PRESERVATION OF PEACE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25564, 17 June 1944, Page 6

PRESERVATION OF PEACE

POST-WAR ORGANISATION

PLANS BEING DEVELOPED (Rec. 8 p.m.) WASHINGTON, June 15. “ The maintenance of peace and security must be the joint task of all peace-loving nations. We have, therefore, sought to develop plans for an international organisation comprising all such nations. The purpose of the organisation would be to maintain peace and security and assist in the creation through international co-oper-ation of the conditions of stability and well-being necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among the nations.” This statement was made by President Roosevelt regarding a post-war international peace organisation. He said he had held many conferences with officials of the State Department in the last 18 months. All the plans and suggestions of groups, organisations, and individuals had been carefully considered. The President emphasised the entirely non-partisan nature of the consultations, and said that all the aspects had been debated in a co-operative spirit. He said: “It is our thought that the organisation would be a fully representative body with broad responsibilities for promoting and facilitating international co-operation through such agencies as may be found necessary to consider and deal with the problems of world relations. It is our further thought that the organisation would provide for a council elected annually by a fully representative body from all nations, which include the four major nations and a suitable number of other nations. “The council would concern itself with the peaceful settlement of international disputes and with the prevention of threats to peace or breaches of peace. There would also be an international court of justice to deal primarily with justifiable disputes. We are not thinking of a super-state with its own police force and other paraphernalia of coercive power. We are seeking an effective agreement and arrangements through which nations would maintain according to their capacities adequate fori es to meet the needs of preventing war and,of making impossible deliberate preparation for war, and to have such forces available for joint action when necessary.” “All this, of course, will become possible,” President Roosevelt said, “ once our present enemies are defeated and effective arrangements are made to prevent them from making war again. Beyond that the hope of a peaceful and advancing world will rest upon the willingness and ability of peace-loving nations, large and smaff, bearing a responsibility commensuiate with their individual capacities, to work together for the maintenance of peace and security.”