Stevenson Offered U.S. Ambassadorship To U.N.

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29384, 10 December 1960, Page 13

Stevenson Offered U.S. Ambassadorship To U.N.

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, December 9. President-elect John Kennedy prepared to fly to Florida today, with his three top Cabinet posts still undecided. It appeared unlikely that he would make his choices for the posts —those of Secretary of State, Defence and the Treasury—before his return to the capital early next week. Four other Cabinet assignments have still to be made.

During a day of conferences at his Georgetown home yesterday, the President-elect offered Mr Adlai Stevenson the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Mr Stevenson, the Democratic Presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956, said he had not yet accepted and would be having another discussion with Senator Kennedy next week. The President-elect also announced that he had asked Mr Byron (“Whizzer”) White, a former Rhodes scholar at Oxford and now a lawyer in Denver, to join his Administration. He did not name the post he had in mind for Mr White, but usually wellinformed sources said it would be either Attorney-General or Solicitor-General.

Mr Kennedy and Mr Stevenson conferred for 65 minutes and. afterwards, in announcing his offer of the United Nations position .the President-elect said: “I can think of no American to fill this responsibility with greater distinction.” He said that Mr Stevenson would have Cabinet rank and would play a greater role in policy-making than had been the case hitherto. Mr Stevenson said that he had not sought the assignment, but wanted to be helpful. He said there were a number of things 'he wanted to think over—“matters related to strengthening the delegation and the organisation of our renresentation at the United Nations”—before talking to the President-elect again next week. The strong favourite in unofficial speculation on the choice as Secretary of State was Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has powerful Congressional backing. Other unofficial reports said President-elect Kennedy was expected to ask Mr Thomas Gates, a Republican, to remain as Secretary of Defence, and that Mr

Douglas Dillon, another member of the Eisenhower Administration, and Mr Robert S. MacNamara, president of the Ford Motor Company, were under consideration as Secretary of the Treasury. Late yesterday the Presidentelect’s 13-day-old son—called John Fitzgerald like his father was baptised in the chapel of Georgetown University Hospital. Senator Kennedy pushed his wife, Jacqueline, in a wheelchair from her room through the hospital lobby to the chapel of the Roman Catholic institution. Mrs Kennedy and her son are due to accompany the Presidentelect to Palm Beach, Florida, today.

The “New York Times” said in an editorial today that Mr Kennedy's choice of Mr . Stevenson for the United Nations post “could not have been improved on. “This is a post for which Mr Stevenson is particularly well fitted by experience, by ability and by temperament. Both the United States and the United Nations will be the gainer for his presence there and his leadership of the American delegation

“Mr Stevenson is well and favourably known throughout the free world He is respected everywhere as a man of ideas and ideais. He is a master of the deft argument as well as of the graceful speech. He is, and always has been, a gallant fighter for the cause of international peace in dignity and in freedom,” it said The “Washington Post” said that Mr Stevenson could be a great national asset to the United States at the United Nations. "We hope very much that he will accept,” it said in a leading article.

“Not unreasonably, Mr Stevenson may want to know who will be the new Secretary of State before he gives his answer. . . .

No-one in the United States could represent American interests in the world organisation more literately, eloquently and persuasively.” it said.