The United Nations

on the World today

ATLANTIC

July 1949

THE final session of the Third United Nations General Assembly (April 5-May 18) was squeezed in between two events of major importance to our time. On April 4 the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington. On May 23 the Council of Foreign Ministers met in Paris.

During the opening week of the Assembly there was considerable uneasiness on the part of United Nations officials regarding the Pact, which in their opinion had dealt a cruel blow to the world organization. But the spirits of delegates and UN officials were restored by the flare-up of a familiar feud in the second week. Andrei Gromyko, with new authority as the Soviet First Deputy Foreign Minister, interrupted a debate on Security Council voting reform to lash out at the United States and the United Kingdom as instigators of the new alliance of aggression. The common people of America and Britain, he said, were opposed to the Pact.

This was too much for that fiery young Scot, Hector McNeil. How, he asked, could the Russians know what the ordinary people were thinking, barricaded as they were in their great homes on Long Island and on Park Avenue? Let them get out to the delicatessens, the buses, the subways, where the ordinary people meet and talk, and the Russians would learn what people think of this new association which has no aggressive aims against anyone. It was a curious exchange: the solemn, dark Russian with his sledge hammer; the quick-moving little Scotsman with his slingshot. It cleared the air. People felt at home again.

Towards the end of the third week word came of the Jessup-Malik talks. Day by day, hour by hour, there were bulletins and rumors. An agreement had been reached. The blockade was to be lifted. The Foreign Ministers were to meet in Paris. UN officials seized on the good news. The big-power conflict had been the most serious deterrent to effective United Nations action. An easing of the conflict was bound to raise both the prestige and the authority of the world organization.

The fifty-ninth flag

The admission of Israel ended an important chapter in post-war history. For two years the United Nations had been bedeviled by the Palestine problem. Two special Assemblies, two regular Assemblies, a Special Commission, two Mediators, a Conciliation Commission, Assembly resolutions, Security Council edicts — all seemed to emphasize the futility of a United Nations endeavor to impose a settlement.

But actually the pieces were falling into shape. The UN partition plan became the charter of a newstate. The new state proved it could defend its integrity against armed assault. The mediation effort, though it cost the life of Count Bernadotte, led to a truce. At Lausanne the UN Conciliation Commission was guiding peace negotiations towards a permanent settlement.

Israel’s application for membership in the United Nations was backed by a Security Council recommendation of nine votes to one, with one abstention. But when the representative of Israel appeared before the Assembly a coolness amounting almost to hostility greeted him. The Arabs were bitter. The Scandinavian countries resented the apparent laxness of the Israeli government in its investigation of the murder of Count Bernadotte. Many of the Latin American countries, where the Catholic faith is strong, were disturbed by Israel’s refusal to accept the international trusteeship for Jerusalem which had been part of the 1947 partition plan. And many nations, distressed over the plight of nearly 900,000 Arab refugees, were concerned about Israel’s unwillingness to carry through the scheme of repatriation laid down at the Paris Assembly.

Israel had to make out a good case for itself to convince the Assembly that it was fit for membership. The responsibility for making this case fell on Major Aubrey S. Eban, who had been a British Intelligence officer in the Near East during the war and before that a Cambridge don. He is it quick talker, a quick thinker. In a statement lasting an hour and a half be dealt candidly with the three disturbing issues: Count Bernadotte, the Holy Places, the Arab refugees. For nearly three days he stood up under a grueling cross-examination. And he persuaded the Assembly that Israel had a good case.

On the morning of May 12, almost exactly a year after Israel had proclaimed itself a sovereign state, the striped blue and white flag with its Star of David was raised on the fifty-ninth flagpole. The new flag waved between the flags of two Arab states: on one side the flag of Iraq, on the other the flag of Lebanon.

North African partition

After the signing of the Atlantic Pact the elderly Italian Foreign Minister, Count Carlo Sforza, journeyed from Washington to Lake Success. His country is not yet a member of the United Nations but the Count had some business he wished to discuss with the Political Committee. The business had to do with the disposal of Italy’s former colonies, at present under British military administration.

The British had one major interest in the colonies question. They wanted Cyrenaica as a strategic base. They were therefore not particularly concerned about the disposal of the other territories: Somaliland, Eritrea, Tripolitania, Fezzan the last two, with Cyrenaica, comprising the former Libya. They were prepared to let Italy take over Somaliland as a trusteeship, and to cede eastern Eritrea to Ethiopia and western Eritrea to the AngloEgyptian Sudan. Mindful of their interests with the Arab states, they hesitated to concede Italian claims to Tripolitania and hoped for some arrangement that would guarantee the right to independence of the Arab peoples in these territories.

Backing the claims of the indigenous population were the Soviet bloc, the Arab states, and a group of Asiatic states led by India which have consistently fought for the rights of former colonial peoples. They challenged the attempt to reimpose colonial rule in North Africa under the guise of individual trusteeships. If the peoples were not ready for independence, then the United Nations itself should set up a trusteeship. They encouraged representatives of the people of Somaliland, Eritrea, and Libya to appear before the Political Committee. And these dark-skinned people in their fezzes and turbans testified that they wanted no return of European rulers, particularly Italians.

The problem of the European nations was to arrive at a compromise between the Italian claims and the British claims. This was being worked out at Lake Success when news broke, in London, that Count Sforza and Ernest Bevin had made a satisfactory deal on Libya. Britain was to have Cyrenaica, France the inland oasis of Fezzan; Italy, after 1951, was to have a trusteeship over Tripolitania. Then, as a sop to Arab and Asian claims in favor of the rights of the native peoples, it was agreed that Libya should become a united, independent state in 1959 — if the United Nations, at that time, would give its sanction.

The Bevin-Sforza deal took the Assembly by surprise. The Russians attacked it bitterly. The Scandinavian countries appeased their consciences by insisting that Libyan independence be assured by 1959 unless the United Nations decided against it. The Soviet-Arab-Asian group fought desperately to hold their lines intact against Western efforts to entice weaker members away from the coalition. The nineteen-nation Latin American bloc let it be known that they would kill the whole scheme if Italy failed to get Tripolitania.

The proposals for Cyrenaica and Fezzan passed, by slight but safe margins. Then came the roll call on Tripolitania. At first it seemed that the vote would hold. Then defections began to appear, and the final result was thirty-three to seventeen, one vote short of the necessary two-thirds majority. The Latin Americans, making good their promise, jettisoned the whole beautifully fabricated scheme. The problem of Italy’s former colonies was set aside as a headache for the next Assembly.

Nations and human rights

To the Western Allies, the plan for the colonies appeared the only practical way out of a difficult international dilemma, the only compromise that had a chance of getting a two-thirds vote. To the Soviet bloc, it seemed just another maneuver in the aggressive strategy of the Anglo-American alliance. But to the states of the Near East and of Asia, and to the peoples of North Africa, it represented a disguised attempt to re-establish European rule and to delay indefinitely the political independence of the territories. To them it was threat to “human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

This phrase from the Charter of the United Nations was a constantly recurring refrain in the debates of the last Assembly. Human rights forced Assembly action on the trials of Cardinal Mindszenty and the Protestant pastors in Bulgaria: the signatories to the peace treaties with Hungary and Bulgaria were asked to see that human rights, guaranteed by the treaties, were not violated.

Furthermore the Assembly, unable to get any assurances from the South African representative that discrimination against citizens of India would be discontinued, by a forty-seven to one vote called for South Africa to meet with India at a round-table conference. A concern for human rights also blocked a Latin American attempt to force the Assembly to ease its 1946 ban against Franco Spain.

The item of Indonesia was dropped from the Assembly’s agenda only after it had become apparent that the UN Indonesian Commission was directing negotiations between Dutch and Republican leaders toward a just settlement. A Convention on the International Transmission of News and the Right of Correction was a significant step forward in guaranteeing the rights of foreign correspondents.

Toward a better world

India, which has placed itself at the head of a new coalition of the people of Asia, was the most active in rallying nations to a recognition of their obligations to the Charter. But smaller states, too, played their part - the Philippines, Australia, Mexico, Uruguay, the Scandinavian countries.

The United Nations, despite its failings, was able to demonstrate a rugged, if at times primitive, vitality. At the end of its Third Assembly it was able to look back on achievements in which it played a major part — the easing of the cold war, the hope of peace in Palestine and Indonesia, and a Declaration of Human Rights which has real meaning.