DANGER ZONES: Boycott Ended

• Share

Dear Mr. Secretary General:

I consider it necessary to inform you that, in accordance with established procedure, I am assuming the presidency of the Security Council in August ... I request you to arrange to notify the members of the Security Council regarding the date of the meeting. The agenda will be communicated subsequently.

With respect,

Y. Malik

Big, blond Yakov Malik did not wait to send the letter. A Soviet second secretary telephoned from Manhattan to Trygve Lie's office and read it in Russian. Thus the Soviet Union ended its boycott of the United Nations Security Council.

Last January, Malik had walked out of the Council when Dr. Tingfu F. Tsiang of Nationalist China took the chair. Said Malik then: "I object to any ruling emanating from a person who represents nobody . . . This [is] not a meeting, but a parody of a meeting."

Thereafter the Security Council had carried on without Yakov Malik. The Russian's absence was important on June 27, when the Security Council had passed a resolution calling on the U.S. and other United Nations to send troops to Korea.

No one knew what the month of Yakov Malik's presidency of the Security Council would bring—willful obstruction, phony peace moves, or what. But the day before the Council was due to meet, he gave notice that first on the order of business would be the question of Red China's admission to the U.N. Malik and his superiors in the Kremlin were picking up just where they had left off 6½ months ago.