Need seen for active support of U.N

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33675, 26 October 1974, Page 20

Need seen for active support of U.N

If the United Nations was to play an effective role in solving international conflicts by the use of peace-keeping forces, it must be provided with the instruments for the job in the form of national willingness on the part of a number of countries to supply these when the need arose, said Mr G. R. taking at a United Nations Day function in Christchurch. Mr taking, a former Secretary of Foreign Affairs and New Zealand’s representative at the United Nations General Assembly,

said in effect that if it was wanted that the United Nations be effective in its main task of preventing war and preserving peace, action had to come before words. The commonest criticism of the United Nations was simply that it had not done its job — that it had been “inert,” “paralysed by the veto,” and was a “mere talk shop” in cases where serious conflicts had broken out, Mr Laking said. These criticisms generally overlooked the fact that the great Powers had devised an organisation that would be effective only if they jointly made it so. Because of bitter post-war hostility, substantial remnants of which still remained, the United Nations could not work in matters of war and peace with the facility imagined in the interallied euphoria of World War 11.

i “It depends entirely for the : fulfilment of its aim of pre- > venting the ‘scourge of war’ * on receiving the means and . co-operation from its memi bers,” Mr taking said. “In I practice, the means and co-operation have frequently not been forthcoming, or s only grudgingly so.” i Today, he said, it was a ' fact of international life that ; the United Nations had been enabled to act, and had i acted, in an indispensable I role in a situation of critical : conflict in the Middle East. i This was largely because : the Soviet Union and the : United States had resolved long-standing controversies ; over the authorisation, : management, and financing of i a United Nations peacei keeping operation, and, for once, the Security Council had been able to act without attracting a veto. Accordingly, the United Nations was playing an important role in the Middle East. Of the expanding membership of the organisation, from the original 49 signatories to the 138 of today, Mr Laking believed this to be perhaps the principal achievement of the United Nations during its history. The result of this growth showed that it had succeeded “brilliantly” in one of its primary goals — to develop the self-government of peoples, and to assist them ultimately to independence.