influence the assistants should have, the two powers agreed to limit the assistants to an advisory role and to let U Thant decide their number for himself...

...Nor has the troika dispute been brought closer to a settlement...

...Except for the West Indies federation, one or two Germanies and the Soviet Baltic satellites, all potential new UN members are AfroAsian...

...As for the British and the French, their diplomats show a discreet satisfaction over the prospects of decreasing U.S...

...This was the major accomplishment of the first half of the session...

...The U.S...

...Most immediately, U.S...

...Also in the offing are Samoa, Gambia, Uganda, Kenya and, separately or together, the Rhodesias and Nyasaland...

...Twelve former French African colonies, most of whom are in favor of admitting Mainland China, agreed to put off the issue for one more year...

...During the first half of its current session, the Assembly has made no headway against the major threats to peace or against the threats to its own continued existence...

...But Leopold Senghor, the poet-President of Senegal, told the Assembly this month that he saw hope in the verytroubles besetting the world...

...AFRICAN AND ASIAN TAKE CHARGE After the UN Interregnum Kennett Love United Nations The unanimous election of U Thant of Burma as Acting Secretary General has filled the critical vacancy at the summit that numbed the United Nations during the first half of the General Assembly's 16th annual session...

...The U.S...

...Berlin and Laos, the two gravest threats to world peace, remain outside the orbit of the UN...

...The growth in membership has had other laming effects...

...A dark picture...

...You see in them, surely, the signs of the birth of the world of the future, which will be accomplished, no doubt, in blood and pain...

...Whatever the consequences of the China issue, the prospects for the second half of the session are not cheerful...

...Like that other experimental creature, the guinea pig, the UN may eventually swell up so much it will die...

...In a complicated deal, they bartered their votes for Nationalist China's promise not to veto the admission of Outer Mongolia...

...The U.S...

...Another significant development was the inclusion on the agenda of the question of whether the Chinese seat in the UN should be occupied by the Nationalist regime on Formosa or the Communist regime in Peking...

...Although President Kennedy rallied to defend the powers of the Secretary General in the critical interregnum following Hammarskjold's death, there are many signs that the Administration will rely less on the UN in the future...

...The Americans had to give up their insistence that the Secretary General remain an unencumbered individual...

...Even in the category of divided countries, Germany is outmatched by Korea and Vietnam...

...In truth we are, I am convinced, at the last critical threshold of mankind...

...Premier Khrushchev expressed the current Russian attitude toward the United Nations this summer when, in the presence of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, he said: "Even if all the countries of the world adopted a decision that did not accord with the interests of the Soviet Union and threatened its security, the Soviet Union would not recognize such a decision but would uphold its rights, relying on force...

...But it did no more than restore the UN to something less than it had been when the delegations converged here from all over the world two months ago...

...More generally, Washington is looking toward strengthening its regional associations and bilateral relationships outside the United Nations...

...And the UN's prestige has been committed to an ill-starred military effort to reunify the Congo that has not even enough support among the members to ensure the financing of the operation...

...Administration spokesmen this month launched a campaign aimed at associating this country with the European Common Market...

...Ninety-five Russian vetoes prove that, of the great powers, the Soviet Union has found the world organization the least amenable to its interests...

...And nationalist movements may succeed in the huge Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique and in the South African trust territory of South West Africa...

...A Russian resolution demanding the transfer of the Chinese seat from the Nationalists to the Communists will probably be defeated...

...But the accomplishments of each session generally come in the second half...

...could no longer count on having its way in the United Nations helped persuade Moscow to drop its drive to extend the veto into the Secretariat by means of the troika system...

...spokesmen have made clear that the demand for a new suspension of nuclear tests is unacceptable in view of the massive Russian test series begun September 1 in violation of a three-year moratorium...

...Should Mainland China be admitted, though, it will be part of the Communist bloc rather than the Afro-Asian...

...Outer Mongolia's membership was paired with that of Mauretania, also a former French African colony...

...The impartiality, steadiness and urbanity of U Thant recommended him to the rival superpowers weeks before his election...

...And a delegation which includes five Cabinet ministers went to Japan to solidify trade relations and strengthen friendship...

...And the physical incapacity of the present headquarters on New York's East River to accommodate all the new members expected in the next five or 10 years may force the UN to go elsewhere...

...at the same time, there are indications that the great powers will progressively neglect the UN in the future, relying more and more on diplomacy and groupings outside its orbit...

...If Nationalist China had vetoed Outer Mongolia, Russia would have vetoed Mauretania and the 12 African countries would have voted in favor of Communist China...

...Evidently the great powers, who incorporated the veto in the Security Council, do not contemplate being pushed around by the new Afro-Asian majority in the Assembly...

...Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold had not arranged for an orderly succession before he died in an African plane crash September 18, two days prior to the opening of the Assembly...

...Underlying these problems, and largely concealed by them, is a twofold evolutionary ailment that may ultimately hurt the United Nations more than the troika or a failure in the Congo: The admission of many new African and Asian countries has rather suddenly swelled the size of the world body...

...is the only one of the five permanent members of the Security Council that has never found it necessary to veto a UN action...

...The drift of voting strength away from the great power blocs toward the Afro-Asians was reflected in the choice of Mongi Sum of Tunisia as Assembly President as well as in U Thant's election as chief executive...

...The Russians had to give up their demand for a troika—consisting of a Communist, a Westerner and a neutralist, each with a veto— to replace Hammarskjold...

...and an Estonian escaped from Khrushchev's ship...

...Algerian independence and membership may not be far off...

...In the October issue of Foreign Affairs, Senator J. William Fullbright (Dem.-Ark...

...His article, widely regarded as a clue to the Administration's thinking, urged strengthening the North Atlantic community by using NATO or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as a nucleus...