United Nations: Mission from Moscow

UNITED NATIONS

Crew-cut and impassive, Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin strode into the United Nations' glass house in Manhattan last week for the opening of the special session of the General Assembly. He listened with obvious satisfaction as the delegates quickly adopted the agenda—discussion of peace in the Middle East—and adjourned for the weekend, to commence serious debate this week. As the highest-ranking Russian visitor to the U.N. since Khrushchev's blucher-banging sortie in 1960, Kosygin was a man with a mission. Having failed to bail out their Arab client-states on the battlefields, the Soviets sought to use diplomacy to deny the Israelis the heady wine of victory.

One measure of Moscow's desperation was the procedure that the Soviets used for summoning the General Assembly into emergency session. The procedure was first devised by the U.S. in 1950 in order to obtain U.N. authority to repel Communist aggression in Korea. At that time, the Russians damned as illegal what they themselves employed last week.

The Vote Was 16-2. In coming to the U.S., Kosygin assured the Kremlin maximum amplification for its diplomatic offensive. His presence also elevated the level of representation in the Assembly's blue and gold auditorium. The roster of scheduled participants included U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, French Foreign Minister Couve de Mur-ville, British Foreign Secretary George Brown, Israel's Foreign Minister Abba Eban, Denmark's Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag, plus a flock of Communist Eastern European Premiers and Asian and Arab foreign ministers.

Kosygin was ready to argue that the Assembly ought to brand Israel an aggressor, and insist that it "disgorge the fruits of its aggression"—meaning withdraw from the Arab territories it now occupies—before any peace talks could begin. The two are very different propositions. On the purely technical matter of aggression, Israel scarcely bothers to deny any longer that it started shooting first. On the day before the guns opened up, the Israeli Cabinet met secretly to discuss whether to launch a "preemptive" attack before the gathering Arab armies struck. Abba Eban argued for further diplomatic efforts. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan insisted that the safety of the nation would not permit delay. Dayan carried the day. The attack was authorized by a vote of 16-2, the only nays being cast by the left-wing socialists.

"Come and Talk Peace." Any Russo-Arab attempt to make capital of that will not likely make much headway among the rest of the delegates. The Arabs, after all, have for 19 years insisted that they were in a "state of war" with Israel, and were clearly massing for their own first strike from the Sinai when the war began. The Russians will probably find more support in the argument that Israel's victorious armies should pull back to their own frontiers.