United Nations: The Sensible 16th

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When the U.N.'s 16th General Assembly opened last fall, it seemed headed for disaster. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was dead, and in sight of his empty chair on the Assembly podium, the Russians fought week after week to destroy the post he had occupied. Then came the savage Katanga war, in which U.N. forces fought to put down Moise Tshombe's rebellion against the Congo's central government—a conflict in which many felt that the U.N. had no business taking part. Many of the new Afro-Asian nations, which now made up nearly half of the Assembly membership, were widely written off as automatic Communist allies. On all sides there were gloomy predictions that the U.N. was near death.

But last week, as Tunisia's Mongi Slim rapped his olive-wood presidential gavel to adjourn the Assembly, the U.N. was probably in better shape than at any time since Hammarskjold's best days. Russia had scored virtually no gains in the Assembly, suffered some severe defeats. Most notable was Moscow's failure to seat Red China as a U.N. member and to impose its troika scheme for a three-man U.N. executive, which would have paralyzed the world body's operations.

The Middle Ground. What stood out in the General Assembly's 16th session was growing moderation among the Afro-Asians. A year ago. African delegates were ready to rally behind virtually any hot-worded resolution on colonialism; now, there is far more discrimination and common sense. When Russia tabled a motion calling for freedom by the end of 1962 for all remaining dependent territories, the Afro-Asians themselves produced a moderate substitute that the Western powers could accept, urging an end to colonialism but setting no deadlines.

Later, the Afro-Asians showed similar restraint about the rebellious Portuguese colony of Angola and about Ruanda-Urundi, the little Belgian-run territory east of the Congo that is due to get freedom next July 1. One proposal would have ordered Belgian troops to leave by that date, but U Thant pointed out that neither the U.N. nor the new country itself could possibly train troops quickly enough to keep law and order; sensibly, the Africans and Asians last week rewrote their motion to let the Belgians stay on temporarily—thereby avoiding what could have been another Congo.

In sum, the Assembly record proved that there is no such thing as an Afro-Asian bloc with clear loyalties or affiliations to either East or West. In this situation, the West can accomplish a great deal with patient buttonholing, explaining, cajoling and bargaining—as was shown again last week when Cuba's delegate sought to brand the U.S. with harboring "new plans of aggression" against the Castro regime. The men from Havana could find no African or Asian "neutralist" willing to introduce their Assembly resolution, and when the measure (finally introduced by Outer Mongolia) came to a vote, many of the Africans abstained, helping the U.S. defeat Cuba's move 45-37.