Balance Of Power Likely To Shift In U.N.

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30686, 27 February 1965, Page 15

Balance Of Power Likely To Shift In U.N.

[From FRANK OLIVER, N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent]

NEW YORK, February 26.

The representatives of more than 100 nations in the United Nations Assembly have scattered after three of the most frustrating months the organisation has experienced. The United Nations recently seemed very near to extinction—so near that its mere survival is regarded as a tremendous accomplishment.

The organisation fought off the wrecking plans of General De Gaulle, assisted by Moscow, which wanted none of the French plan. The attempt of Peking to torpedo the organisation, using Albania, looked innocent and came uncomfortably close to success.

It was a strange day for the United States. When the Assembly was about to meet last autumn the United States was reported in all quarters as absolutely firm that a “no pay, no vote” policy was unavoidable. The end of the session found America fighting hard to avoid a show-down vote of any kind. It was the effective co-oper-ation of the defaulting Soviet

Union with the United States that preserved the U.N. Although the U.N. survived the Chinese-Albanian attack nobody seems particularly happy about the organisation. The breathing spell between now and next September will allow signatories to think about where it is headed.

The hope exists in America that the Soviet Union will do a lot of thinking in the pext six months. Its actions in those last crucial hours made it perfectly plain that much as Moscow hates paying back dues it does not want the destruction of the U.N. Moscow has done its best in the last 20 years to hamstring the organisation time after time, but it did not want China to accomplish a hatchet job. BANKRUPTCY

This, it is felt in Washington, will give the United States something to work with in trying to persuade Moscow to do something concrete in the next six months to an organisation which is near bankruptcy and whose effectiveness is, to put it mildly, seriously impaired.

Vietnam is causing as much private debate about the U.N. as the financial problems. The more serious-minded wonder what sort of organisation will emerge. They fear it will not much longer be the organisation envisaged at San Francisco 20 years ago. Power in the organisation has been rapidly changing hands and no-one at this stage is quite clear exactly where the centres of power will settle. PARALYSIS Vietnam has been frustrating for the U.N. One commentator has said the weakness of the organisation was never more obvious than in its present paralysis over the crisis in South-east Asia. James Reston says the United Nations was never organised to deal with disputes among the great powers and the Vietnam dispute is between the United States the Soviet Union and China. This has, of course, revived the question of China’s membership in the U.N.

Talk about Vietnam is impossible not so much because the Vietnamese are not members as because China is not.

China regards the war as an internal struggle. Action by the Security Council

i would almost certainly produce another veto from the Russians and no-one knows quite how the assembly would vote.

That Is really the vital question. It is privately agreed that Vietnam ought to be discussed and that the U.N. ought to be considering the cause of peace instead of putting all its thought and talk into its sorry financial condition and voting procedures. DOMINATION

The new nations of Africa and Asia now dominate the Assembly. There was no voting this session and noone was able to see just how powerful they are, but it is doubted if the big powers are anxious to make the test over the Vietnam problem.

On the American side there seems to be little optimism that the Administration's position on Vietnam would be supported by the Afro-Asian nations. Congo events make that sort of optimism impossible.

There is no visible enthusiasm, even in Washington, for the mild intervention by the Pope, let alone the efforts of U Thant to get the parties into a negotiating posture. Reston says the U.S. started the practice of bloc-voting in the U.N. but this has now been taken up by the AfroAsians, who “threaten to overwhelm not only the American bloc but the principles of the charter as well. “The U.N. cannot be revived, however, by silence and capitulation. It has to speak out for its principles in the Vietnamese crisis even if it cannot make them prevail.”