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REPORT OF THE NEW ZEALAND DELEGATION ON THE FOURTH REGULAR SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY HELD AT NEW YORK, 20 SEPTEMBER TO 10 DECEMBER, 1949 I. LETTER TO THE MINISTER OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS FROM CHAIRMAN OF DELEGATION New Zealand Embassy, Washington 8, D.C. 28 December, 1949. Sir, I have the honour to present the report of the New Zealand delegation, of which I was Chairman, on the fourth regular session of the -General Assembly of the United Nations. The Assembly met on 20 September, 1949, and remained in continuous session—in the Assembly at Flushing and in Committee at Lake Success —until 10 December, 1949. During this period it discussed and disposed of sixty-nine agenda items. This-Assembly, in my opinion, did not differ materially from previous Assemblies. There was the same disproportionate expenditure of effort to results achieved, the same tendency to accept a formula or a resolution as the equivalent of action, and —I regret sincerely to say this—the ■same bitter and virulent language from the Soviet group. This latter aspect was the more disappointing because the Assembly had opened in a mood of some optimism, resulting perhaps from a few polite and friendly phrases used by Mr Vyshinsky on his arrival in New York. But it soon became obvious that the Soviet tactics were unchanged. They were, as in the past, to accuse the United Kingdom and the United States, and indeed everybody outside their group, of a malicious attempt to embroil the world in a war against the Soviet Union and its allies. And, as in the past, these charges, absurd and illogical to the last degree, were expounded, in season and out of season, in language of extreme violence and bitterness, in speeches which grew longer as the session continued, and too often in that same screaming and ranting tone which was so characteristic- —as indeed so much of the Soviet propaganda to-day is—of the tactics adopted by the Nazi regime in the 1930'5. But once again it is encouraging to record the fact that this unbridled attempt to impose a false and artificial Soviet point of view upon the Assembly was a complete failure, indeed even more so than on previous occasions. The main propositions advanced by the Soviet Union, in
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