SUCCESSOR TO I.R.O.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 46, 5 December 1949, Page 3

SUCCESSOR TO 1.R.0.

U.N. OFFICE TO BE ESTABLISHED

CARE OF REFUGEES IN EUROPE (N.Z.F. A.—Copyright) NEW YORK, Dec. 3. . The United Nations to-day payed the way for caring for European war victims when the International Refugee Organisation goes out of existence in April, ; 1951,

The General Assembly to-day decided -to establish a United Nations High Commissioner’s Office for Refugees, which is intended to take over the remaining functions of the 1.R.0. The United Nations will bear only the administrative# costs of running : the High Commissioner’s office. All other activities will be financed by voluntary contributions. In .1945 8,500,000 refugees were tallied, and 7,500,000 have been repatriated. Of the 1,000,000 remaining some 600,000 have been resettled by the 1.R.0. in the last two years. 'The Assembly passed the resolution by-35 votes 1 to seven, with 13 abstentions. The Soviet Union, its Eastern European satellites, .Pakistan and Yugoslavia opposed the resolution. The Soviet bloc supported a resolution that asked members to furnish the United Nations with information concerning refugees and displaced persons in their territories and recommended that all s uch persons should be returned to their countries of origin. It proposed that there be no continuing machinery after the end of the 1.R.0. Mr Alexander Panyushkin (Soviet Union) said that repatriation efforts were being blocked by the American, British and French occupation authorities.

Mr Corley Smith (Britain) said that refugees would not return home because of “fear and hatred.” It was a perfectly simple reason for people who had seen Poland invaded by the Soviet Union during its alliance with Germany, when “hundreds of thousands of Poles were taken prisoner and sent to w concentration camps.” After it had taken- over Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in 1940 the Soviet had deported large numbers# of Balts' to the Soviet Union. Those deportations had continued ever since the war. Mr Smith invited any United Nations delegate to look at conditions in British camps. He asked if the Soviet Union would invite members to visit Soviet camps.

. Mr Panyushkin said that Mr Smith was using “Goebbels-like propaganda.” • The President of the Assembly (General Carlos Romulo) ordered the term to be struck from the records