U.N. May Become ‘Fossilised Relic’

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30762, 28 May 1965, Page 11

U.N. May Become ‘Fossilised Relic’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

NICE (France), May 27.

The United Nations Secretary-General (U Thant) said in Nice today that the world body risked becoming a “fossilised relic” of past controversies unless member states made more use of it as a peace-keeping agency.

It was his second warning within a week on the dangers of disintegration of the United Nations. Last Saturday, the Secretary-General said failure to use the United Nations in recent disputes was a reversal of its progress and would turn it into a mere debating forum unless the drift was checked.

Today. U Thant, welcomed the conference organised in Nice on the adaptation of the United Nations to the modern world. He said it would be misleading to look for the reasons for the many shortcomings of the organisation within its own machinery. “There are numerous factors which contribute to these shortcomings.” he said. Not the least of these was the reluctance of Governments “to use the available United Nations machinery for the purposes for which it was designed, and to tubscribe wholeheartedly, by actions as well as by words, to the general objectives and ideals of the charter,” he said. “I know well that such a practical commitment to the charter is easier to talk about than to act on. Nonetheless, the charter is, i believe, the only reliable road to inter-

national peace and security which is at present open to the nations of the world.” U Thant said it was essential to apply a sense of real urgency to the problem. “Otherwise, we run the risk of the United Nations itself becoming the fossilised relic of the controversies of an unhappy past, rather than the

vital and dynamic hope for a better future.” Apparently defending retention of the great Powers’ veto right in the Security Council, the Secretary-Gen-eral said the men who framed the charter “realistically recognised the facts of power and it would be unrealistic to think of a new charter which would seek to ignore such facts.”