The UN Mood

...PaulHenri Spaak has performed a miracle of statesmanship in reorienting Belgium's Congo policy and regaining the confidence of the Asian-African group as well as of the UN Secretary General...

...no one would criticize the Soviet Union...

...The next few weeks should show how strong anti-colonialism is today and whether Moscow can whistle it up as a political storm against the West...

...Britain and the United States have proposed an immediate, uncontrolled stop to nuclear testing in the atmosphere, under water, and in outer space...

...The obvious solution would be to make room by expanding the council, which the West is willing to do...

...And the young states will insist that one Secretary General-certainly U Thant if he chooses to stand-be the UN's chief executive and administrative officer...

...But the Soviet Union makes structural change contingent on the seating of Communist China...

...disarmament is a morass...

...The cast of characters has been much more modest...

...It stands to reason that, in a choice between a stand which will precipitate a torrent of abuse or worse from the Soviet Union and one that will evoke no more than polite regret from the West, nations whose interests are not directly involved will shy away from trouble...

...The long agenda is studded with so-called anti-colonial items, pointed at South Africa, Portugal, and Britain's remaining African territories...

...Despite the shocking object lesson of the Berlin wall, the issue is complicated and, for them, remote...

...The Market shuts out the inefficient producer, notably the Communist bloc, denying it foreign exchange at a time of painful dislocation at home and expanding commitments abroad...

...It has been expressed, in part, in various spontaneous movements, many of which somehow feel the urge to demonstrate only against American tests...

...Is this, then, the inert rather than the sober 17th...

...Other large nations are appearing on the scene...

...Underground tests, on the other hand, cannot be distinguished with certainty from earthquakes, and the West proposes a control system which would put a handful of Soviet observation crews on Russian soil, subject to a minimum of international supervision...

...There is, of course, a strong desire throughout the world to end all nuclear tests, especially those which cause radioactive fallout...

...Pakistan has not gone out of its way in recent months to emphasize its ties with the SEATO and CENTO pacts...

...The 55 Asian and African nations which now form exactly half the total membership are, for the most part, only Platonically affected by Berlin...

...It has not taken them long to learn that a hamstrung UN would profit them little...

...Algeria is gone as an easy vehicle of righteous, anti-Western anger...

...These tests can be monitored by existing means and violations would be apparent at once...

...He replied, almost in surprise at the question, "The Russians wouldn't accept it...

...IT is quite possible that Premier Khrushchev will come again to turn the Assembly into the greatest show on earth...

...While standing pat in East Berlin, he would seek UN action to dilute or confuse Western rights and responsibility in West Berlin, perhaps substituting some appearance of UN authority for the clear presence of the Western Allies...

...What would bring him here and how he would perform are his secrets...

...He might use the Assembly as a sounding board to amplify a Berlin crisis that would shake the world, calling on the UN to endorse whatever action he takes...

...This may be clear again when the Assembly splits the issue of financial responsibility in such a manner as to avoid having to deprive the Soviet bloc or anyone else of its vote for failing to pay its share of the Congo and other special expenses...

...The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, did nothing to reverse this diminuendo...

...All agree that the region deserves one, but not at the expense of an area now represented by one of the six non-permanent members...

...There is no reason, therefore, why the United Nations, shaken down in its new proportions, should be any more difficult to live with than it has been in the past...

...Recently, I asked one neutral delegate why the worried neutrals did not press for the immediate cessation of the contaminating tests, whether they then worked for checks on underground tests or not...

...The Assembly disposed of the affair quickly...

...Its influence is expanding into undeveloped regions in which Moscow would much prefer to operate alone...

...Some flaming speeches have called for blanket independence within a year, sanctions against Portugal or South Africa's expulsion from the United Nations...

...More significant, the Soviet troika, while clearly impossible for constitutional reasons, has been explicitly repudiated by one Asian and African speaker after another...

...Guinea's disenchantment with its Soviet flirtation has not gone unnoticed...

...Nor, for that matter, would Khrushchev fare much better in another quite plausible contingency: a Russian attempt to torpedo the European Common Market...

...A tendency to apply a double standard in this fashion is not necessarily a sign of calculated duplicity, as some have charged...

...West New Guinea's transfer to the UN and then to Indonesia had its unpalatable side, but it has removed the Netherlands from the anticolonial line of fire...

...But the Assembly, too, shows little inclination to go thundering off in all directions...

...But its policy is still a far cry from the flabby nonalignment that covers so much opportunism in today's world, and which seemed for a while to be the formula for international acclaim...

...There are those who believe that the Soviet leader is at least as much concerned about the Common Market as about Berlin or disarmament...

...Although practically any old anti-colonial appeal will still bring all the Africans together in solemn chorus, Africa is no political monolith, as Nigeria's recent struggle for Morocco's seat on the Security Council has shown again...

...Maurice Couve de Murville of France pointedly avoided the general debate...

...They will back U Thant in the moderate but firm policy he has laid down in the Congo and resist the demands of extremist elements in the Soviet bloc and the Casablanca group for violent action against Tshombe unless his obduracy blows the Congo wide open...

...They would much prefer to chase the Portuguese...

...Not only did President Kennedy not come a second time, his Secretary of State did not appear in the General Assembly either...

...Second only to this issue was the provision of the money without which the Congo operation would have come crashing downand with it the political credit of the world body...

...Nevertheless, Moscow has rejected the plan out of hand, calling it a cloak for Western espionage and scientifically unnecessary...

...A change in U.S...

...With the great influx of new nations now absorbed, it may rationalize its working methods but not drastically change its outlook...

...No such drama has touched the 17th session...

...The facts of life and the passage of time have affected the plot and the players...

...The emotional and political need to attack "colonialism" will remain, but is likely to be tempered by the economic need for development aid...

...Some, like the British, would question its sobriety, but there is no gainsaying that it has been a good bit quieter-so far-and has worked with more dispatch than its recent predecessors...

...Stung by the turn of events in Laos and anticipating the Spirit of Camp David, he warned the Assembly in the bluntest terms that the UN would end like the League of Nations if it persisted in going against his wishes...

...Without renouncing the idealistic thesis that the United Nations is the best hope for order in a violent, changing world, Washington stressed the advantages of sober, constructive work over wild emotion...

...That was the year of the 16 new African nations, the sweeping declaration on colonialism and, above all, Khrushchev's shoe...

...Ghana and Guinea, both of which aspired to lead the African group in 1960, have now been overshadowed by Nigeria...

...Richard C. Hottelet is United Nations correspondent for CBS News...

...the Common Market, however, is a serious threat to Soviet aims economically and politically...

...Nikita Khrushchev himself, taking off both his shoes, might find it hard to rally companions for a thundering attack on Western interests in Berlin...

...Perhaps the most hopeful thing about the 17th Assembly is that it has had the chance to stand back and take stock of itself in what nowadays passes for normal circumstances...

...The cynicism which dismisses it as an international flea-circus is just as misplaced as the boundless idealism that considers it a fairy godmother...

...FIRST PHASE OF THE 17TH ASSEMBLY The UN Mood By Richard C. Hottelet October 20 The 17th United Nations General Assembly, which Adlai Stevenson has called the "sober 17th," is well into its second month...

...Were the West to assume this kind of blocking position for its own purposes, the outcry would be deafening...

...In 1960, enraged by just that persistence and the consequent humiliating defeat for Russian strategy in the Congo, the Soviet Premier returned to New York with all his friends to take care of the UN once and for all...

...Kwame Nkrumah's new role as chief target in a political shooting gallery makes it hard for him to press his Continental ambitions...

...Explosive issues like Berlin and Cuba are not even on the agenda...

...Unhappily, in tone and style the references in his report to the United States and the "colonialists" looked more like a piece from Pravda than neutral truth...

...Yet, despite what one may presume to have been their best intentions of rousing the Assembly to wrathful denunciation of Yanqui imperialism, their exhortations dribbled away in a desert of indifference...

...Berlin, they say, is a suicidal flash point...

...If the Kremlin could brand the Common Market as Western imperialism in another guise, it might hope to hitch this issue to the emotional forces of anti-colonialism...

...He was sure to be chosen even before his competitor, G. P. Malalasekera of Ceylon, made himself the laughing stock of the UN by inadvertently circulating among member embassies a confidential report to his Government in place of a broadsheet commending himself as the most genuinely neutral of all possible choices...

...The sound of resumed Soviet nuclear tests drowned out the pious protestations of the neutrals in Belgrade and echoed in the Assembly chamber...

...This episode, however, has another significant aspect...

...They profess to see, and perhaps really do see, colonialism only in terms of Western penetration, past and present, into their areas...

...tactics made the Chinese representation issue chancy once more, and the African countries stampeded the Assembly into a vote of censure against South Africa...

...But the major questions of geographical redistribution and of reelecting or replacing U Thant as Secretary General have yet to be faced...

...The European Economic Community makes a liar of Khrushchev in his claims of Western decadence and Communist superiority...

...In 1959, Nikita Khrushchev personally expounded his disarmament plan in New York...

...There is no way of knowing how well he would succeed...

...This wiry, little intellectual coolly goads the lumbering body into convening roughly on time and wasting as little as possible of its working day...

...It would be too much to conclude from this incident that neutralism has fallen on the diplomatic bourse...

...The UN remains a cross-section of political reality, a challenge and an opportunity for a forward-looking, confident and strong American policy...

...Instead, the Foreign Minister of Nigeria and others chose to applaud the Kennedy Administration for its resolute defense of civil rights...

...It is larger and more unwieldy than ever, but not impossibly so in either respect...

...Ambassador Stevenson stated the American case that history and histrionics do not mix well...

...And had the Assembly's mood been more excitable, one might have heard some public condemnation of the Oxford, Mississippi, mess...

...But he is most unlikely to submit any of his positions to international adjudication...

...Dag Hammarskjold's death in a bloody eruption of the Congo crisis filled the fall of 1961 with all the throbbing urgency of a struggle for survival...

...Only Andrei Gromyko and President Osvaldo Dorticos of Cuba succeeded in stirring things up slightly...

...Nor has the problem of financial responsibility, not to mention disarmament, nuclear testing, colonialism, the Congo operation, and international trade, yet been taken up in more than preliminary fashion...

...Nigeria demanded that a Security Council seat be reserved for Black Africa...

...The UN's existence as something more than a permanent conference hall was in the balance as the majority fought with the Soviet Union over Hammarskjold's successor...

...Yet the expectation is that the end of the day will show a considerable measure of responsibility...

...President Muhammad Zafrulla Khan of Pakistan deserves some of the credit...

...The harsh exigencies of a small war with Communist China has also removed V. K. Krishna Menon's sharp tongue from both the general debate and the disarmament discussions...

...Zafrulla Khan's election itself is an example...

...Some wild African ideas, like S?©kou Tour?©'s call for a judicial organ representing all regions to replace the Security Council, and for the creation of bodies to review and enforce UN decisions, have been quietly ignored...

...They are not likely to accept the troika in any form, including that of tripartite Deputy Secretaries General...

...Thus, the real work and the proper label for the 17th Assembly still lie ahead...

...Time has brought with it a bit more maturity and moved the African states up or down the scale of influence to a more realistic relationship...

...It has also been voiced by the neutral nations, which see themselves standing between the Soviet and Western positions on testing...

...Yet this Assembly is almost certain to pass a resolution calling for a cut-off date on all testing without controls-basically the Soviet demand...

...The Soviet Union has placed an item to this general effect on the Assembly's agenda...

...Last year's censure of South Africa, for instance, has not been repeated...

...In atmosphere, the 17th Assembly has been considerably more matter of fact than the last three...

...So low is this minimum-as few as 12 on-site inspections a year-and so comprehensive the Soviet scrutiny of the inspectors' work that some consider it ineffectual...

...Soviet rage and bluster, violent and automatic whenever a Russian position is seriously challenged, has undoubtedly had its Pavlovian effect on delegates and nations...

...They demand that subterranean blasts, too, be prohibited on good faith alone, with no provision to detect cheating...

...The Soviets say that existing instrumentation can unerringly identify underground tests, but they have been unable or unwilling to demonstrate it...

...It may reflect no more than the natural inclination to avoid headon collision, as can be seen in the twin question of disarmament and nuclear testing...