TRYGVE LIE RESIGNS

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26886, 12 November 1952, Page 9

TRYGVE LIE RESIGNS

U.N. Secretary-

General

NEW YORK, November 10. Mr Trygve Lie, for six years Secre-tary-General of the United Nations, today resigned for “personal reasons.”

He said he had wanted to resign earlier, but he had agreed to stay on because of the Korean issue. Now the Situation seemed to be better. A new secretary-general, chosen by unanimity of the Big Five Powers, might be better suited for the job. Mr Lie added that he was resigning for personal reasons after a long consultation with his family and friends, and for no other reasons.

Mr Lie made his resignation public in the plenary session of the General Assembly. He said he did not want to stand in the way in any manner of reaching a truce in Korea. The question of a successor to Mr Lie will be considered by this session ©f the General Assembly. The pro-

cedure is for the Security Council to agree upon a man and the General Assembly to ratify the choice. Each of the Big Five nations has a veto in the Security Council. The most prominently mentioned successors are General Carlos Romulo, of the Philippines, Dr. Luis Padilla Nervo, of Mexico, Nasrollah Entazam. of Persia, and the present Assembly President, Mr Lester Pearson, of Canada. Mr Lie was appointed SecretaryGeneral in London in February, 1946, for five years. In 1951 he was reappointed for a term of three years over the Soviet Union’s bitter opposition. Since then the Soviet delegation has studiously ignored and snubbed him, treating him as if he did not exist. This was known to have caused considerable distress to Mr Lie.

He asked the General Assembly today to remember that he wished to retire in 1950, but agreed to continue only because the aggression in Korea .had created circumstances that put him under an obligation to carry on. “Now I feel that the situation is somewhat different,” he said. “The United Nations has thrown back aggression in Korea. There can be an armistice if the Soviet Union, the Chinese People’s Republic, and the North Koreans are sincere in their wish to end the fighting. If they are sincere, then the new SecretaryGeneral. who is the unanimous choice of the five Great Powers, the Security Council, and the General Assembly, may be more helpful than I can be.”