United Nations: Sniping from the Sedan Chair

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The U.S. had hoped to muster enough supporters to block the admission of Red China to the United Nations by a simple majority when that perennial issue came up for a vote last week. But when the General Assembly's big new indicator board flashed the final results, the U.S. had to settle for a tie—47 nations for seating Red China, 47 against, and 20 abstentions.

U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg declared that the vote "demonstrated that it is not the U.S. alone which has kept Communist China out of the U.N." That was obvious to anyone who could count. Also obvious was the fact that what had once been an overwhelming majority of nations on the side of exclusion was now reduced to no margin at all. "Just wait until next year," jeered one Eastern European delegate.

Most delegates felt that the Red Chinese had helped keep themselves out. As the seating discussions began two months ago, Cambodia lobbied for a proposal that would invite Red China in without tossing the Chinese Nationalists out. That might have won Peking an impressive majority. But Peking vetoed the idea and ordered its friends to press for a resolution that would expel the Nationalists from the U.N. while seating Red China, and contained a barrage of proposals for a revolutionary overhaul of the U.N. What Peking wanted was to wreck the U.N. Would it accept anything less? After last week's tie vote, a Red Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong sniffed that even "were a sedan chair with eight men employed to carry China into the U.N., China still would not go."