France: Disunited Nations

President Charles de Gaulle may not take off his shoes in public, but his view of the U.N. is almost as contemptuous as Khrushchev's. The French dislike the U.N. for stopping Suez; De Gaulle resents U.N. interest in and disapproval of French atomic testing. Last month France refused (along with Russia) to pay its 1960 share ($3,000,000) of the U.N. Congo operation. Last week in his press conference, De Gaulle gave his withering opinion of the U.N.

When he helped create the U.N. back in 1945, said De Gaulle, it was dominated by long-established states, "which were used to international relations and to the traditions, obligations and responsibilities that these relations entail." Only the five big powers sat on the Security Council, and only the Security Council initiated debate. But now, "the General Assembly has assumed all powers. It can deliberate on everything, without and even against the advice of the Security Council." Many of the new members are "improvised states and believe it their duty to stress grievances or demands with regard to older nations, rather than elements of reason and progress . . .

"So that now the meetings are no more than riotous and scandalous sessions where there is no way to organize an objective debate, and which are filled with invective and insults. And then, as the United Nations becomes a, scene of disturbance, confusion and division, it acquires the ambition to intervene in all kinds of matters. This is especially true of its officers. It is anxious to assert itself —even by force of arms—as it did in the Congo. The result is that it carries to the local scene its global incoherence, the personal conceptions of its various agents and the individual partiality of each of the states, which send their contingents with their own orders—send them, then withdraw them.

"Under these conditions, France does not see how she can adopt any other attitude toward the United—or Disunited-Nations than that of the greatest reserve . . . She does not wish to contribute her men or her money to any present or eventual [military] undertaking of this organization—or disorganization."