OFFER OF U.N. PRESIDENT

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28422, 31 October 1957, Page 15

OFFER OF U.N. PRESIDENT

Use Of “Quiet Diplomacy”

(Rec. 11.50 p.m.) NEW YORK, October 30. The President of the United Nations General Assembly, Sir Leslie Munro (N v Zealand) said yesterday he was willing to try to solve the Turkish-Syrian crisis through private talks.

Sir Leslie Munro said he—like his predecessors in the Assembly post—was ready to go outside the meeting halls to help |olve problems facing the world organisation.

In the present crisis, he said in an interview with an American Associated Press reporter, that quiet diplomacy could play an important role, and the President could help by conferring privately with protagonists and discussing the problem with them. “I am willing to take part in any way I can,” Sir Leslie Munro laid.

He did not take sides on the ’ 'Hie East controversy. He felt it was imperative for the President of the Assembly to build up a reputation for impartiality, fitting him for taking part in quiet diplomacy on issues before the United Nations.

He did not take too seriously the charges of the Russians that he had deliberately delayed the Assembly debate on Syria’s charge that Turkish troop concentrations were a threat to Syria. It was only natural, he said, for differences of opinion to arise Such charges, he said, did not affect his intention to remain impartial- “I don't think these differences tend to lessen their esteem for me or my esteem for them,’’ he said.

If he did this. Mr Hammarskjold would maintain contact with Syrian and Turkish diplomats at headquarters in New York.

There was no advance speakers’ list today—an indication that the situation still was “fluid,” and that a final solution had not been agreed.

Diplomats, who have been listening for the last week to warnings from Mr Gromyko and Syrian delegates that war was

imminent between Syria and Turkey, read with interest today reports of yesterday s Turkish Embassy party in Moscow at which Mr Khrushchev said there would be no war. British and American delegates have consistently played down the Soviet-Syrian charges, insisting that these were part of a “war of nerves.”

Western diplomats said that speeches by Mr Lodge of the United States last Friday and Commander Allan Noble. British Minister of State, on Monday, had been decisive in taking the steam out of what they called a Soviet propaganda offensive.