Crisis in United Nations

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27782, 6 October 1955, Page 12

Crisis in United Nations

The African and Asian group has forced a crisis on the United Nations by insisting on debating both Algeria and Western New Guinea. Although it is likely enough that in time France will resume active membership, the studied withdrawal of French representatives from the General Assembly and its agencies must damage the tenuous corporate feeling, so laboriously established, that keeps the organisation together. All this has been brought about for little practical reason, because interference in Algeria is not going to help much in the progress at last being made towards sclf-dctermin-I ation in North Africa. Ample preceden f r/ though bad ones, presumably led the President of the General Assembly (Senator Jose Maza, of Chile) to accept the motion putting Algeria on the agenda; but they clearly infringe article two of the United Nations charter, which states:

Nothing contained in the present charter shall authorise the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State, or shall require the members to submit such matters to settlement under the present charter. . . .

This is a sound provision. The United Nations was set up to preserve friendly relations among nations and not to deal with the internal problems of its members. Without this limitation it would spend most of its time fruitlessly interfering in such domestic affairs as the recent revolution in Argentina, communal bloodshed in India, and the treatment of Moslem

minorities in Russia. Nevertheless, the United Nations had departed from this principle (as in the case of South Africa), without the members reacting as violently as the French have done. The French had some cause for this demonstration. Subjected to much justifiable criticism of their dilatorin ers in dealing with North African troubles, and also to disingenuous intercession by Egypt as the leader of a Pan-Islamic movement, they lost their patience at this latest intervention which, now that affairs in North Africa seem to have taken a I turn for the better, is singularly ill-timed. The great of successive French Governments has been to retain the essential support of their conservative elements when planning the political future of the protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco, and of Algeria, which is legally part of metropolitan France. This difference of opinion within governments is the cause of the “ immobilisme ” that has plagued French politics since the war. The resistance of the French to reform in Algeria will undoubtedly increase under what they will regard as Arab provocation. They would be even more obstinate if they thought their own Government was meekly accepting United Nations intrusion into French domestic matters. The trend of French thinking recently has suggested a belated approach to some sort of North African federation, in which Arab and French inhabitants alike would be protected and which would retain the commercial links with France that most Arab leaders think are necessary. If trouble in the United Nations checks this promising development the anticolonial Powers will have won a hollow triumph at the expense of setting back the cause they profess to serve.

The Dutch, whose support carried the motion on Algeria by a majority of 28 votes to 27, should not be surprised that the General Assembly voted by a much larger majority to put Western New Guinea on the agenda, too. This is a dispute not between a government and some of its subjects, but between two sovereign nations about a territory peopled almost entirely by still a third race. Still, this is legally Dutch territory and article two probably applies. Fortunately, the Netherlands Government does not have either the internal problems of the French Government or the

complications of a Dutch population in Western New Guinea to make it unduly sensitive about what the General Assembly may say. Nor are reforms hampered, because the time has not come when the people of New Guinea are ready for any great measure of self-government. The Dutch (curiously insensitive to the predicament of France) are now not unreasonably annoyed by the General Assembly’s decision, particularly since British policy in Cyprus is not to be questioned. The decision on Cyprus shows that delegate can take a practical view (as well as a correct one) when they feel that they cannot stampede a government into hasty action.