U Thant Attacked Over New Guinea

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29932, 20 September 1962, Page 8

U Thant Attacked Over New Guinea

(N^A.-RnUr—Copyright) NEW YORK, September 18. The Earl of Avon (formerly Sir Anthony Eden), the former British Prime Minister, today criticised the United Nations SecretaryGeneral (U Thant) for failure to send observers to West New Guinea.

“Pending an outcome of negotiation between Holland and Indonesia, there could have been no pretence that Indonesia had a legitimate claim to control Western New Guinea,” the Earl of Avon said in an article in the American quarterly "Foreign Affairs.”

"It therefore seems strange .that the acting SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations should refuse to send observers to report on events in New Guinea after Indonesian parachute landings and other inroads into the territory.

“The Netherlands Government made this request, and it was not met, on the pretext that it would be a departure from neutrality to send observers unless both parties agreed that this should be done. "This doctrine could mean that both the aggressor and the victim have to agree before the United Nations

can send observers to the scene of an alleged aggression. That is not a tenable doctrine on any basis of international equity.”

The Earl of Avon said the Netherlands yielded its trusteeship in Western New Guinea under pressure from the United States and the United Nations. After seven years of Indonesian administration, the native inhabitants would be allowed to decide by plebiscite what their future should be.

“Yet a vote in such conditions can hardly carry confidence,” he said. It was a growing weakness that the United Nations had failed to uphold the principle that international engagements must be respected. The Earl of Avon criticised what he called President Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal, Indonesia's takeover of Dutch shipping “with no presentable offer of compensation.” and Cuba’s “theft of American properties.” He said Indonesia had pointedly prepared for “liberation” of territories in Western New Guinea “which are administered by the Netherlands and occupied by native populations having no racial connexion with the country which would now make them part of a new colonial empire."