Menzies Critical Of U.N. Role Over Suez

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28250, 11 April 1957, Page 10

Menzies Critical Of U.N. Role Over Suez

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

CANBERRA, April 10.

The Prime Minister (Mr Menzies) said last night that peace had been jeopardised and international justice betrayed by recent failures of the United Nations.

Mr Menzies, speaking in the House of Representatives in the foreign affairs debate, said he believed it was dangerous to delegate foreign policy to the United Nations General Assembly. The rock on which world peace rested was the friendship between the British Commonwealth and the United States. He hoped that American leaders would ponder the outcome of recent events in the Middle East and see that these developments were not allowed to occur again. He believed the need to look over problems carefully before they reached the United Nations had been overlooked too much in recent events.

“I believe it was overlooked too much in Suez with disastrous results which have weakened the position of two of the great European Powers in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation,” he said.

One set of rules had been applied to Britain and France but a markedly different set had been applied to the Soviet Union. If Panama seized the Panama Canal, and repudiated the perpetual leases to the United States, just as Colonel Nasser did, or if Communist China attacked For-

mosa, the United States would not allow its redress to depend on United Nations votes, Mr Menzies said.

, The United States had treaty Obligations and would honour them with force if necessary, he said. If acceptance by Britain and France of United Nations recommendations to stop the fighting represented success for the United Nations, then he supposed United Nations intervention was justified. "Justice Greatest Principle”

The greatest principle for which the United Nations must stand was justice, Mr Menzies said. But Egypt had denied Israel use of the Suez Canal since 1951 by saying it had belligerent rights. The United Nations had been -bowing to but Israel had been given no guarantee, and no protection, on the use of the canal or the Gulf of Aqaba. "Is this a triumph for international justice? I can’t believe it,” Mr Menzies said. President Nasser had sabotaged the Suez Canal by sinking 49 ships in it, when he did not need “to sink a canoe for any military reason,” the Prime Minister said. Now all nations had the privilege of paying to clear up the canal. Soviet arms were pouring into Syria and Egypt. “Our loss of prestige in the Middle East, and these other things have strengthened the Soviet influence in the Middle East, and this influence has encouraged Nasser.

“Nasser was encouraged and I fear it may encourage others, in the not so far distant future,” he said.