Soviet ‘Troika’ Plan Dropped

Press, Volume C, Issue 29634, 3 October 1961, Page 15

Soviet ‘Troika’ Plan Dropped

(N2. Preet Copvrtoht, NEW YORK, October 2. Tiie Soviet Union late last night made public a proposal that one man be named to run the United Nations Secretariat until April, 1963—without a veto by any of his underlings but in co-operation with three deputies, the Associated Press said. That would be the end of the five-year term of the late Secretary-General, Mr Dag Hammarskjold, who was killed on September 18 in an aircraft crash in Northern Rhodesia.

The Soviet delegation said in a press release that in the last few days it had given United States and other representatives "a conciliatory proposal on the temporary administration” of the Secretariat. The Soviet Union in the last year had boycotted Mr Hammarskjold and called for his replacement by a “troika” —a board of three men, Communist, Western, and neutral, each with a veto. But the press release denied that it would apply the veto to the temporary administration. The release said reports to that effect aimed to mislead public opinion and whitewash quarters that sought to subordinate the United Nations staff “to the influence of one country or group of countries.” Substance of Plan

The Soviet delegation said the substance of its proposal was this: “The General Assembly, on the recommendation of the Security Council, will invite a man ... to serve as chief of the United Nations Secretariat for a specified period (until April, 1963) . . . “Both the Security Council and the General Assembly will appeal to this man and to his three deputies ... to act in a spirit of concert "The Soviet delegation has made it clear that it does not have in mind the utilisation of the veto on the part of any of these deputies to the provisional chief. ... He must, however, maintain daily co-operation with his deputies and the deputies with him, and must seek to achieve mutual agreement with them

on the major questions of the work of the Secretariat”

United States delegates had told others privately that this last point might be interpreted later to mean a veto, A.P. said.

They had argued that the Assembly could appoint a temporary United Nations head without the Security Council. A.P. said the United States was backing a tentative Irish - Norwegian proposal that the General Assembly alone name one man to direct the Secretariat.

Most prominently mentioned for the post were Mr Mongi Slim of Tunisia, Mr Frederick Boland of Ireland, and U. Thant, the Burmese delegate.

The Soviet release said the man it proposed to put in charge was one “well known in United Nations circles.” It said the deputies should be men "who now work in the administrative body of the Secretariat and who are highly qualified international officials from the UJSJS.R, the United States and one of the countries of Asia or Africa.” The agency said that could mean the United Nations Un-der-secretaries, Mr Georgy Arkadev, of the Soviet Union, Mr Ralph Bunche, of the United States and Mr Shakravarthi Narasimhan, of India. The Soviet Union had at one point earlier proposed that those three together should take over the Secretariat temporarily. The Soviet plan, the substance of which was reported by diplomats last week, was regarded in some quarters as a Soviet concession. Under the Soviet plan, the Soviet Union would be able to reject any candidate it disliked by using its veto in the Security Council Western sources had been holding firm to the position that one man should take the decisions and should not have assistants imposed on him by the General Assembly. They had also rejected the principle that the assistants should represent power blocs. The Security Council will meet today to take up the controversial membership applications of Outer Mongolia and Mauritania. The two applications were shelved last Tuesday, when the Security Council took action only on the application by Sierra Leone.