NEW POWER BLOC

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29273, 3 August 1960, Page 20

NEW POWER BLOC

Africans, Asians At U.N. (N.Z. Press Association —Copi/Mpht) SAN FRANCISCO, August 1. An Asian diplomat said last night that the entry of eight new African nations to the United Nations this year would create a power bloc that could upset the voting edge now held by the West in the General Assembly. Mr N. T. D. Kanakaratne, legal adviser to Ceylon’s United Nations delegation, said the new African and Asian nations would probably consolidate their votes to form a “blocking one-third” in the General Assembly. "Up to now,” Mr Kanakaratne told a Lawyers’ Guild convention, “whenever the United States was pitted again Russia on the cold war issue, the United States has been able to exert pressure In her foreign embassies and muster the necessary two-thirds majority vote from among the Western nations. “But with the new African nations assured of admittance to the United Nations—and more nations to follow—a new power bloc can be created and the West will no longer have the voting edge,” he said. This new development might cause the United States and other Western Powers “to change their attitudes” on many issues. At the same time, Mr Kanakaratne said, it will “make It difficult for Russia to back up the present claim that the United Nations is Western dominated.”