Page image

24

Moreover in the course of 1948 the Security Council had decided that the Spanish situation did not represent a threat to the peace and should therefore not be included in the Council's agenda. Therefore no further action by the United Nations was necessary. The Spanish people should be left to act as they chose concerning their Government, which m'any case (as was proved by the testimony of Winston Churchill and J. E. Carlton-Hayes, a former United States Ambassador to Spain) had acted favourably towards the Allies during the last. war. The joint resolution was endorsed among Commonwealth countries by the representative of South Africa, who stated that he could see no advantage in measures which isolated the Spanish people from the rest of the world, and gained considerable support from other Latin American States ; Argentina, for instance, contended that the majority decision of the Assembly in 1946 was recommendatory only and had no power to bind individual members to fixed courses of action. Nevertheless some of the most violent criticism of the joint resolution came from South America. The representative of Uruguay stated that the United Nations action had always been directed not against Spain and the Spanish people but specifically against the Franco Government and that the racial and cultural affinities between Spain and Latin America should not be allowed to obscure this fact ; the Mexico representative quoted extensively from the records of previous discussion on the Spanish problem in order to recall and emphasize the reasons for the original condemnation of the Franco regime. The case for intensification of measures against Spain was developed with considerable violence by the representatives of countries of Eastern Europe, and especially by Dr. Katz-Suchy of Poland. He contended that measures so far taken by the United Nations had failed to remove -the Franco regime, partly because they were inadequate, partly because certain members of the United Nations had deliberately set out to nullify and flout the 1946 resolution. The United States and the United Kingdom particularly were deliberately disregarding Franco's role during the war, the nature of his regime, and the threat to international peace constituted by its continued existence in order to establish an ascendant economic position in Spain and to prepare the country as a military arsenal for their future aggressive plans. They hoped to see the 1946 resolution whittled away and the ultimate introduction of Franco Spain into the United Nations ; thus the " quartet " of South American Powers who now proposed modification of the provision relating to recall of ambassadors were in reality part of a much larger orchestra. The Spanish situation called in fact not for weaker! measures but for intensified courses of action, and the Polish resolution represented the verv least that the United Nations should do.