FULL SUPPORT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27079, 13 May 1949, Page 7

FULL SUPPORT

AMERICAN PARTICIPATION IN UNITED NATIONS

PRESIDENT TRUMAN’S PLEDGE Rec. S p.m. WASHINGTON, . May 12.

The United States was still wholeheartedly behind the United Nations although it had proved a disappointment as a security organisation, said President Truman in sending Congress a report by the State Departiment on American participation in the world organisation during 1948. “ If the United Nations as a security organisation has disappointed us, and if we have had to take supplementary measures to meet actual or potential threats to our security, it is not because the United States has not put forth real efforts to develop the United Nations to its full stature,” he said. *' The world to-day is not the world we had hoped for when the San Francisco conference adjourned less than four years ago.” Mr Truman added that the Big Five Powers which hold tne veto in the Security Council were under a special obligation to live up to the principles of the charter and settle international disputes by peaceful means. The Secretary of State. Mr Dean Acheson, in a foreword to the report, said there was no sound reason for the Americans to lose confidence in the United Nations. At the same time, Americans and others had been disappointed because the failure of certain States to observe their obligations under the Charter made it impossible for the United Nations to grow to full stature as a peace-keeping organisation. The “ inadequacy ” of the United Nations in the security field had forced the United States and other nations to resort to the North Atlantic Treaty and other steps outside the United Nations, but consistent with its purposes.