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the Security Council on 23 April, 1948, to assist in supervising the implementation of the cease-fire order issued on 17 April, 1948. Since the General Assembly was not in session during the period when the Mediator was performing his duties, Count Bernadotte received instructions from the Security Council alone ; until the submission of his progress report he reported exclusively to the Council on his mediation efforts, the truce supervision, and the refugee problem. Thus the Mediator, in concert with the Truce Commission, was directed by the Security Council to supervise the observance of the four weeks' truce called for by the Council on 29 May, 1948, with the aid of a number of military observers. Later, on 15 July, the Security Council determined that the situation in Palestine constituted a threat to the peace within the meaning of Article 39 of the Charter, ordered the parties concerned to desist from further military action, and directed that the truce should remain in force " until a peaceful adjustment . . . is reached." The Mediator was again instructed to supervise the observance of the truce, and, in addition, the Arabs and Jews were urged to continue conversations with him in order that all points under dispute might be settled peacefully. To the onerous duties which had thus been imposed upon him the Mediator devoted ceaseless effort. At the time of his assassination a basis for agreement had not been found, but the Mediator was firmly convinced that the problem of Palestine was not insoluble by peaceful means. In his report, furthermore, the Mediator pointed out that the Security Council truce resolutions had been generally respected and had brought an end to organized hostilities in Palestine. He believed, however, that such was the strain on both sides in maintaining the truce under the prevailing tension that " it would be dangerous complacency to take it for granted that with no settlement in sight the truce can be maintained indefinitely." In his opinion the truces had pr6vided a " cooling off " period of relative calm and the time was therefore ripe for a settlement. Accordingly he strongly recommended that the Assembly should now take a firm position on the political aspects of the problem in the light of all the circumstances since its last session, and that its resolution should be so reasonable as to discourage any attempt to thwart it or to defy the Security Council injunction against military action. While the Mediator did not consider it within his competence to recommend to the United Nations any definite plan for Palestine, he felt it his obvious duty to inform member States of the conclusions which he had reached as a result of his frequent consultation with the Arabs and the Jews. In arriving at these conclusions he was guided by the following basic premises : « That peace must return to Palestine. That " a Jewish State called Israel exists in Palestine and there are no sound reasons for assuming that it will not continue to do so."