Gromyko's Long Shadow at the UN
SAMUELS, GERTRUDE
A CONSPICUOUS ABSENCE Gromyko's Long Shadow at the UN BY GERTRUDE SAMUELS United Nations As the 38th regular session of the UN General Assembly opened on the traditional third Tuesday of...
...What can be said is that the unsettled mood engendered by his decision to remain aloof has ironically made the Soviet Foreign Minister the most formidable and threatening "presence" here...
...Major delegates who were hardly strangers to dealing with a journalist spoke in measured, uncomfortable tones...
...Some, like the French ambassador, literally raced away...
...Yasuhide Hayashi, Japan's counsellor at the UN for political and legal affairs, after contending that "the Soviet Union is well aware that the UN is needed," went on to say: "Gromyko and [U.S...
...As for the long-term significance of Gromyko's staying away, U. S. Mission Chief Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, perhaps not surprisingly, maintained that there was none:" It just means he decided not to come...
...Well you see," Jelonek replied more circumspectly, "the UN has had its ups and downs, and it has survived...
...Gromyko will be missed not so much inside the august Assembly and committee chambers as in the small, private, sometimes secret behind-the-scenes meetings...
...Three days earlier, a valuable opportunity for high-level dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union had been dramatically scuttled with the announcement from Moscow that Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, an autumnal fixtureherefor the past quarter century, was not to appear...
...Nonetheless, his decision to stay away was fraught with larger portents for the World Organization...
...Asked whether he nonetheless felt the current situation was a harbinger of things to come, Stadjuhar answered rather sadly, "I hope not...
...Ambassador Alois Jelonek, West Germany's deputy permanent representative, told me: "The General Assembly is the place where all the different positions are put forward...
...Speaking to correspondents about the report, he added that a state of international turmoil like the present one "was precisely the condition that made direct contact at the highest possible level essential...
...Israel and the Palestinians...
...population believes "the UN has become an anti-American organization," well over 60 per cent thinks the body should be given more power to reduce the danger of superpower confrontation, enhance human rights and conserve natural resources...
...Yes, of course...
...But I would not suppose that this is more than marginal...
...There have been, however, worse times," he reminded me...
...Obviously, we are at peace and not at war...
...Rudolf Stadjuhar, a former veteran Yugoslav News Agency correspondent now in the UN Secretariat, expressed more concern: "The tension is felt here at headquarters...
...Still, reason prevailed...
...But does this crisis erode the worth of the UN...
...It's a unique forum for the international community to make decisions and settle problems...
...Dialogue of a sort between the U.S...
...The state of United States-Soviet relations today is about what it has been for quite a long time...
...Mar-getson, a youthful former Army careerist who retains his soldierly bearing despite having joined the diplomatic corps in 1960, said: "Our ability to solve the problems of the world is lessened by the absence of a major figure, Mr...
...And we will hear what the Soviet Union has to say from whoever Gromyko deputes to act in his place...
...Have the Soviets, by downgrading their delegation at this particular As-sembly, signaled they now place less importance on the UN...
...Which, of course, is what many at Turtle Bay are worried about...
...In that perspective, it very much speaks in favor of having all the main actors around...
...President Reagan has already addressed the General Assembly, reaffirming American support for the UN despite his criticism of the Communist states and the so-called nonaligned group for politicizing the body and pursuing a double standard...
...No one can predict at this time whether Gromyko's historic absence will spell the beginning of a fatal downward spiral for the UN, or whether better sense will win out...
...When pressed on the matter of diplomatic contact, Kirkpatrick reiterated emphatically: "It means nothing...
...The worth of the UN would certainly be in doubt if the superpowers stopped using it as a meeting place...
...There should be cooperation between the superpowers...
...At this moment, its importance is being watered do wn...
...Ambassador Yehuda Z. Blum of Israel commented: "The fact thai Gromyko is not coming is a symptom of the world-wide uproar over the Korean jet...
...Gromyko also notified Tokyo that he will meet the Japanese Foreign Minister at another opportunity, outside the UN...
...With no fewer than 141 items on the agenda and 150 speakers slated for podium appearances, some well-worn issues will be argued once more: disarmament...
...If we want to have a dialogue," he declared crisply at a press conference, "Gromyko ought to be here regardless of any political or ideological reason...
...And a striking looking, black business suited Chadian I questioned nearby wasted no words: "Mr...
...TheUNcan get on with its work...
...Secretary of State George P.] Shultz will meet elsewhere...
...Technically the consequence of a dispute over landing rights for his plane in New York, Gromyko's absence actually seemed more the result of an unwillingness to confront the international outrage being expressed at the USSR's downing of a South Korean civilian airliner earlier in the month, killing all 269 people aboard...
...To be sure, over three dozen heads of state and government are scheduled to arrive at Turtle Bay during the three-Gertrude Samuels reports regularly on the United Nations for this magazine...
...What has happened to the dreams of the UN's founders...
...As one key member of the Secretariat put it, "If they won't negotiate here, what elsedo weor they have...
...And in 1973 the Yom Kippur War produced a great deal of tension...
...in the non-official dinners, the bars, the corridors of the UN building...
...It's a big blow to this Assembly...
...global negotiations to find ways of meeting the desperate needs of developing countries...
...He must have realized how much he would have been isolated...
...the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia...
...grain deliveries do continue to the USSR...
...Even before the Gromyko announcement, Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar had moodily observed in his annual report that "when East-West tension is superimposed on regional conflicts...
...Many of her colleagues from around the globe disagreed...
...To Minister Darko Silovic of Yugoslavia, "This episode is just a skirmish between the two superpowers...
...Probably the most encouraging piece of news to greet this General Assembly came, oddly enough, from a Roper poll commissioned by the UN Association of the United States...
...The question hanging over the UN is whether Moscow's move marks the beginning of a dangerous pattern...
...It means nothing...
...There were more than the usual number of requests to withhold names...
...yet in the end the UN helped to avoid the widening of that conflict...
...Ambassador John W.D...
...When the Assembly convened, its newly elected President, Jorge E. II-lueca of Panama, echoed the Secretary-General...
...The British delegate deplored the fact that Gromyko had remained at home, but expected the rest of the Soviet representatives to at least partly fill the gap...
...and USSR does continue in Geneva...
...month session, including Egypt's Hos-ni Mubarak, France's Francois Mitterrand, Poland's Henryk Jablonski, Canada's Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and India's Indira Gandhi...
...It's between the Soviet Union and the United States...
...A CONSPICUOUS ABSENCE Gromyko's Long Shadow at the UN BY GERTRUDE SAMUELS United Nations As the 38th regular session of the UN General Assembly opened on the traditional third Tuesday of September, long shadows of tension seemed to enshroud the delegates from most of the 158 member states...
...You cannot have a marriage without a bride and a groom, and they have to be of different sexes...
...the Iran-Iraq War, now in its fourth year...
...They don't want a public dialogue...
...Indeed, it is dangerous to blow this up into something too important...
...The survey revealed that, although 23 per cent of theU.S...
...Anxiety could readily be felt in a series of interviews I conducted on the unexpected turn of events...
...A tall, handsomely turbaned Sikh, asking not to be identified other than as a member of the Indian mission, said firmly: "If the superpowers don't want to talk to each other, it becomes difficult for the whole world, doesn't it...
...China's Ambassador, LingQing, informed the media through his press attache that "he preferred to refrain from making a comment on this matter...
...Back in 1962, with the Cuban crisis, people were genuinely scared by the possibility of a U.S.Soviet military clash...
...Gromyko should be here...
...the danger of widening strife becomes an ominous prospect...
Vol. 66 • October 1983 • No. 18
