TRUSTEESHIP TERRITORY

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28743, 14 November 1958, Page 13

TRUSTEESHIP TERRITORY

, Soviet Proposal Defeated (Rec. 8 p.m.) NEW YORK. November 13. The United Nations Trusteeship Committee last night rejected by 31 votes to 22. with 18 abstentions, a Soviet proposal that Australia and the United States bring their trusteeship territories to independence within 10 years. Australia administers New Guinea and Nauru as trust territories under an agreement with the United Nations. The United States administers the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. The Trusteeship Committee rejected also—by 34 votes to 18. with 19 abstentions—another Soviet proposal that Britain and Belgium be asked to take measures to ensure that their respective territories on Tanganyika and Ruanda-Urundi achieve independence within the next five years.

The committee adopted instead a resolution sponsored by India, Burma. .Ghana and five other countries which asks the General Assembly to invite the Powers administering the territories to formulate "early successive intermediate targets and dates in the fields of political, economic, social and educational development of these trust territories, so as to create as soon as possible the pre-conditions for the attainment of self-government or independence.”

This resolution which passed would also have the Assembly urge the Powers to estimate the dates on which one or both of these objectives might be attained. Britain supported the resolution as a whole after expressing strong reservations about the first of these provisions. Britain abstained in the voting on that provision and voted against the second. . Australia and Belgium voted against both provisions and the draft as a whole. All three countries voted against the Soviet proposals, which were described by Sir Andrew Cohen (Britain) as arbitrary and utterly impossible.