A U.N.O. DIARY
By A DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT
THE General Assembly of the United Nations, which met in Central Hall, Westminster, for the first time last Thursday afternoon, can look back on a week's record of solid achievement.
In a surprisingly short time it cleared out of the way almost all its own organisational business, the election of President and Vice- Presidents, the establishment of Committees, the adoption of rules of procedure and agenda. By Monday afternoon it had completed the constitution of the two most important organs of the United Nations —the Security Council of i i and the Economic and Social Council of t8—and had begun the general debate on the massive report of the Preparatory Commission, a debate which, continuing over several days, will give the representatives of every nation gathered in London a chance to have their say. This rapidity of progress is in itself the best possible tribute to the care with which the work of preparation has been done, both in the Preparatory Commission itself and by the Secretariat under the direction of Mr. Gladwyn Jebb, who was lent by the Foreign Office to the United Nations as Executive Secretary after the San Francisco Conference. It is also a tribute to the firm tact and parliamentary skill of M. Paul-Henri Spaak, the Foreign Minister of Belgium, whom the Assembly chose as its President at its opening session.
Whether it was concerted beforehand or not, the parliamentary ball-passing that preceded the election of the Assembly's President looked from the galleries like the prettiest piece of Russian team-play that has been seen in these parts since Dynamo beat the Arsenal 4-3 at Tottenham. No sooner had Mr. Gromyko put the ball in play with his surprise nomination of Mr. Trygve Lie, the Norwegian Foreign Minister, than Mr. Rzymowski, the chief Polish delegate, was after it like a flash with his support. And before the opposing team—or the whole meeting for that matter—could catch its breath, Mr. Manuilsky, the Ukrainian, was practically in front of the goal mouth with the ball with his bland suggestion that since there had been no other nomination Mr. Lie should be elected by acclamation. That the play did not quite come off and the goal was saved for M. Spaak was rather due to good luck than to the quick-wittedness of his side. Why, Mr. Gromyko having taken the initial advantage of a lack of precision in the rules of procedure, none of M. Spaak's numerous supporters had the nous to get up and nominate him, thus making everything all square and above board, will for ever remain a mystery. Incidentally, M. Manuilsky looks like becoming quite as notable a figure in these Assembly meetings as he was in the Prepara- tory Commission and earlier at San Francisco itself. He is the astutest parliamentarian in all three of the Soviet Republic delegations, and he can drive a troika through a hole in procedure as well as anybody. His chairmanship of the Assembly Committee on political and security matters will be well worth watching, especially in the crucial debate on the atomic energy resolution, when it is referred to his Committee for discussion.
So far the Assembly has seemed remarkably free from the jealousies and jockeyings, the back-room intrigues and the corridor back-biting which are so usually the accompaniments of international gatherings of this kind. Where there has been disagreement it has been good, honest dispute, openly thrashed out and decently resolved, with no apparent residues of hard feelings. Only once has the Assembly felt the dank breath of international political discord on its cheek, and that was when the Iranian delegate, Seyed Hassan Taqizadeh, speaking in the general debate, told it how near the United Nations had come to having Iran's difficulties with Russia over Azerbaijan dumped into its lap at this very first meeting. That would indeed have been a prickly problem for the Assembly to handle before it had well got into its stride, and the United Nations may be grateful to the Iranian Government for having spared the new organisation such a responsibility—if, indeed, it has been spared that, for as I write a persistent report is circulating that Persia is definitely to lay a plaint before either the Security Council or the full Assembly itself ; we shall soon know. By contrast with the forthrightness of the Iranian's speech, the other speeches in the general debate to date have been models of platitudinous discretion. Mr. Byrnes, who opened the debate on Monday, Mr. da Souza Dantas for Brazil, Mr. Manuel Bianchi for Chile, Dr. Wellington Koo for China, Hr. Rasmussen for Denmark and Dr. Shermerhorn for the Netherlands, all preferred to stick to the safe high ground of moral precept and ideal concept. This is all very nice and comfortable and makes good reading in the newspapers back home, but it should not be forgotten that the United Nations was created to do a job of work, and work is done by doing it, not by talking about how it should be done. The more real work the organs of the United Nations are given to do— such as, for example, the Azerbaijan problem—the more they will be able to do.
The elections for the Security Council—which for some years to come must remain the key organ of the United Nations—produced on the whole a remarkably satisfactory result, considering that this was the first time of trying. The relevant article of the Charter (Article 23) governing these elections reads : "The General Assembly shall elect six other Members of the United Nations to be non- permanent members of the Security Council, due regard being specially paid, in the first instance, to the contribution of Members of the United Nations to the maintenance of international peace and security and to the other purposes of the Organisation, and also to equitable geographical distribution." The five Great Powers who are permanent members of the Council—and a law unto themselves within it under the "veto" provision—are already well distributed geographically. There is China, definitely Asiatic ; the Soviet Union, Euro-Asiatic ; the United States, Western Hemisphere ; and Britain and France, both of Europe and both of the world at large. To these five are now added as non-permanent members : Brazil and Mexico for the two halves of the Western Hemisphere ; the Netherlands for Western Europe and Poland for Eastern ; Egypt for the Middle East ; and Australia for the South-West Pacific and South-East Asia. The chosen six also more than reasonably satisfy the other of the two criteria laid down in the Charter, the test of "contribution." Brazil, Mexico and Australia are all strong, stable, " medium " Powers, able to meet any demands the Security Council is likely to make on their military strength. Egypt can offer a vital strategic position, and we may be sure that Poland and Holland, so soon as they have recon- stituted resources to which the ravages of war have done such despite, will also be able to contribute effectively to the "purposes of the Organisation."
Immediately after the Security Council election was completed, Dr. Wellington Koo, leader of the Chinese delegation (he is, so far as I remember, the only delegate who took part in the drafting of the League of Nations Covenant at Paris in 1919), entered a strong caveat against taking the pattern set by this first election as a pre- cedent, in the sense that it fixed either groups or regions whose representation should be perpetuated in future Councils. He was supported in this by M. Georges Bidault, for France, who hoped that a precedent would not be created which might lead either "to privileges or to exclusiveness."
These warnings were useful, though it is a little difficult to see how the inequity against which they were directed is to be altogether avoided. Dr. Koo had in mind, of course, the representation of Asia on the Security Council. But by the accidents of politics, geography and demography combined, the bulk of Asia's immense population— rather more than half the world's total—div:des its allegiance among three Governments—the Soviet, the Chinese and the Indian, whereas the other half of the world's population is divided among more than sixty Governments. And in an Assembly in which it is Governments, rather than peoples, that are represented, perfect distribution of repre- sentation can never be attained. One cannot have both government "of the people, by the people, for the people" and government of Governments by Governments for Governments all in the same breath.
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