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U.N. Police Force Urged By Munro

(New Zealand Press Association)

NEW YORK, December 17. New Zealand’s Sir Leslie Munro, former President of the United Nations General Assembly, has advocated the establishment of an “effective United Nations force readily available in an emergency.” Sir Leslie Munro, writing in ~ e American quarterly review. “Foreign Affairs,” said that if the United Nations failed to create such a force for supervisory police duties, it would be in danger of failing to fulfil its basic purpose of preserving the peace. He said: “History since the establishment of the United Nations has recorded crisis after crisis in which an international force could have played a salutary part.” He referred to the United Nations intervention in Korea—“as much symbolic as it was real’ —and to the intervention during the Suez crisis, which, although of an ad hoc character, had produced invaluable lessons for the future. “Surely we should profit by them and proceed to create a permanent mechanism by which units of the armed forces of member countries could be endowed with the authority of the United Nations and made available at short notice for supervisory police duties,” Sir Leslie Munro said. In his article titled “Can the United Nations Enforce Peace?” Sir Leslie Munro mentioned the Laos crisis. If Laos became the victim of aggression, it hardly seemed likely that the United Nations would save her “given

the fact that the world organisation has no stand-by force.” It would be only the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation, or more probably its principal party, the United States, that could or would come to the aid of Laos. “In other words, the chief bulwark of endangered States today is not the United Nations but either a great Power or a regional organisation,” he said. “In a troubled and divided world the time for improvising is past. “We need now to grapple with the question of establishing an effective United Nations force readily available in an emergency.” Sir Leslie Munro said that the impasse over Berlin, the confused situation in Laos, “aggressions” by Communist China on the Indian-Tibetan border, and the proposals of the Soviet Prime Minister (Mr Nikita Khrushchev) before the General Assembly for complete disarmament all pointed to the need for an urgent reassessment of the problems involved in the establishment of a permanent force. “Only a starry-eyed optimist could contemplate the absence in the foreseeable future of substantial armed forces to keep the peace in Europe, North Africa, between Israel and the Arab States, between China and India and the States of South-east Asia, between China and Formosa, and, although here there are some grounds for optimism, between India and Pakistan.” He said that if there was to be total disarmament by nations, a substantial international force would still need to be at the disposition of the United Nations. He referred to the presence of the United Nations Emergency Force in the Gaza Strip and the area of Sharm el-Sheikh since 1956, and said its presence had preserved peace where there had been none for centuries.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19591219.2.206

Bibliographic details

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29082, 19 December 1959, Page 19

Word Count
509

U.N. Police Force Urged By Munro Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29082, 19 December 1959, Page 19

U.N. Police Force Urged By Munro Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29082, 19 December 1959, Page 19

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