UNITED NATIONS: Useful Lesson

Adaptable as they are, Soviet diplomats doubtless learned a useful lesson from last week's U.N. deliberations: tyranny may be beyond the reach of the U.N. but a breach of parliamentary manners is risky business.

Russia's trouble began when Soviet First Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily V. Kuznetsov made the mistake of trying to crack the whip over the General Assembly. At issue was the Security Council seat to be vacated at year's end by Yugoslavia in accordance with a "gentlemen's agreement" devised in 1955 to break a 35-ballot deadlock between Yugoslavia and the Philippines. Under this agreement, Yugoslavia was to hold the seat for the first half of the normal two-year term and the Philippines for the second. Now, however, Kuznetsov, claiming that Russia had "made no promises" to observe the agreement, demanded that Communist Czechoslovakia be elected to replace Yugoslavia. If the Philippines should be elected, he warned, Russia would veto any proposal to add two seats to the eleven-man Security Council for Asian and Latin American powers.

Irritated by this crude attempt at blackmail, the Assembly lost no time in handing Kuznetsov a well-earned rebuff. By a vote of 51-20, the Philippines got a seat in the Council.

Doing something about the bloody oppression in Hungary, however, came harder. Early last week Hungarian Foreign Minister Imre Horvath somewhat evasively announced that the puppet government of Janos Kadar was ready to discuss plans for U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold's proposed trip to Hungary. When Hammarskjold replied that he was prepared to arrive in Budapest on Dec. 16, Horvath equably relayed this information to his government.

Within 24 hours Hammarskjold had his answer—via radio broadcast. "The Hammarskjold visit," said Radio Budapest flatly, "will not take place on Dec. 16.'' The Kadar government did not trouble to send the Secretary-General a formal reply.

The obvious next step for the General Assembly was one that some U.N. members had been urging, and others holding out against, for three weeks—suspension of Horvath and the rest of the Kadar government's U.N. delegation.