ASSEMBLY OPENED IN PARIS

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25607, 23 September 1948, Page 5

ASSEMBLY OPENED IN PARIS

Speakers Appeal For Peace

DR. EV ATT CHOSEN PRESIDENT (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) PARIS, September 21. “Men must understand that the world cannot go on living from war to war,” said Dr. Juan Bramuglia, the retiring president of the United Nations General Assembly, when opening the session to-day. “I call you to peace,” he said.

He did not want any nation in the world to be excluded from the United Nations. There could be no chosen ones and no outcasts. He proposed a new international policy of “co-opera-tion, not domination.”

The President of France (Mr Vincent Auriol), in a passionate appeal for peace, told the delegates: “The peoples of the world look to you as their supreme resort, as the fount of their hopes, as guarantors of security and international justice. “Millions of human beings who want to be able to think of to-morrow without fear for their country, for their liberties, their lives and their goods, are filled with anxiety lest the precious chance of peace be lost.” Mr Auriol added that people were asking: “If it is true that all nations want peace, what then hinders the building of peace?” Mr Auriol continued: “With anxiety we watch mistrust increase between peoples whose blood in times of danger sealed their trusting friendship. With anguish we see the embers being stirred up. and violence and fanaticism strike most just men at the very moment when, with noble devotion, they are accomplishing their high mission of pacification and justice?’ Australia’s Minister of Externa] Affairs (Dr. H. V. Evatt) was elected president of the Assembly on the second ballot, receiving 31 of the 51 votes cast.

Dr. Evatt took over from Dr. Bramuglia, and, after the election of committee chairmen, the Assembly adjourned until to-morrow. No Soviet-Bloc Chairmen “Not one of tne chairmen elected to the six kdy committees of the Assembly is a member of the Russian bloc,” says the Paris correspondent of the British United Press. “This is the first time that this has happened since the Assembly was formed three years ago.”

After the opening speeches, the Assembly paid tribute to Count Bernadotte, Colonel Serot. and five other United Nations servants killed in Palestine.

The Secretary-General (Mr Trygve Lie) said that Count Bernadotte and Colonel Serot had been “killed in cold blood by deliberate assassination and in open defiance of their privileged position as neutral, unarmed officials representing the whole of the United Nations in an effort to bring peace to Palestine.” Their death must demand full satisfaction from those responsible Mr Lie added: “This raises the question of what the United Nations shall do to make certain that its representatives enjoy the maximum protection while in areas of physical danger. This incident seems to make it evident that the United Nations canpot depend on local authorities for the safety of its representatives and that it must be prepared to ensure their safety by instruments of its own.” He added that he would later put before the Assembly definite views on what measures the United Nations should adopt to build up its guard.